John Powers
John Powers is the pop culture and critic-at-large on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He previously served for six years as the film critic.
Powers spent the last 25 years as a critic and columnist, first for LA Weekly, then Vogue. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Harper's BAZAAR, The Nation, Gourmet, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
A former professor at Georgetown University, Powers is the author of Sore Winners, a study of American culture during President George W. Bush's administration. His latest book, WKW: The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai (co-written with Wong Kar Wai), is an April 2016 release by Rizzoli.
He lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife, filmmaker Sandi Tan.
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The latest season of the British police series on PBS Masterpiece is twistily plotted and suffused with sadness. Unforgotten packs much more of an emotional punch than your ordinary cop show. -
Joshua Cohen offers a fictionalized version of a real-life campus visit by the father of the former Israeli prime minister. The novel offers a funny take on serious things.
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Omar Sy plays a shapeshifting thief in the Netflix series modeled on Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin novels. The new season offers a winning confection of speed, cool settings and good acting.
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Acorn TV's engaging new crime drama takes place in a touristy seaside town with an oversized murder rate. Pearl, the single mom who runs the seafood restaurant, also has a small detective agency.
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A writer offers up her guest house to a famous painter in hope that something transcendent will happen. But he's selfish, amoral and flagrantly misogynistic — and monstrously at ease with all this.
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The first volume of Kaoru Takamura's 1997 eccentric crime thriller has just been translated into English. Inspired by a real-life case, Lady Joker reveals its world in rich, polyphonic detail.
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The Man Who Sold His Skin centers on a Syrian man who, desperate to reach Belgium, allows an artist to tattoo a visa on his back. The film has been nominated for the Best International Feature Oscar.
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Four middle-aged high school teachers test the theory that life is better with a constant infusion of alcohol. It's a provocative premise that wraps up in an exuberantly Hollywood ending.
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This four-part TV series isn't merely unfolding a crime story —it offers a metaphor for the troubled soul of Northern Ireland, two decades after the Troubles supposedly ended.
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Mick Herron's brilliantly plotted series follows a group of maladroit MI5 agents who've somehow blown it with the agency. The latest installment is a timely novel set in a post-Brexit U.K.
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Lee Isaac Chung's semi-autobiographical film centers on a South Korean family trying to make it as farmers in rural Arkansas. Minariproves that a small story can feel bigger than a blockbuster.
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As with COVID-19, AIDS had its deniers and its conspiracy theorists. A new five-part series centers on five young adults sharing an apartment in London at the onset of that epidemic.
