OUR MOVIE PICKS
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan and Justin Chang.
Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s exuberant, one-of-a-kind vehicular-action-thriller-musical-romance stars Ansel Elgort as a tinnitus-afflicted, music-loving getaway driver alongside a superb supporting cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Eiza Gonzalez. (Justin Chang) R.
The Big Sick
Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan are terrific as a young couple navigating the challenges of interracial romance and Muslim immigrant identity in director Michael Showalter’s delightful, serious-minded comedy, which also features powerhouse supporting turns from Holly Hunter and Ray Romano. (Justin Chang) R.
Brigsby Bear
Kyle Mooney gives a terrific performance as a young man obsessed with an educational TV show in director Dave McCary’s sweetly disarming comedy, which expands into a winning tribute to the joys of amateur filmmaking and the therapeutic power of art. (Justin Chang) PG-13.
Columbus
John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson play two strangers who go on a walking-and-talking tour of the modernist architecture in Columbus, Ind., in this serenely intelligent, gorgeously contemplative first feature from writer-director Kogonada. (Justin Chang) NR.
Detroit
In re-creating one of the most horrific episodes from the 1967 Detroit race riot, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have made a tense, excruciating and entirely necessary portrait of individual and systemic racism that reverberates all too powerfully in the present. (Justin Chang) R.
Dunkirk
Both intimate and epic, as emotional as it is tensionfilled, Christopher Nolan’s immersive World War II drama is being ballyhooed as a departure for the bravura filmmaker, but in truth the reason it succeeds so masterfully is that it is anything but. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.
Girls Trip
Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and a revelatory Tiffany Haddish play women renewing the bonds of friendship on a New Orleans weekend getaway in this hilariously raunchy and sensationally assured new comedy from director Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man”). (Justin Chang) R.
Step
Heartening and unashamedly emotional, this certified crowd-pleasing documentary tells the story of the hard-knock lives and expansive dreams of members of the step dance squad at a Baltimore charter school. (Kenneth Turan) PG.
War for the Planet of the Apes
An eerie quiet descends over this grim and masterful third “Planet of the Apes” prequel, directed with bleak beauty by Matt Reeves (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) and crowned by another superb performance-capture turn from Andy Serkis as the soulful chimpanzee Caesar. (Justin Chang) PG-13.
Wind River
Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen star in the most accomplished violent thriller in recent memory, a tense tale of murder on a Native American reservation made with authenticity, plausibility and wall-to-wall filmmaking skill by writer-director Taylor Sheridan. (Kenneth Turan) R.
Wonder Woman
With forthright emotion, spirited humor and a surprisingly purposeful sense of spectacle, director Patty Jenkins and her superb star, Gal Gadot, have made a thrilling new superhero saga that might just save the typically nonthrilling DC Extended Universe. (Justin Chang) PG-13.