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.
-
This sci-fi drama about an ex-special-forces operative who teams up with a humanoid robot excels at world-building — but ultimately fails to create characters that take on lives of their own. -
Kenneth Branaugh is back as Hercule Poirot, and it's hard not to enjoy his company in this unusually spooky murder mystery based on Agatha Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party. -
Bernal flirts and struts and gives one of the best performances of his career in a film inspired by the life of Mexican American professional wrestling star Saúl Armendáriz. -
Two queer best friends start a self-defense class for girls as a ruse to hook up with cheerleaders in a film that's both a disarmingly sweet love story and a merciless comic pummeling.
-
Michael Cera plays a man who returns home to see his two sisters after three years apart. This squirmy film about adults who act like overgrown children might just break your heart. -
A narcissistic film director leaves his husband for a woman in Ira Sachs' new drama. But ending a marriage is rarely clean or easy — as this thrilling, tempestuous film proves. -
Two films take on the horror of grief: While Disney's live-action comedy is neither funny nor frightening, the Australian horror-thriller about teenagers dabbling in the occult is terrifically creepy. -
It's not every day that an exuberant comedy about a Mattel doll goes head-to-head with a brooding drama about the father of the atomic bomb, but critic Justin Chang says both films deliver. -
Film critic Justin Chang doesn't know if Cruise can save the movies but he never gets tired of watching him try. Cruise does his own outrageous stunts in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. -
It's hard not to get swept up in this journey — full of filthy one-liners and priceless sight gags. And the film pulls it off with a level of savvy about Asian culture still rarely seen in Hollywood.
