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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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." -
Earlier this year, Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof fled his country to escape an eight-year prison sentence. His new film centers on a middle class family grappling with Iran's social unrest. -
In this adaptation of Burroughs' autobiographical novel, Craig plays an American who falls hard for a younger man in 1950s Mexico City. It's a singular performance, but also a deeply human one. -
Two big-budget films are set to battle at the box office: Wicked offers a gravity-defying origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West, while Gladiator II revisits the violence of ancient Rome. -
This enveloping drama, which centers two women in Mumbai, is about solidarity between women, about making ends meeting, and about how a populous city can feel like the loneliest place in the world. -
Eastwood takes measured aim at the American justice system in a film that centers on a murder trial — and a juror who realizes he may be implicated in the crime. -
In a film that has powerful moments of wonderment, humor and joy, Saoirse Ronan plays a London factory worker trying to protect her young son as German bombs fall across the city.
