John Powers

A new BBC miniseries streaming on Amazon and starring Hugh Grant tells the story of Britain's Thorpe affair, a 1970s tabloid fiesta that brought together politics, illicit sex and a criminal trial.

Authors Dorthe Nors and Sayaka Murata use bracing good humor to subvert readers' expectations about single women in their new novels, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal and Convenience Store Woman.

A new series on AT&T's Audience Network updates the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor. Critic John Powers says Condor is an entertaining show that lacks the cultural relevance of its forerunner.

The six-part series centers around members of the Defoe family — high-end lawyers specializing in marital issues whose own private lives are as furtive and messy as the cases they're handling.

Rachel Kushner's new novel centers on a young mother serving two consecutive life sentences for murdering a man who'd been stalking her. Critic John Powers calls The Mars Room "searingly intelligent."

Stanley Kubrick's science-fiction epic — which opened to mixed reviews in 1968 — unknowingly foreshadowed the future of effects-driven blockbusters.

Hollinghurst's new domestic epic leapfrogs across seven decades to examine how the laws of social propriety shape the destinies of a father and son. Critic John Powers says the novel is fascinating.

Donald Glover's Emmy-winning FX series returns for its second season on Thursday. Critic John Powers says Atlanta is simultaneously "strange and angry and hysterically funny."

Critic John Powers says Mick Herron's latest novel sucks you in from the opening page, and a Netflix series imported from Germany is both fun and binge-able.

The new season of the FX anthology series American Crime Story revisits the 1997 murder of the Italian designer. John Powers says the show presents a moving portrait of homophobia in 1990s America.

Every year, critic John Powers is haunted by the things he wishes he'd reviewed. The themes his 2017 "Ghost List" range in spirit from cosmic surrealism to ripped-from-the-headlines immediacy.

Amazon's new series centers on a spurned 1950s housewife who has a knack for stand-up comedy. Critic John Powers says Rachel Brosnahan delivers a "genuinely funny performance" in the title role.

Maya Jasanoff weaves together biography, history, literature and her own travels in a new book about the globe-trotting author. Reviewer John Powers says Jasanoff's portrait of Conrad is terrific.

The eight stories in Carmen Maria Machado's new collection feature women in extremis — physical danger, psychological meltdown, treacherous love or close encounters of a ghostly kind.

Emma Stone stars as King in a breezy new film that carries us back to '73, and the heyday of the women's lib movement. Critic John Powers says the message of Battle of the Sexes still resonates today.

The TV series' second season takes place four years after its first, and begins with an unknown Asian woman's body washing up (in a suitcase) on a beach near Sydney.

The 1950 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame was adapted from a lesser-known 1947 novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, who belongs in the crime-writing pantheon. The novel's just been re-released.

Newly released on DVD and Blu-ray, the 1985 film follows a well-heeled LA couple who decide to become free-spirited wanderers. Critic John Powers says Lost In America is a comedy for the ages.

Two entitled young women vacationing on a chic Greek island get involved with a mysterious stranger in Lawrence Osborne's new novel. Critic John Powers calls it a "seductively menacing new thriller."

Mark Kidel's new Showtime documentary tells the story of the man behind the debonair star. Off screen, Grant was "lonely, insecure and haunted by fears of being abandoned," says critic John Powers.