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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Peter Dinklage aches with unrequited love in this musical retelling of the famous Cyrano de Bergerac story. Cyrano isn't always the most graceful retelling, but it's hard not to admire its conviction. -
The Belgian drama Playground unfolds at a school where 7-year-old Nora watches her brother being bullied. The Chadian film Lingui, the Sacred Bonds centers on a mother whose teen daughter is pregnant. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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.
