BABY DRIVER

R, 90 minutes. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Stonington, Waterford, Westbrook and Lisbon. Edgar Wright has never met a film genre he couldn’t transform. He took the slow-walking world of zombies and infused it with high energy comedy to create “Shawn of the Dead.” The right turn he made in what appeared to be a sleepy village cop movie with “Hot Fuzz” created cinematic whiplash. Now, the director-writer has tackled the rather driven-into-the-ground genre of fast cars with “Baby Driver.” It starts out looking to be nothing more than a fast story of furious thugs, but Wright quickly turns it into a blend of “Reservoir Dogs” and “Romeo and Juliet.” The collision of two such diverse scenarios sounds like what would happen if someone made a peanut butter and ketchup sandwich. As with all of Wright’s work, all you have to do is give his twisted sense of filmmaking a few moments and the beauty of contradictions becomes a thing of beauty. “Baby Driver” starts with a typical bank robbery and car chase. Behind the wheel is Baby (Ansel Elgort), a young man who doesn’t look old enough to drive. It takes only a few seconds to realize that Baby’s a maestro behind the wheel, treating his run from the cops like a choreographed dance. Part of that comes from Baby constantly listening to music to drown out the permanent hum in his head created during an accident when he was a child. The brains behind the group is Doc (Kevin Spacey), a no-nonsense businessman who plans each crime with the skill of a general going into battle. He never works with the same band of thieves except for Baby, who has become a good luck charm. Among the criminals he hires are Buddy (Jon Hamm), a white collar money wizard who took to a life of crime after becoming obsessed with white powder. Buddy’s love, Darling (Eiza Gonzalez), is as deadly with her sexuality as she is with her guns. And then there’s Bats (Jamie Foxx), a psychopath who settles any friendly or unfriendly dispute with a bullet. The plan for one last big score begins to show cracks when Baby’s focus becomes split between the job and Deborah (Lily James), a southern belle waitress whose dream is to hit the open road without a plan. This longing for independence infects Baby and he must work his way out of criminal commitments that stand in his way.”Baby Driver” is filled with fascinating characters who could all be the focus of their own movie. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency

1/2 R, 119 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts today at Waterford, Stonington, Lisbon, Westbrook. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas. “The Big Sick” is a small movie that makes a big impact. While a romantic comedy on the surface, it plumbs emotional depths, all while never losing its insightful sense of humor. The brainchild of comedian-writer Kumail Nanjiani, bestknown as Dinesh on the HBO series “Silicon Valley,” “The Big Sick” gets added heft from the fact that it’s