Justin Chang

Pasadena

Film Critic, @NewYorker and @nprfreshair | Chair, @NatSocFilmCrix | Secretary, @LAFilmCritics | Programmer, @TheNYFF | Adjunct Instructor, @USCAnnenberg

Featured in: Favicon

latimes.com Favicon

msn.com

yahoo.com (+5) Favicon

huffpost.com Favicon

scribd.com Favicon

npr.org

sfgate.com Favicon

smh.com.au Favicon

variety.com Favicon

chicagotribune.com + 95 more

Articles

'Warfare' embeds the audience in the chaos of modern combat

1 week ago | nhpr.org | Justin Chang

In his 2024 action-drama, Civil War, the British director Alex Garland imagined a dystopian America torn apart by violence. For all its echoes of the present day, I found the movie politically neutral to the point of vagueness, and I couldn't buy into its world building. I did, however, buy into its world destroying, which is to say, its viscerally terrifying action sequences.
Disney’s “Snow White” Remake Whistles But Doesn’t Work

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Justin Chang

Nothing good ever seems to come of Gal Gadot singing. Those of us with clear memories of March, 2020, during the early days of pandemic lockdown, may recall the video montage she beamed out of herself and other celebrities, all warbling John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It was meant to bring us together, and on that score it was a total success.
'The Alto Knights' is a mob drama with a double dose of De Niro and ... not much else

1 month ago | m.kuow.org | Justin Chang

It's been 10 years since Barry Levinson directed a new feature, and if that seems like a long wait, I should note that it's taken 50 years for The Alto Knights, his new movie, to make it to the big screen. The idea was first pitched in the 1970s, not long after the New York City crime lord Frank Costello, known as "the prime minister of the underworld," died at the age of 82.
There's a lot to unpack in 'Black Bag' - a witty, sexy spy thriller

1 month ago | m.kuow.org | Justin Chang

It feels like only yesterday that I was recommending a new movie from the director Steven Soderbergh and the screenwriter David Koepp. Actually, it was about two months ago; the movie was Presence, a ghost story made with the thrift and ingenuity that Soderbergh has long been known for.
Goings On Newsletter

1 month ago | link.newyorker.com | Rachel Syme |Katy Waldman |Fintan O'Toole |Justin Chang

Plus: Steven Soderbergh’s spycraft in “Black Bag”; Jonathan Larson beyond “Rent”; and overheard at the Eavesdrop bar. View in browser | What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week.
At the Oscars, “Anora” Keeps a Dream of American Cinema Alive

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Justin Chang

Any Oscars ceremony where most of the big prizes go to “Anora” and “The Brutalist”—two blazingly intelligent, vividly personal movies, both encouraging signs of an American independent cinema not yet in its long-anticipated death throes—is a very good Oscars ceremony indeed. It wasn’t an inevitable outcome, or, as the ceremony got under way on Sunday night, an immediately obvious one.
“Mickey 17” Is a Science-Fiction Adventure of Multiple Unwieldy Thrills

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Justin Chang

The last time someone groped Robert Pattinson aboard a spaceship, to the best of my knowledge, was in Claire Denis’s 2018 movie, “High Life.” The groper was a lowlife—a deranged doctor, bent on harvesting astronaut semen for pernicious procreative ends. Pattinson’s character, a self-declared celibate, was unconscious and unconsenting. The assault took place on the grottiest of vessels, manned by violent criminals who had been banished into deep space.
What to Watch Before the Oscars

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Justin Chang

In today’s edition, the three movies to watch, with only three nights left before Sunday’s Oscars. And then, how Amelia Dimoldenberg sets her guests on edge. Plus:• Have we reached the end of seriousness? • The New York Drama Critics’ Circle goes metalJustin Chang Chang is a film critic and has been writing for The New Yorker since 2024. You’re undoubtedly eager to catch up on Oscar-nominated movies that are likely to win big on Sunday. Tough.
Renewed “Dreams” at the Berlin Film Festival

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Justin Chang

Film-festival juries are consistently inconsistent, and often arbitrarily assembled. Each year, several largely unacquainted, disparate-minded luminaries from across the film world—directors, screenwriters, actors, and, on occasion, critics—are brought together to manufacture the illusion of consensus. Even so, certain organizing principles can help nudge that consensus along.
This long-buried 1999 film offers a new chance to see James Earl Jones

2 months ago | boisestatepublicradio.org | Justin Chang

The 80-year-old Charles Burnett is often thought of as one of American cinema's last true independents. His movies, most of which focus on working-class Black families in his home city of Los Angeles, have been underseen, underexposed and sometimes misunderstood. In the past couple of decades, Burnett's been rightly recognized as one of the greats; his 1978 first feature, Killer of Sheep, was released in theatres in 2007 and widely hailed as a masterpiece.