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.
-
Eleanor Catton's novel centers on young members of an radical environmental rights group who wind up entangled with a billionaire drone manufacturer. Our critic devoured all 400+ pages in two days. -
Eleanor Catton's novel centers on young members of an radical environmental rights group who wind up entangled with a billionaire drone manufacturer. Our critic devoured all 400+ pages in two days.
-
The HBO series starring Matthew Rhys lures us in with the Perry Mason brand. But it ultimately overlooks the shark-like courtroom demeanor that made the character more legend than lawyer.
-
The Oscar-nominated documentary follows two brothers in Delhi who run a homemade infirmary nursing black kites — birds of prey widely considered a scavenging nuisance — back to health.
-
Based on an actual criminal case in France in which a Senegalese woman killed her baby daughter, Alice Diop's film is rigorous, powerful and crackling with ideas about isolation and colonialism.
-
The 1985 novel has been described as "unfilmable." Baumbach wasn't deterred — and though the movie brims with terrific moments, his White Noise doesn't hold together as well as Don DeLillo's.
-
Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat on a quest for meaning in Kazuo Ishiguro's adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film Ikiru. The first film felt inventive and urgent — Living doesn't live up.
-
Jerzy Skolimowski's thrillingly imaginative new film, EO, follows a former circus donkey on a journey across modern Europe. It's a strange, haunting epic that couldn't feel more of our moment.
-
A writer dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving the last chapter of his new mystery novel incomplete. PBS' new MASTERPIECE Mystery! series is based on the bestselling novel by Anthony Horowitz.
-
The epic action-picture bromance makes the case for returning to theaters — it reminds us that movies are always more thrilling when they're part of a collective experience.
