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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An FBI agent in a dead-end job suddenly finds himself in the middle of a huge conspiracy. This new 10-part series is a cross between a paranoid thriller from the '70s and a twisty TV show like 24.
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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. -
In this wonderfully unpredictable film, first-time actor Park Ji-min stars as Freddie, a young woman raised by adoptive parents in France who returns to the country of her birth.
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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.
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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.
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HBO's new show, which draws from a video game of the same name, is replete with apocalyptic landscapes and zombies. But what makes the series truly groundbreaking is the emotion that runs throughout.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Every year, John Powers looks back on the great features he never got around to talking about. This year's list includes White Lotus, The Menu, Nanny and Dark Winds — plus one vodka commercial.
