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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Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore star in Todd Haynes' dark and disturbingly funny film about a teacher who was convicted of raping her sixth grade student — and later went on to marry him. -
The mundane becomes mesmerizing in David Fincher's dark comedy, which tracks every detail of a hit man's routine: the scheduled naps, the fast-food runs, the yoga stretches he does to stay limber. -
Paul Giamatti plays a boarding school teacher charged with watching over the students who have no where to go during winter break in a throwback film that doesn't quite live up to its potential. -
A writer stands accused of killing her husband in this film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. But as Anatomy of a Fall persuasively suggests, every marriage is a mystery. -
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. -
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.
