Black Dog, from Chinese director Guan Hu, is a disarmingly funny addition to the man-meets-dog film canon

Black Dog begins, somewhat unusually, with an avalanche in the Gobi Desert. Fast facts about Black Dog What: In the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, an ex-con tasked with rounding up stray dogs strikes an unlikely friendship with a black whippet Starring: Eddie Peng, Xin, Hu Xiaoguang Directed by: Guan Hu Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Like contacting a shelter Among its remarkable qualities, the film's coordination of live animals provides its most spectacular images. Black Dog's early 2008 setting makes overt reference to the Beijing Olympics, an event emblematic of China's sweeping modernisation and its corresponding tumult, whose shock waves contour the film. Black Dog's interweaving of social realism, whimsy and sentimentality proves largely cohesive, with Guan reining in the saccharine tendencies that define more conventional man-meets-dog narratives. In a holiday season dominated by Moana's sea creatures, Better Man's singing chimp and a new Paddington adventure, Black Dog deserves its day.