While the plot runs out of gas and occasionally threatens to go off the rails, Guan’s strong visual direction ensures that “Black Dog” never ceases to be interesting.

| Original Score: B | Jan 30, 2025

This is a man and dog versus the rest drama with a social conscience and a deadpan sense of humour.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 3, 2025

Next to Umberto D., Chinese director Guan Hu may just have made the enduring masterpiece of man-and-dog movies -- Citizen Canine, if you will -- in this soul-filling homecoming odyssey set on the windswept fringes of the Gobi Desert.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2024

Black Dog registers as an existential fable about isolation, redemption, the possibility of making connections against the odds. It is also a crime thriller and a dazzling piece of landscape cinema.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 29, 2024

Its heartwarming aspect comes framed with real grandeur, and a stark absurdism and tightly wound sentimentality reminiscent at times of Takeshi Kitano.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 26, 2024

The film does tend to sag a bit towards the end, could have been more crisp and less sappy and melodramatic. But Guan Hu largely tells it with great control and deftness. Black Dog is riveting in its own unique idiosyncratic way.

| Jul 10, 2024

Set against a backdrop of urban blight and canine chaos, Guan’s highly original, deadpan thriller begins with a jarring sequence of dogs causing a bus to flip over on a desert road, only to get weirder and wilder from there.

| May 29, 2024

Guan’s approach gives the scenes of violence or tragedy a certain antic, Buster Keaton quality, which is enhanced by both Peng’s impassive yet physically expressive performance, and that of his wonderful canine co-star.

| May 22, 2024

The real star is Black Dog himself, who navigates the arc from misunderstood arse-biter to brave and noble hound with real aplomb.

| May 19, 2024