BABY DRIVER

R, 90 minutes. Waterford, Westbrook, 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-theground 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. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency

THE BIG SICK

1/2 R, 119 minutes. Through tonight only at Niantic. Still playing at Madison Art Cinemas, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. “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, best-known as Dinesh on the HBO series “Silicon Valley,” “The Big Sick” gets added heft from the fact that it’s largely autobiographical. When combined with the strong performances, especially from a positively electric Holly Hunter, this is a film that fires on all cylinders.

Nanjiani plays himself, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant trying to make it as a stand-up on the Chicago comedy circuit. One night, a woman in the audience good-naturedly heckles him, leading to a conversation with her after he gets off stage. She turns out to be Emily (Zoe Kazan) and they soon become much more than upstaged performer and overly zealous crowd member. Because she’s a white American, he keeps her a secret from his family who only want him to marry a South Asian Muslim. His mother has made it her maternal mission to invite any available young Muslim women to “casually” drop by while the family is having dinner — yet it’s all to no avail. But, wait, there’s more. Kamail’s not just keeping his budding romance a secret; he can’t

bring himself to tell his family that he’s no longer sure if he believes in all the tenets of Islam either. He’s not even praying five times a day anymore and hasn’t in a long time. The issue of being torn between two cultural worlds and two continents would be enough for most films of this type. But fate then throws Kumail and Emily a nearly knockout curveball that will change both of their lives, taking “The Big Sick” to

another level. Directed by Michael Showalter, “The Big Sick” could have jumped headlong into the sap and melodrama. Instead, it balances the comedic, dramatic and melancholic with a juggler’s aplomb. What’s also remarkable about “The Big Sick,” which Nanjiani co-wrote with his real-life wife Emily V. Gordon, is how it gets beneath the one-dimensional American

image of Asian and Muslim men as just either sexless IT geeks or gun-toting terrorists. Nanjiani creates South Asians who are real people, not punchlines, though there’s enough humor to keep the whole thing from becoming heavy-handed. — Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

CARS 3

H1/2 G, 109 minutes. Westbrook, Lisbon. The wheel on that screen keeps on turning, as a third installment of the “Cars” franchise rolls into theaters, in an obvious attempt to churn out more grist for the merchandising mill. It’s ironic then, that one of the plot points in the film involves the distasteful option that Lightning McQueen might have to sell out, slapping his number and likeness on everything from mud flaps to detergent. It’s part of the “brand,” his new sponsor purrs, and we’re to understand that this is bad; it takes away from McQueen’s individuality and personal freedom. And yet, what is a “Cars” sequel if not a brand extension? It certainly isn’t quite a movie. Directed by Brian Fee, it’s merely a sketch of a movie, a series of familiar tropes and characters known from the prior two “Cars” films, or the Disneyland ride, or perhaps a Happy Meal toy glimpsed once. Even if you’ve never seen a “Cars” movie, you know the buck-toothed tow truck that could only be voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, one mister Tow Mater. Legendary racer Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) is a washed up old race car, made obsolete by the tricked out new rides that hit the speedway, equipped with new technology, new training and the willingness to talk smack. His nemesis is rookie Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer), and though Lightning should really hang up his tires, he insists that he’ll decide when he’s done. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

DESPICABLE ME 3

H1/2 PG, 90 min. Through today only at Mystic Luxury Cinemas. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Though the Minions now have their own film (of the same name), they still pull back-up duty in the “Despicable Me” franchise, and yes, they are somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into “Despicable Me 3,” a serviceable stop on the inevitable way to “Despicable Me 4.” As a couple of hours of kidtertainment, you could do worse, but it’s nothing to write home about. “Despicable Me 3,” directed by Pierre Coffin, Eric Guillon and Kyle Balda, written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, relies on pre-established audience familiarity with the characters and universe of the franchise, and then just throws subplots on top of subplots on top of that. Each story is so shallow that it feels like a series of shorts, with only the flimsiest of narrative threads stitching the whole thing together. Two new characters are introduced in this third installment: Balthazar Bratt, voiced by Trey Parker, is the antagonist, a washed up child actor from the ‘80s turned super-villain, with a serious axe to grind against the industry that rejected him as a pimply, pubescent teen. He’s got a mullet, a keytar, a purple suit with shoulder pads, and one heck of a music licensing budget (it’s packed with snippets of hits from Michael Jackson to Van Halen). The other new character is a sidekick, Dru (also Steve Carell), Gru’s long-lost twin brother. After losing their jobs, Gru, wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig) and their girls head to Fredonia to meet Dru. — Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

DUNKIRK

R, 107 min. Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. With a bare minimum of dialogue, and a brutal maximum of scenes depicting near-drowning situations in and around Dunkirk, France, in late May and early June 1940, Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” is a unique waterboarding of a film experience. Many will respond to it, primally, as a grueling dramatization of what the English call “the Dunkirk spirit,” one that turned a perilous mass evacuation of British and Allied troops, under German fire (though bad weather kept the Luftwaffe largely at bay), into a show of collective resilience at a crucial early crossroads of World War II. Operation Dynamo, Winston Churchill called it. Thanks to a series of interlocking lucky breaks (including the decision, probably Hitler’s, to call off the Nazi tanks before they got to Dunkirk), somewhere between 340,000 and 400,000 Allied soldiers, mostly British and French, were rescued from the beach and harbor of the smoldering coastal city. Nolan’s somewhat perversely structured screenplay tells three stories, also interlocking, laced with flashbacks and revisits to scenes, moments, really, you may not realize are revisits from a new perspective. On land, storyline one, aka “The Mole,” unfolds over a week’s time. The young soldier in British uniform we follow (played by Fionn Whitehead) comes upon the beach, which has filled up with thousands and thousands of British Expeditionary Force fighting men. The Germans are closing in. The young man, our introduction to this place, spies an opportunity for rescue, grabbing a stretcher along with another, nearly mute soldier (Aneurin Barnard) and joining an increasingly desperate fray awaiting naval rescue. What little exposition “Dunkirk” contains is meted out by Kenneth Branagh’s imposing naval commander and James D’Arcy’s army colonel, as they eye the skies for the enemy, and the air support that will not come. Story two, “The Sea,” takes place in a single day. Story three: “The Air,” taking place in a single hour. This is where “Dunkirk” soars, literally, metaphorically and cinematically. — Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune