Justin Chang
Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker and NPR's Fresh Air. He previously served as film critic at the Los Angeles Times and chief film critic at 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 is a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee. He teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2024 for his work at the Los Angeles Times.
-
Shape-shifting aliens attack a South Korean border town in Hope, a big-budget thriller that blends third-rate CGI with exhilarating action scenes. -
Seventeen-year-old Isabel tees up balls for golfers in a lush luxury oasis in Manila. It's the feature film debut of writer and director Rafael Manuel, and every shot of Filipiñana churns with life. -
Three queer Black friends embark on a road trip in search of a fourth whom they haven't seen in some time. Dreams in Nightmares is a sweetly bickersome comedy-drama about friendship and freedom. -
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson star in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun's satirical film about a young filmmaker who's rebooting a fictional slasher franchise. -
Olivia Wilde plays an artist who initiates a wildly inappropriate sexual relationship with her younger employee. But between the sex scenes, there are thoughtful conversations about age and intimacy. -
The Odyssey feels like a prism through which Nolan's earlier films can be understood. A downbeat realist by nature, Nolan imbues the epic with a fascinating tension between fantasy and skepticism. -
Two couples spend an ill-advised evening together in the tense comedy The Invite. Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton, star in the film, which plays it a little too safe. -
Spielberg's new thriller centers on a massive U.S. conspiracy to hide the fact that aliens have been visiting Earth for decades. If anything, though, the movie's pleasures feel more retro than timely. -
Backrooms, by 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons, is set in a mysterious maze of abandoned offices. Curry Barker, 26, tells a horror story about consent and male loneliness in Obsession. -
Though the 2026 festival featured less Hollywood razzle-dazzle than in years past, there were still plenty of great films. Most notable: All of a Sudden, from the Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.
