Justin Chang Movie Reviews & Previews

Critics » Justin Chang

Justin Chang

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:: Variety
Critics' Group:: Los Angeles Film Critics Association

Total Reviews:: 274

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Showing 1 - 50 of 274

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" Retains the moral urgency and serious-minded pulp instincts that have made the Warners franchise a beacon of integrity in an increasingly comicbook-driven Hollywood universe." — Variety Posted Jul 16, 2012
74%	Prometheus (2012)	" Remains earthbound in narrative terms, forever hinting at the existence of a higher intelligence without evincing much of its own." — Variety Posted May 30, 2012
45%	On the Road (2012)	" Despite the high level of craft here, it's an inadequate substitute for the thrilling, sustaining intelligence of Kerouac's voice." — Variety Posted May 23, 2012
70%	Ramona and Beezus (2010)	" A sprightly, generic kidpic that flattens and condenses elements from Beverly Cleary's deservedly popular novels." — Variety Posted Jul 19, 2010
62%	Salt (2010)	" Noyce rolls up his sleeves and delivers an unpretentious piece of action-movie craftsmanship that proves worthy of its star's own consummate professionalism." — Variety Posted Jul 19, 2010
41%	The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)	" A noisy, f/x-spewing cauldron of a movie." — Variety Posted Jul 9, 2010
57%	Douchebag (2010)	" Dickler's acting debut is memorably repellent, even if the movie he's in -- a fitfully engaging story about two estranged brothers on a road trip -- often feels forced and unconvincing." — Variety Posted Jul 7, 2010
64%	Biutiful (2010)	" Its scant emotional rewards can't shake off the sense of a prodigiously gifted filmmaker stuck in a grim rut." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
79%	Fair Game (2010)	" Fair Game serves up impeccable politics with a bit too much righteous outrage and not quite enough solid drama." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
33%	It's a Wonderful Afterlife (2010)	" Broad enough to drive a truckload of samosas through, yet achieving the miracle of genuine silliness only through Sally Hawkins' turn as a daffy psychic, this gluttonous ghost story should appeal to Chadha's loyal customers." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
89%	Life 2.0 (2011)	" A disturbing but nonjudgmental study of online addiction and the lure of manufactured identities." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
90%	Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009)	" Quietly spellbinding." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
69%	Hadewijch (2010)	" An austere, deeply questioning examination of a devout young woman having an intense crisis of faith." — Variety Posted Jul 6, 2010
86%	Inception (2010)	" If movies are shared dreams, then Christopher Nolan is surely one of Hollywood's most inventive dreamers, given the evidence of his commandingly clever Inception." — Variety Posted Jul 5, 2010
52%	Knight & Day (2010)	" A high-energy, low-impact caper-comedy that labors to bring a measure of wit, romance and glamour to an overworked spy-thriller template." — Variety Posted Jun 21, 2010
12%	Jonah Hex (2010)	" The film's noisy, slam-bang approach and lack of imagination in all nonvisual departments will keep it from rounding up a fresh generation of thrill-seekers." — Variety Posted Jun 17, 2010
94%	Winter's Bone (2010)	" Following its brave heroine (an outstanding Jennifer Lawrence) as she seeks to uncover the truth behind her father's disappearance, the film employs the structure of a whodunit to take a tough, unflinching look at an impoverished Ozarks community." — Variety Posted Jun 10, 2010
66%	The Karate Kid (2010)	" It's a sign of that pic's dramatic durability that Kid manages to be as absorbing as it is, despite its nearly 2 1/2-hour running time." — Variety Posted Jun 4, 2010
82%	Solitary Man (2010)	" It offers audiences the pleasures of a screenplay whose every acerbic line is firmly rooted in character, and it hands Michael Douglas one of his best roles in years." — Variety Posted May 17, 2010
45%	You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)	" By now it's clear Woody Allen doesn't much believe in God, destiny or the notion that life has any larger meaning, a message he tubthumps to increasingly feeble and unpersuasive effect in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger." — Variety Posted May 17, 2010
55%	Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)	" After his attempts to branch out slightly with World Trade Center and W., Money Never Sleeps finds Stone at ease in a way he hasn't been in years." — Variety Posted May 17, 2010
43%	Robin Hood (2010)	" This physically imposing picture brings abundant political-historical dimensions to its epic canvas, yet often seems devoted to stifling whatever pleasure audiences may have derived from the popular legend." — Variety Posted May 10, 2010
41%	Death at a Funeral (2010)	" Death at a Funeral is a strained, mirthless remake of a comedy that wasn't terribly funny to begin with." — Variety Posted Apr 15, 2010
