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.
-
Kingston burst onto the scene in 1976 with The Woman Warrior and then kept writing. Critic John Powers says that, like James Baldwin, she's managed to shift American culture and remain relevant. -
The seven-part British TV series, which centers on a young doctor working in the OB/GYN ward of a London hospital, tells a painful story about the assembly-line nature of modern medicine.
-
In 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead in her Durham, N.C., home. Her husband, Michael, was accused of her murder, and a Netflix documentary followed. Now, a new HBO Max series revisits the case. -
Daniel Roher's film about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny offers intimate, sometimes amazing access to the bravery — and human cost — of opposing a despot.
-
HBO's new eight-part series follows an American crime reporter who intends to take Japanese journalism by storm — but first must learn how to navigate the churning opacity of 1990s Tokyo. -
Mick Herron's Slough House books center on a ragtag crew of intelligence officers who've blown their careers through bungling or bad luck. The first of those novels is now a clever Apple TV+ series. -
Based on the novel by Min Jin Lee, Pachinko follows four generations of a Korean family in Korea, Japan and the U.S. as they navigate broken hearts, broken homes, murder, suicide and more. -
Schumer stars as a woman on a voyage of self discovery in an enjoyable (if uneven) new Hulu series. Life & Beth is at its best when it harnesses Schumer's capacity for catching life on the wing. -
The BBC series, now playing on HBO Max, follows an Irishman who gets into a car accident and wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital. This suspenseful six-part thriller will keep you guessing. -
This offbeat and amusing thriller from Apple TV+ conjures a world in which employees of a cult-like corporation voluntarily undergo a procedure that severs their work and non-work memories.
