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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A Korean American man faces deportation because his adoption in the 1980s was never finalized. Blue Bayou may be heavy handed, but it tells a fundamental truth about our flawed immigration system. -
After serving time in prison for war crimes, a former military interrogator starts a new life as a professional gambler. But as this complex drama shows, it's not always easy to escape the past.
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Simu Liu plays a young kung fu master who returns home to battle his evil father. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a superhero movie packed with an unusual emotional intensity.
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The hit of the 2021 virtual Sundance Film Festival centers on a teenager who's the only hearing member of her close-knit family. CODA strikes some false notes, but it also delivers heartfelt emotion.
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Even well-worn notes can sound freshly resonant in the right hands. A new film about Franklin's early years doesn't entirely avoid biopic conventions, but there's real intelligence and feeling in it.
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Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard play a celebrity couple in this extravagant movie musical. Critic Justin Chang warns you'll have to get on the film's bizarre wavelength, but he's grateful it exists.
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Dev Patel stars as a young adventurer from King Arthur's court in David Lowery's inventive adaptation of an enduring 14th-century poem.
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Hong Sang-soo's new film follows a mild-mannered woman as she makes three different visits. Each chapter is absorbing on its own, but it's even more intriguing to contemplate how it all fits together.
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Reviewer Justin Chang didn't travel to the Cannes Film Festival this year, but he managed to see a number of the movies in Los Angeles. His favorites include The Souvenir Part II and Stillwater.
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Benicio Del Toro and Don Cheadle play low-level gangsters who get sucked into a into a major corporate conspiracy in Steven Soderbergh's engrossing new film.
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Two sea creatures go undercover as boys in an Italian Riviera town in the charming Pixar film Luca. In the German drama Undine, a water sprite must take the life of human lovers who betray her.
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Set during a record-breaking New York City heat wave, this vibrant screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda's stage musical pulses with musical numbers that blend of hip-hop, Latin pop and salsa.
