Still screening in Bay Area theaters
“Baby Driver”: This heist picture not only has a hip soundtrack, but director Edgar Wright has carefully synced the action and visual rhythms to it. Ansel Elgort plays the young wheelman who whisks a Kevin Spacey-led gang, including Jon Hamm and Jamie Fox, away from each crime scene before the dust settles. Lily James delivers the eye candy. Think of it as a Tarantino-esque jukebox musical. 2 ½ stars (Ann Hornaday, Washington Post) R, 1:57
“The Beguiled”: Sofia Coppola revisits the Southern Gothic genre in her steamy remake of a 1971 Civil Warera thriller starring Clint Eastwood. This time the Yankee solder taken in by the Farnsworth Seminary for Young (Southern) Ladies to recover from his wounds is played by Colin Farrell. Nicole Kidman brings icy decorum to the role of the headmistress, even as repression loses its grip on the corseted students (Elle Fanning and Kristen Dunst, among them), and sexual tensions erupt. But Coppola never once lets the male character hijack the narrative, and soon he realizes he has been outflanked. 4 stars (Karen D’Souza, Staff) R, 1:34
“The Big Sick”: The screenplay, written by star Kumail Nanjiani and his real-life wife, Emily V. Gordon, was inspired by their courtship. The sexy, beguiling Zoe Kazan brings intelligence and believability to the Gordon role. The romance is almost derailed because Kumail can’t bring himself to tell his traditional Pakistani parents he’s in love with an American named Emily, who comes down with something, and is in a medically induced coma when Kumail finally visits the hospital and meets her parents. This film transcends the clichés of each formula it flirts with. 3 ½ stars (Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News) R, 2:00
“City of Ghosts”: Matthew Heineman documents the citizen-journalist group working in Raqqa, a city on the Euphrates in eastern Syria that has become the headquarters for the Islamic State. It is also a place where one of the more inspiring examples of citizen reporting has taken root. The activists are mostly young, formerly apolitical men armed with nothing but a hashtag and a logo, even though they and their families face danger and possible execution if discovered. 3 stars (Jake Coyle, Associated Press) PG-13, 1:32
“A Ghost Story”: Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play a couple in rural Texas whose bond of contentment is severed when the husband dies in a car crash. Soon he returns as a ghost, clad in a thick white sheet with two small eye holes, but no one can see him but the movie audience as he roams the grounds of his old house watching and pining for his wife. Eventually she leaves, and he is forced to look on helplessly as she is replaced by a steady stream of new occupants. Director David Lowery seems less interested in exploiting the trappings of a horror film than in using them to highlight the man’s isolation, and open a window on eternity. 3 stars (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:27
“The Little Hours”: In Jeff Baena’s cheeky adaptation of parts of Boccaccio’s 14th-century story collection “The Decameron,” randy nuns run amock, especially after the arrival of a young hunk of a gardener-caretaker (Dave Franco). The nuns — played by Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci and Alison Brie, among others — speak in the anachronistic slang of the 21st century. With hardly any jokes in the screenplay, the language gimmick and the genre itself are the punchlines, as such. 1 ½ stars (Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times) R, 1:30
“Lost in Paris”: In this fourth cinematic showcase for Brussels-based husbandand-wife burlesque performers Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, she plays a Canadian visitor to Paris who has come to see her aunt (Emmanuelle Riva) and he a homeless drifter who becomes Fiona’s improbable soul mate. Though rife with mistaken identities and crazy coincidences, the movie delivers a soothing dose of whimsy and a fond farewell to Riva, who died earlier this year. 2 ½ stars (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times) Unrated, 1:23
“Maudie”: Sally Hawkins (“Blue Jasmine”) plays one of Canada’s best-known painters — Maud Lewis, a self-taught “outsider” art- ist whose childlike images appeared on greeting cards, beaver board and linoleum tiles and who becomes famous after a CBC news crew discovers her in 1965. Ethan Hawke plays her husband, a fish peddler. 2 ½ stars (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) PG-13, 1:55
“Spider-Man: Homecoming”: Superhero cynicism aside, this movie is really fun, largely because director Jon Watts has cast teenagers to play teenagers, including Tom Holland in the title role (the actor was 19 during shooting). The script and situations ring mostly true (even though there wasn’t a single woman on the team of six screenwriters) as Peter Parker and friends navigate high school, crushes and the indignities of teen life. Holland delivers the perfect blend of empathetic, excitable and clueless. 3 stars (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press) PG-13, 2:13
“War for the Planet of the
Apes”: Matt Reeves’ riveting and surprisingly poignant epic chronicles a war forced upon a burgeoning civilization of apes who are leaning to use language and want to live peaceably with, though separately from, the humans on the planet even though the human in command of the military (Woody Harrelson) is hell-bent on exterminating the apes. 3 ½ stars (Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press) PG-13, 2:22
“Wonder Woman”: In a genre not known for embracing women of substance, filmmaker Patty Jenkins gives us a caped crusader (Gal Gadot) worth rooting for, as well as fine work from Chris Pine playing an American spy. Jenkins doesn’t need to pour on the pyrotechnics. The real fireworks in this film are its powerful emotions. 3 stars (Karen D’Souza, Staff) PG-13, 2:21