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 agoraphobic tech worker stumbles on evidence of a possible murder in Steven Soderbergh's new film. Zoë Kravitz stars in this gripping story of technology, surveillance and isolation.
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At first glance, the commitment-phobic woman at the film's center may seem to embody stereotypes about people her age, but this perceptive Norwegian dramedy doesn't reduce her to those assumptions.
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At times, Juho Kuosmanen's film plays like a scruffier, less romantic version of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. There's tension to every scene, a sense that anything could go wrong at any moment.
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A media circus ensues when a man on leave from debtors' prison finds a handbag and returns it to its rightful owner. Motives are always more complicated than they appear in Asghar Farhadi's film.
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Director Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is a bewitching piece of craftsmanship, featuring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the murderous power couple.
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Drive My Car tops Chang's list of the year's best movies, but plenty of other films made the return to theaters extra special.
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This is the first musical Spielberg's ever made, but he proves a natural: Few other American filmmakers have a more instinctive sense of rhythm and visual flow, or more direct access to your emotions.
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After his wife's death, a middle-aged stage actor forms an unlikely bond with the 20-something woman sent to be his chauffeur. Drive My Car is an intricately structured drama about love and loss.
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An enterprising teen and a 20-something photographer's assistant become unlikely friends — and then zig-zag from one comic episode to the next — in this altogether wonderful film.
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Jane Campion's Western plays out like a tightly wound psychological thriller, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as one of the scariest characters you're likely to meet this year.