John Powers

Aaron Katz's mumblecore flick Cold Weather is set in Portland, Ore.; Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is from South Korea. Critic John Powers says both films are wonderful, in part because the stories they tell are so unpredictable.

British actor Jason Statham plays a professional hit man in The Mechanic, based on a 1972 Charles Bronson thriller. Critic John Powers says the film offers a revealing look at Statham's distinctive appeal.

Critic John Powers has a theory about movies: The best gifts to give aren't necessarily the most recent hits. His 13 picks for the 2010 holiday season include a Charlie Chaplin classic, a Charles Laughton masterpiece and one of the greatest documentaries ever produced.

The late director Elia Kazan had a profound influence on American film in the decades after World War II. Critic John Powers says a new box set featuring 15 of his films, including On the Waterfront and Wild River, is a "terrific collection anchored by some of the most mythic performances in film history."

In the past few weeks, two films have explored the careers of men who have found a place in the pantheon of popular mythology. Critic John Powers says seeing Carlos and The Social Network side by side made him think about how much social values have changed in recent decades.

David Grossman began working on his novel To the End of the Land while his son Uri was in the Israeli Army. He hoped it would protect him. It didn't. Uri was killed, and Grossman's fiction explores the fragility of families, nations and life itself.

Young-ha Kim's latest thriller, Your Republic Is Calling You, is about a North Korean spy living courtly in Seoul for two decades -- when he's suddenly called to return to Pyongyang. Critic John Powers says the suspenseful novel offers a gripping look inside modern Korean culture.

Filmmaker Lixin Fan's Last Train Home documents the journey 130 million migrant workers make back to their rural villages every Chinese New Year. But the movie is not only about families traveling home -- it's about China's modernization. Critic John Powers says the images in the "epic and intimate" movie are absolutely ravishing."

The French outlaw Jacques Mesrine, who terrorized France and killed 39 people, is the subject of the thrilling Mesrine: Killer Instinct, which stars Vincent Cassell as Mesrine and Gerard Depardieu as a Parisian crime boss. Critic John Powers applauds Cassell's acting, saying it "ranks with the best of DeNiro or Pacino or, more recently, Daniel Day-Lewis."

In 1963, French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot decided to make a movie that would reinvent the movies. It was called Inferno, and the unfinished film was an enormous failure. But a new documentary about the disastrous project is anything but -- critic John Powers says Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno is "cinematically thrilling."