John Powers

Critic John Powers compares the heroines featured in this summer's two cultural juggernauts -- Twilight and the Millennium Trilogy. And despite being almost diametrically opposed, the characters Lisbeth Salander and Bella Swan have more in common than you may think.

Tilda Swinton stars as a wealthy wife and mother who gets involved with a younger man in Luca Guadagnino's acclaimed new film I Am Love. Fresh Air's critic-at-large John Powers says the movie offers grownup audiences something they've been missing.

If the Dead Rise Not, the latest book in Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther detective series, shifts the saga from prewar Nazi Germany to 1954 Havana. Critic John Powers says the Chandleresque novel kept him glued to his deck chair for days.

The film critic reports his impressions of this year's Canne Film Festival. On Powers' list of notable films: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Palme d'Or-winning movie about a dying farmer, and a French film about Cistercian monks debating whether to stay put in a community full of terrorists.

Dorothy Sayers' genteelly dapper detective, portrayed by Ian Carmichael in the '70s BBC miniseries, returns in a newly released DVD set. Critic John Powers reviews the first two episodes of a murder-mystery collection whose success on American TV paved the way for a PBS's popular Mystery franchise.

No One Knows about Persian Cats, which won the Special Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival, has now opened in theaters across the U.S. Critic John Powers says that Bahman Ghobadi's film — about outlaw musicians in Iran — is a reminder of the liberating potential of rock.

David Lynch's mysterious, groundbreaking serial drama premiered on April 8, 1990. Twenty years later, critic John Powers looks back at the cult series, which he says "smuggled avant-garde into prime time."

Directed by Nicholas Ray, the 1956 film Bigger Than Life, stars James Mason as a schoolteacher who experiences wild mod swings and psychotic episodes after becoming addicted to his arthritis medication. Critic John Powers applauds the film, which he says "has a juiciness missing from a period show like Mad Men."

The new Israeli movie Ajami, shortlisted for an Oscar, is filled with the daily collisions of everyday urban life in the the port city of Jaffa. Movie critic John Powers says that the interesting characters and situations that fill Ajami remind him of the HBO series The Wire.

Back when Theodore White did his groundbreaking book The Making of the President 1960, it was easy to write about elections. Most Americans didn't know very much about how campaigns actually worked. These days, we're all experts on push-polling, NASCAR dads, and those oddball Iowa caucuses. For an election book to register now, it must offer something new, something hot. It has to dish.