25%	Letters To God (2010)	" This faith-based/fact-based inspirational weepie allows no one to escape the saintlike glow of its terminally ill protagonist." — Variety Posted Apr 9, 2010
22%	Repo Men (2010)	" This ultra-gory speculative noir is, at its infrequent best, certifiably nuts; the rest of the time, it's one numbingly brutal slog." — Variety Posted Mar 18, 2010
13%	The Bounty Hunter (2010)	" There are no rewards to be claimed for enduring The Bounty Hunter." — Variety Posted Mar 17, 2010
86%	Hubble 3D (2010)	" The newly resurgent 3D format gets an out-of-this-world showcase in Hubble 3D." — Variety Posted Mar 16, 2010
90%	Easier with Practice (2009)	" Amusingly predicated on the romantic possibilities of phone sex, Easier With Practice pushes past its titillating premise to become a quietly provocative love story about emotionally stunted manhood and the risks some guys will take to connect." — Variety Posted Mar 11, 2010
13%	Our Family Wedding (2010)	" This broad ethnic farce serves up a full-on culture collision, but -- thanks to a handful of diverting performers -- stops just short of becoming a train wreck." — Variety Posted Mar 8, 2010
74%	Splice (2010)	" Benefiting significantly from the casting of Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, director Vincenzo Natali's outlandish sci-fier sustains a grotesque and funny fascination throughout its slightly protracted runtime." — Variety Posted Jan 27, 2010
——	Lucky (2010)	" Blitz's fundamental embrace of human eccentricity shines through in a film that glows with optimism even as it reveals the dark side of a miracle." — Variety Posted Jan 26, 2010
51%	Holy Rollers (2010)	" Asch's first feature is intelligent, respectable yet curiously muted in tone and impact, never fully catching the viewer up in either its crime saga or its account of individual rebellion within an insular religious community." — Variety Posted Jan 26, 2010
87%	Please Give (2010)	" Like Holofcener's previous pictures, Please Give derives its narrative energy less from a series of plotted incidents than from its keenly observed interplay of clashing personality tics and worldviews." — Variety Posted Jan 25, 2010
81%	Four Lions (2010)	" An audacious premise gets dangerously unstable execution in Four Lions." — Variety Posted Jan 25, 2010
0%	Breaking Point (2009)	" Overplotted and underwhelming." — Variety Posted Dec 4, 2009
84%	The Princess and the Frog (2009)	" This long-anticipated throwback to a venerable house style never comes within kissing distance of the studio's former glory." — Variety Posted Nov 24, 2009
62%	Brothers (2009)	" Plays like a more polished but less effective twin to the 2005 Danish original." — Variety Posted Nov 23, 2009
21%	Oh My God (2009)	" Compacts nearly three years' worth of globe-trotting interviews into an often visually vibrant but rhetorically muddled package." — Variety Posted Nov 12, 2009
——	The Fall (2009)	" An unconvincing if not exactly unwatchable tale of two polar-opposite brothers." — Variety Posted Oct 30, 2009
20%	Hannah Free (2009)	" Decent production values can't fend off the feeling that the pic should have been consigned, if not to the stage, then to the smallscreen." — Variety Posted Oct 23, 2009
21%	Amelia (2009)	" To say that Amelia never gets off the ground would be an understatement; it barely makes it out of the hangar." — Variety Posted Oct 18, 2009
25%	Law Abiding Citizen (2009)	" It winds up feeling overwritten yet underexplained, foregoing plausible revelations in favor of gusty debate about the ethical challenges of practicing and upholding the law." — Variety Posted Oct 15, 2009
94%	Good Hair (2009)	" Good Hair is a raucous and rigorous inquiry into the subject of African-American hair -- the stigmas, the secrets, the shocking price of maintenance -- that gets at universal but rarely discussed truths about black femininity." — Variety Posted Oct 6, 2009
58%	The Invention of Lying (2009)	" While it never tops the explosive hilarity of its first 20 minutes, The Invention of Lying is a smartly written, nicely layered comedy." — Variety Posted Sep 30, 2009
71%	The Boys Are Back (2009)	" The pain of divorce and the tragedy of a parent's death supply the raw emotional materials of The Boys Are Back, making it all the more impressive that director Scott Hicks steers clear of the maudlin and the manipulative..." — Variety Posted Sep 15, 2009
42%	Jennifer's Body (2009)	" While not exactly lifeless, Jennifer's Body sure could be fresher." — Variety Posted Sep 10, 2009
63%	Extract (2009)	" The pic's attempts at comic portraiture feel sketchy at best, more or less assigning each character a single, belabored trait." — Variety Posted Aug 19, 2009
37%	The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)	" Fairly irresistible nonsense." — Variety Posted Aug 10, 2009
43%	Shorts: The Adventures of the Wishing Rock (2009)	" More zippy, diverting fun from Robert Rodriguez's family filmmaking factory." — Variety Posted Aug 10, 2009

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