The Adventures of Tintin

Still Spielberg’s only fully-animated film (The BFG and Ready Player One mix live-action material with digital landscapes and characters), this motion-capture romp stars Jamie Bell as the young, globetrotting journalist Tintin and Andy Serkis as his cranky sea-captain pal Captain Haddock. This is the story of how they met, getting mixed up in the search for a lost ship and its legendary treasure, but it’s also an excuse for Spielberg to flex his muscles as a visual storyteller. Unimpeded by the limitations of physical reality, he crafts elaborate chases, crashes, and last-minute rescues that genuinely thrill — a mid-movie truck chase, played out in a single continuous shot, feels like a TED Talk on how to stage action when you don’t have to worry about killing your camera operator — while still celebrating the giddy spirit of Hergé’s comics. And you can tell Daniel Craig is having a blast as the scheming villain Sakharine, even if he’s giving that performance in a wetsuit covered in polka dots.

NORM WILNER