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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Todd Haynes' inventive, immersive movie is full of interesting ideas. The Velvet Underground neatly sidesteps the usual rock-doc banalities as it plunges us into the Velvets and their world.
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Two new films grapple with the complexity of moral courage. Wife of a Spy is set in Japan on the cusp of WWII. Azor follows a Swiss banker during the Argentine dictatorship of the 1980s. -
The tension never lets up in this four-part PBS Masterpiece series. As two brothers scramble to cover up their crime, Guilt practically echoes with the sounds of other shoes dropping. -
No fewer than five assassins are on the high speed train at the center of Kotaro Isaka outlandish and virtuoso novel — and within pages, they're going after each other. -
William Gardner Smith wrote the story of a Black writer who, like Smith himself, moved to Paris to pursue a freedom he couldn't find in America. New York Review Books is releasing a new edition.
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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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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.
