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.
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An art-school dropout seizes control of her life and livelihood by branching out into credit card fraud in this Los Angeles noir. Plaza is both vulnerable and fierce as a woman on the take. -
A Pakistani immigrant and an Irish-born grandmother fall in love in a bleak English town in this sunny and upbeat film. Ali & Ava is a lovely, charming surprise.
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After tapping into the horrors lurking beneath the surface of American life in Get Out and Us, writer-director Peele ventures into alien sci-fi territory with his new thriller, Nope.
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Gosling plays an assassin being chased by other assassins. That sounds exciting, but it isn't; it's a pileup of self-admiring one-liners and insanely violent but weirdly inconsequential action scenes.
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Juliette Binoche is a woman whose life is disrupted by the return of a former lover. Both Sides of the Blade sounds like soap-opera material, but nothing about the film feels trite or predictable.
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An unnamed man inexplicably loses his memory in this strange and singular film. Apples is about how we deal with grief and loneliness, especially when memory becomes more of a curse than a blessing.
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Elvis' longtime manager Col. Parker plays an oversized role, but that's not this film's only problem. There may be a great movie hiding in Elvis, but it's buried under an awful lot of visual clutter.
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Emma Thompson stars as an older woman who hires a younger sex worker in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Dakota Johnson is a single mother who's wooed by a recent college grad in Cha Cha Real Smooth.
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David Cronenberg's film is set in a grim future where humans, having lost the ability to feel physical pain, start operating on their own bodies. This movie mixes blood and guts with great tenderness.
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Tom Cruise was in his early 20s when he first played the cocky young Navy pilot with the need for speed. Now, 36 years later, he's back — and Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is as insubordinate as ever.
