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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In 1970, Hansen began a 12-novel series about Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who happens to be gay. Reading now, it's clear that Hansen was one of the great crime writers of his time. -
Based on Lee Child's best-selling novel, this eight-part series by Amazon Prime Video features Alan Ritchson as an ex-military policeman on the hunt for a murderer in small-town Georgia. -
This six-part BBC mystery series about a sailor murdered aboard a nuclear sub will keep you guessing. As the investigation widens, more murders — and a slew of red herrings — follow. -
As the year draws to a close, critic John Powers singles out seven revelatory people or things that made 2021 a little brighter. At the top of his list? Basketball star Steph Curry. -
This eight-part comedy, which centers on a gender-fluid millennial of Pakistani heritage, takes issues that are often used as hot buttons and treats them as an everyday, often funny part of life. -
Adapted from Nella Larsen's 1929 novella, Netflix's new film centers on two Black women, one of whom pretends to be white; the other could pretend, but chooses not to.
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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.
