BABY DRIVER
ANNABELLE: CREATION
1/2 R, 109 minutes. Waterford, Lisbon. Dolls are so easily, effectively creepy that the tossed off prologue of “The Conjuring” generated a breakout star. Now, the evil porcelain doll Annabelle has a franchise of her own, with “Annabelle,” and the latest, “Annabelle: Creation,” a prequel of a prequel that director David F. Sandberg ably spins into a satisfyingly spooky origin story. Sandberg made a bit of a sensation last year with his clever horror debut, “Lights Out,” and his command of cinematography, lighting, production design and sound makes “Annabelle: Creation” a fine heir to the legacy of “The Conjuring” and “The Conjuring 2” auteur James Wan. — Katie Walsh, Tribune Content Agency R, 90 minutes. Westbrook. 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. — Rick Bentley, Tribune Content Agency
THE BIG SICK
1/2 R, 119 minutes. Through today only at Niantic, Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Lisbon. Still playing at Stonington. 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. — Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram