Justin Chang

A "Cars" spinoff that seems to have taken an unfortunate detour through "It's a Small World," "Planes" is so overrun with broad cultural stereotypes that it should come with free...

Venice is perhaps the least widely attended of the Big Five film festivals, especially for American journalists who find it both expensive and unnecessary to cross the Atlantic for a...

"Apartments don't kill people. People kill people." If only there were more howlers of that caliber in "Apartment 1303," this truly vacant thriller might have clawed its way into so-bad-it's-good...

For once, truth in advertising: "Dealin' With Idiots" spends 83 minutes doing exactly that. Drawing on personal experience, actor-comedian Jeff Garlin co-wrote, directed and starred in this flat, aimless comedy...

Five women pushing 50 and older form a basketball team to promote breast-cancer awareness in "The Hot Flashes," drawing groans and grimaces from their small-minded Texas community. A few cringes...

PHOTOS: The Best Films of 2013 (So Far) Conventional wisdom has it that the studios, ever mindful of awards season, tend to reserve their quality movies for year's end. Certainly...

A doctor's-eye view of the daily chaos of a major metropolitan hospital proves a major boon and a minor limitation in "Code Black." Shot during the course of his residency...

Two currently popular strands of genre filmmaking, the low-budget sci-fier and the found-footage thriller, merge to reasonably plausible and impressively controlled effect in "Europa Report." Meticulously crafted by Ecuadorian helmer...

A stimulating intro course on wine-appreciation gets blended with a narrowly focused contest-doc format in "Somm," which follows the efforts of a handful of young American connoisseurs to earn the...

It's no knock on James Gandolfini to note that this remarkable and galvanizing actor was not exactly a chameleon. He was and will forever be defined by Tony Soprano, to...