WEST SIDE STORY (12A)

In a feature film career stretching back 40 years to the nail-biting road rage thriller Duel, director Steven Spielberg has nimbly traversed genres, smashed box office records and collected two Academy Awards for his impeccable work behind the camera.

For all that deserved success and his mastery of the modern blockbuster with Jaws, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park, Spielberg has thus far shimmied away from the heightened reality of a big screen musical.

Very good things come to those who wait because his update of West Side Story is a visually stunning, unreservedly old-fashioned song and dance spectacle on a grandiose scale, which pays due reverence to stage and screen predecessors, the book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Sixty years after Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' Oscar-winning film opened with those syncopated finger snaps to introduce the feuding Jets and Sharks, screenwriter Tony Kushner addresses cultural insensitivities head-on.

Every Puerto Rican character is played by an actor from the Latinx community, Spanish dialogue has no English subtitles as a mark of respect to the language, and drugstore owner Doc has been replaced with his widow Valentina to provide an eye-catching role for Rita Moreno, Oscar-winning star of the 1961 film.

The Wise and Robbins take on West Side Story was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and Spielberg and his creative collaborators won't be far behind.

Production and costume design powerfully evoke gentrified 1950s New York and its fashionable swagger, the editing of musical sequences is en pointe, while Spielberg's long-time cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, conjures breathtaking imagery like streetlights reflected in standing water in an overhead shot of Tony singing Maria or the elongated shadows of rival gangs stretching towards each other for an ill-fated "rumble".

Those tensions are inflamed when Jets co-founder Tony (Ansel Elgort), recently released from prison after almost beating a boy to death, defies best friend Riff (Mike Faist) and falls head over heels in love with Maria (Rachel Zegler), baby sister of Sharks leader Bernardo (David Alvarez).

West Side Story nods respectfully to previous incarnations including choreographer Justin Peck's breathless riffs on Robbins' stylised movements.

Elgort can't match the intensity of co-stars - in some scenes he doesn't seem entirely present - but there is a tenderness to his duet with Zegler on Tonight.

She brings palpable fire to her role and Ariana DeBose melts every frame as Bernardo's sassy girlfriend Anita - the role which secured Moreno her Oscar - including a skirt-swishing rendition of America worthy of a standing ovation.

Moreno delivers a haunting solo of Somewhere that tingles down the spine and underscores the raw emotion coursing beneath the technical virtuosity.

8.5/10

CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG (PG)

Hoping to disprove the notion that the loveliest gifts come in small packages, director Walt Becker's supersized family comedy unleashes a hulking runt of a litter on New York City and revels in the devastation as the mutt pounces on a Zorb in Central Park and breaks a veterinarian's expensive weighing scales.

Clifford The Big Red Dog is based on the beloved series of children's books by Norman Bridwell dating back to the 1960s and Becker's film shares many of the tail-wagging title character's traits.

It's boundlessly energetic, eager to please, occasionally clumsy and tiring for periods.

The digitally rendered hero, who teaches a bullied girl the power of love and self-belief, is cartoonishly cute and gels with live-action elements including a human cast led by Jack Whitehall, whose faltering American accent could have been dropped since his man-child pointedly discloses he was born in England.

The comedian and actor is the butt of the pooch-oriented jokes.

He is accidentally sprayed when Clifford cocks a leg and is handed a thermometer to gauge the pet's temperature in a place "that rhymes with nut hole".

There is plentiful sweetness to offset the silly, delivered in spades by young lead Darby Camp, and John Cleese has a twinkle in his eye as a modern-day Dr Dolittle with a gift for pairing abandoned creatures and emotionally crippled owners.

Twelve-year-old Emily Elizabeth Howard (Camp) is the new girl in sixth grade at Thatcher Academy.

She is bullied mercilessly by mean girl Florence (Mia Ronn), who cruelly nicknames the scholarship student "Food Stamp".

When Emily's paralegal mother Maggie (Sienna Guillory) leaves town on business for a couple of days, lackadaisical uncle Casey (Whitehall) babysits his niece.

On their first morning together, they visit the pop-up animal shelter run by Mr Bridwell (Cleese), who suggests the adoption of a temperamental tortoise or stand-up chameleon.

Instead, Emily is smitten with a mischievous golden retriever pup with beetroot fur.

"How big is he gonna get?" she inquires.

"That depends... on how much you love him," cryptically responds Mr Bridwell.

Overnight, the pooch - christened Clifford - grows to monstrous proportions and attracts the attention of building superintendent Packard (David Alan Grier), who forbids pets on the premises.

When footage of Clifford goes viral, scheming biotech chief executive Zac Tieran (Tony McHale) dispatches underlings to capture the towering canine and sequence its DNA as the missing piece of his "feed the world with giant food" puzzle.

Clifford The Big Red Dog is unabashedly playful and chaotic, peppered with pratfalls and pantomime villainy.

Camp's heartfelt lead performance provides ballast to Whitehall's tomfoolery (an opening sight gag with hand sanitiser sets the tone) and lends credibility to a grandstand plea for compassion and acceptance that only happens in the movies.

5.5/10

DON'T LOOK UP (15)

The threat of an extinction-level event fails to turn the heads of the woman and men in power in writer-director Adam McKay's bruising satire of the climate change crisis and misinformation in an age of rolling 24-hour news.

Professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) encourages his astronomy students to look to the sky for subtle changes to our solar system.

Together with grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), he makes a shocking discovery: a comet the size of Mount Everest is on a collision course with Earth and will hit the third rock from the Sun in a matter of months.

Armed with their devastating data, Randall and Kate seek a meeting with US President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her Chief of Staff, who happens to be her sycophantic son Jason (Jonah Hill).

Top brass on Capitol Hill are non-plussed by the astronomers' bold claims so Randall and Kate raise the alarm by appearing on morning TV show The Daily Rip hosted by the dismissive double-act of Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

As the clock ticks down to the end of the world, no-one seems to be listening to the experts.

7/10

BEING THE RICARDOS (15)

Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman hopes to add another golden statuette to her collection for her portrayal of I Love Lucy star Lucille Ball in a biographical drama written and directed by Aaron Sorkin.

The film unfolds during one pivotal week of production on the sitcom when political smears threaten Lucille and her husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem).

The crisis threatens to end their careers and marriage and the power couple rally with support from co-stars William Frawley (JK Simmons) and Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda).

They must fend off allegations from Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee that Ball is a communist sympathiser.

8/10