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The title character in Dog Man is a man with a dog’s head. The product of improvised emergency surgery after a bomb squad mishap, he serves as a police officer in a generic city called “OK City.” Dog Man’s nemesis is a villainous cat named Petey; their ongoing relationship consists of Dog Man repeatedly capturing Petey, and Petey repeatedly escaping from jail. This goes on agreeably enough until Petey decides to up the ante by cloning himself,...

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The initial scenes of Nickel Boys are somehow both vivid and vague, like one’s own earliest childhood memories. We’re seeing the point of view of Elwood, a bright, impressionable African-American kid in 1960s Florida. The warm imagery and the overheard conversations and broadcasts evoke a potent sense of the remembrance of things past, but also suggest a small child’s grasp of them. Then we see Elwood’s point of view years later as a teenager, when he accepts...