Justin Chang

The first time we see Elton John in Rocketman, he's wearing a spangly red devil costume with sharp horns and enormous wings. It's one of the many glorious, glittery things we see him wear in the movie, although on this occasion, he isn't dressed for a concert. It's around 1990, and Elton, played by Taron Egerton, is attending a group therapy session. He may be one of the world's most successful rock stars, but he's also being eaten alive by sex addiction and substance abuse, and also by feelings of abandonment that go back to his childhood.

Joanna Hogg's movie, which centers on a young film student, is the first of a projected two-part drama drawing from Hogg's life. It won the top prize in Sundance's world cinema dramatic competition.

Writer-director Olivier Assayas has a knack for turning abstract ideas into stimulating cinema — which is exactly what he does in Non-Fiction, a modern-day talkfest centering on the Parisian elite.

Critic Justin Chang says he couldn't tear his eyes away from Elisabeth Moss, who gives a spectacular performance as an out-of-control punk musician struggling with substance abuse.

In the science-fiction thriller 'High Life,' Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche play two members of a space crew sent on a mission to investigate a black hole millions of miles from Earth. The movie is a rare English-language picture from the acclaimed French filmmaker Claire Denis, who previously directed Bionoche in the 2017 romantic comedy 'Let the Sunshine In.' Film critic Justin Chang reviews it.

Peele mixes horror and hilarity in a new film about a family who runs into terrifying doppelgängers of themselves while on vacation. Critic Justin Chang says star Lupita Nyong'o carries the movie.

Chinese writer-director Jia Zhangke examines upheaval in modern China in his latest film, a gripping drama of crime and punishment about a woman and her gangster boyfriend.

The first female-led superhero movie from Marvel Studios is a pleasant, sometimes bland, feature-length introduction to a character who feels more sketched-in than fully realized.

A new film by German director Christian Petzold is set in a suspended-in-time version of the present. Critic Justin Chang calls it "a piercingly sad lament for the lost and forgotten souls of Europe."

Justin Chang reviews the new film 'Birds of Passage' about a family corrupted by the Columbian drug trade.