Justin Chang
Justin Chang is a film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Fresh Air, and a regular contributor to KPCC's FilmWeek. He previously served as chief film critic and editor of film reviews for Variety.
Chang is the author of FilmCraft: Editing, a book of interviews with seventeen top film editors. He serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
-
Joaquin Phoenix renders the iconic villain on an intimate, human scale in Joker, a disturbing film about one man's psychological destruction and a city's descent into criminal anarchy.
-
Brad Pitt is an astronaut who saves the world by traveling millions of miles to reunite with his long-absent dad. It's an unabashedly ridiculous premise, but somehow Ad Astramanages to pull it off.
-
The underdog comedy, which centers on a hard-partying woman who signs up for the New York City Marathon, proves that even a predictable plot can be hard to resist if it's well executed.
-
A new screwball comedy by filmmaker Kirill Mikhanovsky follows the driver of a medical transport van and his passengers over the course of 24 busy hours in Milwaukee.
-
Where'd You Go, Bernadette follows a brilliant architect who, in the midst of a decades-long career slump, disappears to recapture her life's passion in the unlikeliest place imaginable.
-
Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays a popular teenager who was adopted from Eritrea as a kid. But underneath Luce's charming smiles and polished speeches is the trauma of a former child soldier.
-
The latest blockbuster from Disney and Lucasfilm tells of the early adventures of Han Solo. Critic Justin Chang says the plot somehow feels both utterly inconsequential and exasperatingly busy.
-
Disney's Lion Kingis so realistic-looking that, paradoxically, you can't believe a moment of it. The computer-generated blockbuster feels like the world's most expensive safari-themed karaoke video.
-
Awkwafina stars in Lulu Wang's funny ensemble drama about a Chinese American family and their elaborate ruse to pay respects to their matriarch — without ever letting on she has a terminal illness.
-
An American couple attends a mysterious festival in the Swedish countryside in Ari Aster's new thriller. The haunting, hypnotic film will slowly seep into your nervous system.