John Powers

Fresh Air's critic at large John Powers returns from the 2013 Cannes Film Festival with tales of the good, the bad, and the parties. He says Blue Is the Warmest Color was "the film of the festival" while Only God Forgives was the biggest disappointment.

In her classic '60s documentary, Shirley Clarke profiles a loquacious 33-year-old gay hustler who dreams of having a nightclub act. Her subject could hardly be more complex — and in examining him, she raises important questions about the relationship between fact and fiction.

A new documentary looks at obsessive fans of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. These fanatics look for hidden meanings in the movie, and while some of their theories sound outrageous, it's too simple to call such thinking deranged.