OUR MOVIE PICKS
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan and Justin Chang.
Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s exuberant, one-of-a-kind vehicularaction-thriller-musicalromance 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.
Beatriz at Dinner
Salma Hayek gives perhaps the best performance of her career as an empathetic holistic healer who comes face to face with a rotten billionaire real-estate mogul (a marvelous John Lithgow) in this queasily funny and suspenseful dark comedy from director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White. (Justin Chang) R.
The Beguiled
Superbly acted by an ensemble that includes Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell, Sofia Coppola’s Southern gothic chamber piece brings artful precision and a deft, distinctive feminist reading to a Civil War-era story previously adapted in 1971 by Don Siegel. (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.
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.
A Ghost Story
Casey Affleck dons a bedsheet and stars opposite Rooney Mara in writerdirector David Lowery’s quietly compelling lowbudget experiment, a simple story of love and loss that gradually pries open a window onto eternity. (Justin Chang) R.
Girls Trip
Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and a revelatory Tiffany Haddish play four 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.
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.
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.