Justin Chang
speaker
1,638 appearances
51 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 3d ago
Justin Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.
Appearances
When I was in my early teens, I was both a devout churchgoer and an avid reader of mysteries.
One of my favorite writers was P.D.
James, whose Anglican faith informed her fiction in subtle ways.
For James, the plotting and solving of murder was a grisly yet profoundly moral undertaking.
A detective story, she wrote, confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe, in which problems can be solved by rational means.
The new movie Wake Up Deadman, Rian Johnson's latest whodunit after Knives Out and Glass Onion, is too funny and slyly over-the-top to feel like a Petey James story.
To my knowledge, James never incorporated body-dissolving acid or the old poison beverage switcheroo trick.
But in his own crafty way, Johnson is also using mystery conventions to open up a spiritual inquiry.
The story takes place in and around a Catholic church at a small town in upstate New York, where a junior priest named Judd DuPlentice, played by a terrific Josh O'Connor, has been assigned to serve.
Unfortunately, he's forced to work under Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, whom Josh Brolin plays as an angry fundamentalist firebrand.
spewing hatred and contempt for gay people, single moms, and the entire hell-bound secular world.
Although Wicks' behavior has reduced church attendance, he's surrounded himself with a small group of loyalists.
The most devoted is Martha, who keeps the church running.
She's played by an amusingly nosy Glenn Close.
There's also Kerry Washington as a sharp-witted attorney, and Jeremy Renner as a sad-sack alcoholic doctor.
Kaylee Spaney plays a famous cellist who donates large sums to the church in hopes that God will heal her chronic pain.
Two characters feel like sharp, cynical jabs at American conservatism –
One is a formerly liberal writer, played by Andrew Scott, who's since drifted rightward.
The other is a failed young Republican politician turned aspiring YouTuber, played by Daryl McCormick.
With the best of intentions, Judd tries hard to break Wicks' hold on his flock and lead them into deeper faith in God.
Showing 1021–1040 of 1,638 · page 52 of 82
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