Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
It's ruthless but sentimental, gritty but fanciful, drop-dead serious but also a little impossible to take seriously.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What it all means is open to interpretation. Read it as a parable or as a horror movie. Read it as the story of love between a girl and her dog. Read it however you want. No matter what your take, you won't be disappointed.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The obviousness of the message - follow the right leader - would be more tolerable in a less badly acted, less shoddy-looking film.

Name : G. Allen Johnson / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Rarely does a film's execution achieve or even exceed its director's ambitions, but Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo's "White God" is that rare movie.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
A B revenge movie with A-plus direction by Kornel Mundruczo and a cast of canines so personable that even when they tear out people's throats you still want to take them home.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
White God offers a dark - very dark - take on the way humans exert authority, and superiority, over our fellow creatures.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Kornel Mundruczo's sixth and best feature is an emotionally rousing, technically masterful man-vs.-dog adventure.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Intriguing, but the movie's larger statement isn't clear.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Think "The Incredible Journey" crossed with "The Birds" crossed with "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Or maybe just imagine "Cujo" as told from the dog's point of view. Don't take grandma.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Even those who don't buy in completely to Mundruczo's parable will be impressed by his canine crowd scenes, staged with ambition, skill and genuinely original vision.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This gripping suspense story considers how any canine can become the unfortunate repository for its master's darkest impulses.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
This powerful Hungarian drama features the Al Pacino of dog actors.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
A rousing creature-feature thriller and political allegory, from Hungarian director Kornel Mundrucz.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
The more you command it to sit and stay-to settle down as a plausible plot, or to cohere as a political fable-the more it slips its leash and runs amok.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The whole production speaks well for the power of film; it's a serious stunner.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo downplays White God as a "genre experiment," but his film has real bite regardless.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
It all pays off with an astounding, extended climax that is as rousing and exciting as it is frightening - one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had watching a movie.

Name : Farran Smith Nehme / Alias : New York Post
Director Kornel Mundruczo goes big with allegory, violence, drama and sentiment, and the results are riveting.

Name : Tom Keogh / Alias : Seattle Times
A mixed-genre fable that evokes Dickensian melodrama, coming-of-age tropes and outright horror.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
When the violence gets unbearable, take comfort in the troop of trainers on the sidelines who prove that, for now, man and beast still make a good team.

Name : Bruce Ingram / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Unfortunately, whatever satisfaction you may derive from seeing assorted nasty human beings get what's coming to them for betraying the trust of man's best friend is watered down by vague social and political allegory.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The hand that feeds - and also brutalizes - is righteously bitten in "White God," a Hungarian revenge fantasy that's like nothing you've seen on screen before.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
By turns Dickensian, Marxist and dystopian, it's a movie as deliriously unclassifiable as it is expertly focused in its desire to provoke and entertain.

Name : Vadim Rizov / Alias : AV Club
There's simply not that much to see in the performances.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Serena only has one key flaw: it is difficult to believe a single word of it, still less to care about these relentlessly selfish and short-sighted characters.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The actors don't just look uncomfortable in their period duds, they also look uneasy in their own skins, which is a feat for two such natural, physically confident screen performers.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
The film is haunted by a sense that something was overlooked in translation from the book.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Funny how there are fans of Jennifer Lawrence who will never see her in "Serena." It's not her best film, but it contains one of her best performances, in a role that challenges her more than any other.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Both actors, gracefully dressed and lightly anguished, draw deep on their professional aplomb in a bid to keep a straight face; the credible, bulked-up pain that Cooper brought to "American Sniper" seems a world away.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Given these unpromising circumstances, I was expecting something truly awful, and perhaps that might have been more fun to watch than this lugubrious period piece. The production values and the costumes are the true stars.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ah, well. All the best actors eventually get their Ishtar, right?

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Left for dead since 2012, Serena would better serve its stars by burial, not resurrection.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Although the film got stuck in editing limbo for two years, no amount of cutting could rid the project of a diseased premise. Nor is it erotic or violent enough to be an effective critique of human nature.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Lawrence is the hottest actress in Hollywood and she and Cooper share six Oscar nominations, and one win, between them. But "Serena" uses muscles the costars of "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle" stars don't often get to flex.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
In other words, a lot of people realized they had an epic clunker on their hands.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
We don't invest anything in either character, and with barely any tension, 'Serena' grabs neither head nor heart.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Densely packed and gorgeously expressionist, the old-fashioned tragedy is very nearly a satisfying experience despite its various shortcomings.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
The choppily edited and thoroughly wooden "Serena'' fails to catch fire, even when everything literally goes up in flames. Basically, it's "Cold Mountain" without Renee Zellweger.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's reassuring, really, to be reminded that top-tier Hollywood stars can make lousy choices just like the rest of us.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What were Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence thinking? Seriously?

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Beating a dead horse barely begins to describe the task of writing about "Serena"; it's more like playing coroner.

Name : Serena Donadoni / Alias : Village Voice
By making Serena ornamental, Bier diminishes her power, and Lawrence plays her as a petulant Lady Macbeth wannabe. Worse is Bradley Cooper, whose Pemberton comes off like an entitled scion, not a clear-cut timber king.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Into each life some rain eventually falls, and in a bomb called Serena, golden couple Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, united for the third time onscreen, arrive soaking wet.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
One of those movies that proves that the mere presence of all the right ingredients does not a happy meal make. It's all in the mixing.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
It's painful to watch all that talent get wasted.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The performers are as beautiful to look at here as they are intriguing to watch.

Name : Charlie Lyne / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This is a film full of unremarkable compromises - the kind that result in a bland film rather than a bad one.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Absolutely nothing works. No one seems to understand the place or the people. And the only thing gleaned from the lumber industry is that you can build an entire movie from performances made of wood.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Bier's Danish-language work, usually structurally and emotionally cohesive to a fault, has rarely been this compellingly untidy.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Filmed in 2012 and finally limping into theaters like a glamorous zombie, the movie has star wattage but zero emotional voltage.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A Depression-era potboiler starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence that never manages to get past the feeling of a calculated Hollywood reunion.