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.
-
Steve McQueen's powerful anthology consists of five films, each telling a different story about the experiences of Black men and women in London's West Indian community. -
Kate Winslet plays Victorian-era fossil hunter Mary Anning, and Saoirse Ronan is her lover, in a film that dares to envision a world in which women are ultimately free to make their own decisions.
-
Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, now 90, has a gift for making riveting cinema from the minutiae of the everyday. His latest is a four-and-a-half hour documentary starring Boston City Hall, pre-COVID-19.
-
Though Anne Hathaway throws herself into the role of the Grand High Witch with obvious relish, she often seems to be straining for effect — which leaves The Witchesfeeling flat.
-
An uneducated sailor falls in love and finds fame as a writer — only to become disillusioned by his own success. It's an intensely political work, which London wrote as a rejection of individualism.
-
Two new movies reflect on the passage of time. One is an up-to-the-minute account of the Trump administration's response to COVID-19. The other follows a family impacted by long-term incarceration.
-
Radha Blank plays a fictionalized version of herself — a struggling artist from Harlem, who was hailed years earlier as a promising playwright. The film is gorgeously shot in black-and-white.
-
The Netflix adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel is grim in ways that can be both exciting and wearying: so many twists and betrayals, so many awful characters, so many horrific acts of violence.
-
The relationship at the center of Kaufman's new Netflix film might not be long for the world, but the main characters are nevertheless awfully hard to get out of your mind.
-
Spinning a Chinese legend into family-friendly entertainment with worldwide appeal is a tricky business. The new version of Mulan feels like a watered-down version of a potentially captivating story.
