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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Frances McDormand plays a widow who travels the U.S. taking on work wherever she can find it in a new film based on Jessica Bruder's 2017 book. Nomadland understands loss in a way that few movies do.
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A powerful new film focuses on the last year in the life of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Black Panthers' Illinois chapter, who was only 21 when he was killed during a raid planned by the FBI.
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Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is a dizzying noir that never heads where you expect. Two of Us is a crafty thriller that touches on elder abuse and LGBT couples' rights.
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Set in the 1990s, this slickly made drama starring Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto may look like a retread, but it feels more like a weirdly enveloping trip down memory lane.
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In this adaptation of Aravind Adiga's 2008 novel, a young man defies the odds by escaping poverty in a rapidly globalizing India. The White Tiger is a dark satire — with an eat-the-rich ethos.
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Two new films center on the lingering effects of trauma and tragedy. Carey Mulligan is woman bent on revenge in Promising Young Woman; Vanessa Kirby is a mother whose baby dies in Pieces of a Woman.
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Even though most of us stayed away from movie theaters, 2020 was a banner year for independent narrative films, feature-length documentaries and pictures of all types and genres from overseas.
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Boseman died of cancer in 2020, not long after he finished shooting this adaptation of August Wilson's play. His final screen performance — as a troubled trumpet player — ranks among his best.
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The film opens in an airport where a man greets the wife and daughter he hasn't seen in years. Farewell Amor is a deeply empathetic story about the struggles and anxieties of one immigrant family.
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David Fincher's new film is a playful weave of fact and fiction as it reimagines the story of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz in the years that inspired the Hollywood masterpiece.