John Powers

John Powers reviews a luminous cinematic memoir by the 81-year-old French director Agnes Varda. Like all Varda's films, The Beaches of Agnes brims with its creator's independence and vivacity.

When it came out in 1961, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad perplexed and excited audiences with its surrealistic storytelling. John Powers has a review of the film's Criterion Collection re-release.

Our critic at large returns with the second part of his report from this year's Cannes Film Festival, including his impressions of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the South Korean vampire flick Thirst — both due out in the United States later this summer.

Critic-at-large John Powers reports on the scene at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Critic John Powers reviews the Starz comedy series Party Down, which follows a group of oddball dreamsers who work for a Hollywood catering company.

Hans Fallada's 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone, presents a memorable portrait of ordinary resistance to Nazism in wartime Germany.

Critic-at-large John Powers explains why Gordon Ramsay, the profanity-prone star chef of Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, is "the world's greatest TV chef."

In Let the Right One In, Eli and Oskar are both lonely 12-year-olds — but one of them happens to be a vampire. Critic-at-large John Powers calls the Swedish film "the best vampire movie in the last 75 years."

Matteo Garrone's epic film Gomorrah takes us into the world of the Camorra, an organized crime syndicate based in and around Naples. John Powers has a review.

David Potter's gripping, enigmatic writing for TV made him one of British culture's defining figures from the 1960s through the 1980s. Critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new DVD collection Dennis Potter: 3 to Remember.