Justin Chang

The new comedy "The Holdovers" finds actor Paul Giamatti reuniting with director Alexander Payne for the first time since their Oscar-winning 2004 film "Sideways." In the new movie, Giamatti plays a teacher at a New England boarding school in 1970 left looking after a group of students, or holdovers, staying put through the Christmas break. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

As in his earlier period dramas, like The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York, Scorsese brings a highly specific bygone era to vivid life. But this story of enviable wealth is also one of exploitation.

The top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival went to the French film "Anatomy Of A Fall," directed and co-written by Justine Triet. The movie, which opens in theaters this week, is a murder mystery and courtroom drama starring German actor Sandra Huller as a writer accused of killing her husband. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

Set decades into the future, the movie begins with a prologue charting the rise of artificial intelligence.

Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, have smartly overhauled the Agatha Christie story "Hallowe'en Party" , which is now set in 1947 Venice.

Roger Ross Williams directs even the bloodier wrestling scenes with an elegance that makes us aware of the artifice; this isn't exactly the Raging Bull of lucha libre movies, and it isn't trying to be.

Two queer best friends start a self-defense class for girls as a ruse to hook up with cheerleaders in a film that's both a disarmingly sweet love story and a merciless comic pummeling.

In the new indie comedy "The Adults," Michael Cera plays a guy who returns home to see his two sisters after three years apart. It was written and directed by Dustin Guy Defa, who also cast Cera in his 2017 ensemble film "Person To Person." "The Adult" is in theaters this week.

Ira Sachs' new romantic drama "Passages" follows a male film director who leaves his husband after having an affair with a woman. Our film critic Justin Chang says it's a hot-blooded tale of desire and a terrific showcase for its lead actor, Franz Rogowski.

This week is the release of "Haunted Mansion," a new live-action comedy based on the popular Disneyland ride, and "Talk To Me," an Australian supernatural thriller about teenagers dabbling in the occult. Our film critic Justin Chang says that despite their differences, both movies are fundamentally about characters trying to ease their grief by communing with the dead.