
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.
-
Misericordia is one of the most surprising films our critic's seen this year. It focuses on a man who returns to his small village for a funeral — only to become enmeshed in countless entanglements.
-
Robert De Niro plays rival mob bosses in a new biographical crime drama. But while it's fun to watch De Niro argue with himself, The Alto Knights ultimately feels dubious and derivative.
-
Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play a high-ranking spy couple in Steven Soderbergh's new film. Black Bag offers Bond-style globe-trotting intrigue and marital dramedy.
-
Robert Pattinson plays a space traveler who's repeatedly killed and resurrected in the name of scientific research in this otherworldly farce. It's Bong's first movie since his Oscar-winning Parasite.
-
There are many reasons to seek out Charles Burnett's long-buried 1999 film, but perhaps primary among them: The rare chance to see Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder and James Earl Jones share the screen.
-
This Oscar-nominated documentary, which tells the story of the Israeli military's demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, was created by a team of two Palestinian and two Israeli filmmakers.
-
In Steven Soderbergh's supernatural thriller Presence, a family finds they aren't alone in their new house. It's a ghost story told masterfully from the ghost's point of view.
-
Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives a phenomenal performance as a profoundly unhappy woman. There isn't a lot of plot, but director Mike Leigh builds his stories from the details and detritus of daily life.
-
Fresh Air's film critic takes stock of the past 12 months' worth of movies, pairing 10 of his favorites, and picking one that stands alone.
-
Nickel Boys is one of the most thrillingly inventive literary adaptations our critic has seen in years, while The Brutalist is a rare American films that feels genuinely worthy of the word "epic."