Richard Roeper

Catherine Hardwicke’s sharply drawn, slow-simmer domestic drama Prisoner’s Daughter has the cool vibe of an indie film from a generation ago, from the lived-in look of the Vegas sets to the authentic performances of the terrific cast.

I avoid saying a comedy is “laugh out loud hilarious” unless that’s literally true, but I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times at the edgy antics of Joy Ride — and I was genuinely moved by the warmhearted scenes depicting the complicated bonds of friendship and family.

There’s no overreaching attempt to paint the band as anything more than they were, no roster of professors and music experts and somber social commentators weighing in.

We’re left with the feeling that while Rock Hudson enjoyed an often-spectacular career and a rich and full and glamorous life, the real Roy Fitzgerald was never able to truly emerge from the shadows. The world wouldn’t allow it.

Dial of Destiny has a few clever ideas and some well-crafted action sequences, but the main plot line is creaky, corny and contrived, and the final action twist lands the story in such disastrous, B-movie territory that not even Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones can rescue it from collapsing in a dusty heap of mediocrity.

It’s a great-looking ride with a few legitimate jump-scares and some suitably chilling imagery, but the finale leaves us frustrated and let down, wondering: Is that all there is?

With Surrounded, Mandler solidifies his standing as a talented and versatile filmmaker, with Letitia Wright and Jamie Bell burning up the screen as two wounded and fiercely independent adversaries who both realize they’re in this thing together, and the outcome is most likely going to be a bloody mess.

In the hands of director and Stevenson High School grad Gene Stupnitsky (“Good Boys”), who co-wrote the screenplay with John Phillips, this is a hit-and-miss romp with just enough wit and heart to carry the day over the utterly predictable plot and the occasional bit of physical comedy that misses the mark.

There are so many Wes-ian constructs at play here, so many deliberate attempts to keep us at a distance, it’s as if we’re standing on a sidewalk in the rain, looking through a thick window at a painting hanging on a distant wall. We’re too busy thinking about what we’re seeing to feel much of anything at all.

This is an uneven film with a couple of glaring inconsistencies, but director Slattery has a fine sense of framing and pacing, and the top-notch cast handles the clever dialogue with aplomb.

While Extraction 2 doesn’t match the original action thriller from 2020 as it embraces so many clichés I lost count, it’s still a rousing international adventure with some incredible battles that will leave you feeling exhausted FOR the actors (and their stunt doubles). This is the kind of movie that leaves it all out there on the field.

With the ensemble cast doing superb work, The Blackening is a horror comedy that packs a serious punch.

Despite a far-too-long running time and a second half that often relies on audience-pleasing gimmickry in favor of a compelling story arc, The Flash is an exceedingly well-acted adventure with just enough gas in the accelerator to make it to the finish line before wearing out its welcome.

Eva Longoria’s Flamin’ Hot is a well-made but overly conventional and borderline corny (pardon the pun) biopic chronicling the rags-to-riches tale of one Richard Montañez, a maintenance worker at Frito-Lay who invented the globally popular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, forever changing the snack-food game.

Finally, a sci-fi action mega-movie filled with CGI battles in which barely distinguishable foes hurl each other about while delivering unspeakably corny lines, as we hear hip-hop hits on the soundtrack.

An entertaining docudrama that rarely digs beneath the surface but serves as a bright and inspirational reminder of a time when basketball was the glue forging a bond among five young boys who started playing together when they were around 10 years old and remain close friends to this day.

The action sequences are dazzling and innovative, but at least two major set pieces run far too long, to the point where we’re equal parts thrilled and exhausted. Given that this is just the first half of a two-part sequel (“Beyond the Spider-Verse" is scheduled to arrive in theaters next spring), one can’t help but consider if this might have worked better as a multi-part streaming series, with each episode running 45 minutes or so.

Although Sanctuary is stylish and initially intriguing, it’s eventually a real chore to spend an entire feature-length film (even with a relatively brief running time of 96 minutes) with two boors who are also kind of boring, despite all the histrionics and fang-baring and manipulative mind games. They find themselves and each other a lot more interesting than we do.

Infused with a stylish and shadowy style courtesy of director Rob Savage (“Host,” “Dashcam”), with a sharp screenplay by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods and Mark Heyman, The Boogeyman is a familiar but still effectively unsettling variation on the time-honored story of the terrifying entity who’s in the closet or under the bed or maybe just down the hall, waiting to pounce on you and your loved ones, even as everyone around thinks you’re nutso for insisting there’s a Boogeyman living rent-free in your house.

If you’re looking for a smart, insightful, slightly cynical yet warmhearted and consistently smile-inducing slice of life reminiscent of the best character-driven films of the 1970s, punch your ticket right here.

White Men Can’t Jump 2023 is the second remake for director Calmatic this year, following the disastrous “House Party” from last January, and while it’s not as clumsy or weirdly tone-deaf as that bomb, the screenplay by Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Doug Hall misses a couple of major opportunities, including the decision to have the most dramatic development of the entire movie take place offscreen.

Everyone slips comfortably into their roles and does what they can with the goofy dialogue and the death-defying, logic-defeating stunt sequences.

Like so many cautionary tales we’ve seen come out of Hollywood since there was a Hollywood, “You Don’t Know Me” is one long reminder to be careful what you wish for—because dreams that come true often arrive with tentacles attached.

I’m not going to spoil the epilogue in the slick but trashy and quite dumb Jennifer Lopez action movie The Mother, but I will say it’s so insanely off the rails, so bat-bleep crazy that I almost want you to watch The Mother just so you’ll know what I’m talking about. Almost.

Hypnotic is an uneven, at times mesmerizing and dazzling mind-bender of a psychological thriller that plays like a drive-in movie version of a Christopher Nolan film.

The documentary is at its best when we observe Fox in quiet, warm and funny moments with his wife and their four children, and when it’s just Fox facing the camera, talking with his typical candor and humor about his condition and refusing to be painted as some kind of martyr.

Thanks to the clever, docudrama style direction by Matt Johnson, a crackling good screenplay by Johnson and Matthew Miller and searingly good performances from the ensemble cast, the scenes where BlackBerry crashes and burns are just as enthralling as the triumphant moments when an unlikely team of ragtag techno geeks based in Waterloo, Ontario, briefly revolutionized the mobile device world.

I’m not going to say the ridiculous and off-putting romantic text-message dramedy “Love Again” is the worst movie of the year, but it might be the most implausible film I’ve seen so far in 2023, and I’m not necessarily excluding “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Cocaine Bear” and “65” from the competition.