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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Historian Ian Buruma chronicles the lives of ordinary Berliners — including his own father — during World War II. Stay Alive is about the past, but has powerful lessons for the present. -
Daniel Roher's film about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny offers intimate, sometimes amazing access to the bravery — and human cost — of opposing a despot.
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A new film chronicles what happens when a Chinese billionaire reopens a former General Motors plant in Ohio. John Powers says it's an old-school observational documentary in the very best sense. -
Hatidze Muratova lives in a remote area of Macedonia and has one simple rule: When you harvest honey, you take half — and leave the other half for the bees. An elegant new documentary tells her story. -
The six-part BBC series airing on HBO follows one British family over the course of 15 years of upheaval, beginning in 2019. The unsettling show imagines the dismal future that liberals fear. -
Meryl Streep joins the Big Little Lies cast as the mother of the man killed at the end of Season 1 — complicating things for the Monterey Five, who are still processing the aftermath of the death. -
Ruth Wilson stars in the PBS drama based on the story of her own grandmother, who discovered, after 22 years of marriage, that her spy-turned-author husband may have been married to someone else. -
Critic John Powers discusses the Italian documentary, Fire at Sea, and the novel, These Are the Names. The works take very different — but nonetheless poignant — approaches to the refugee situation.
