Email Author Karina Longworth

Awards

• 2011 - Southern California Journalism Awards/LA Press Club

  Film reviews

• 2011 - Southern California Journalism Awards/LA Press Club, published February 5, 2010

  "Sundance's Rebel Yell"

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2012 Stories by Karina Longworth

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  Quentin Tarantino Emerges with His Most Daring Film Yet

  published December 19, 2012

  Quentin Tarantino has been Googling himself, and it's starting to become a problem. The filmmaker, whose eighth feature, More >>

• 

  The Top 10 Films of 2012

  published December 19, 2012

  More than ever, boiling this concluding year down to the 10 "best" movies feels both arbitrary and reductive. Ideally, I'd have 25 unnumbered... More >>

• Killing Them Softly in Obama's America

  published November 28, 2012

  An adaptation of George V. Higgins's 1974 novel Cogan's Trade, Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly anatomizes a self-policing... More >>

• The Trouble with Hitchcock

  published November 21, 2012

  Early in Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins with a sack of fat connecting chin to neck) walks the red carpet at... More >>

• Generation P

  published November 14, 2012

  Billed as "the first and only Russian film that poked sharp satire at the current Russian political system and the virtuality of its leaders,"... More >>

• Mostly Cloudy: Looking for David O. Russell in Silver Linings Playbook

  published November 14, 2012

  Silver Linings Playbook, which stars Bradley Cooper as a manic-depressive man-child attempting to get his life back together after a... More >>

• The Comedy: Look at This Fucking Movie

  published November 7, 2012

  Could there be a more unsympathetic character in today's culture than a well-born white male who uses his privilege irresponsibly? A highly... More >>

• Skyfall Lays Bare the Unknowable Spy

  published November 7, 2012

  If Hollywood's rut du jour is the origin story as bid for franchise immortality, you can't say that Skyfall—the 23rd "official"... More >>

• Auteur Goes Amateur: Barry Levinson's The Bay Aspires to YouTube

  published October 31, 2012

  Found-footage eco-horror cheapie The Bay—in which a previously harmless waterborne parasite mutates into an unstoppable... More >>

• Fun Size, The Teen Comedy That's Not Bad for You

  published October 24, 2012

  Gossip Girl and The O.C., the two teen TV shows created in the past decade by 36-year-old Josh Schwartz, are sly bait and... More >>

• The Loneliest Planet Sets a Course for Who Couples Truly Are

  published October 24, 2012

  The Loneliest Planet begins with close-up trained on the body of a beautiful woman, naked and trembling. It's not what it sounds like.... More >>

• Getting Someplace: In Middle of Nowhere's L.A., Real Life Flourishes

  published October 10, 2012

  When Ruby (played by the stunning Emayatzy Corinealdi) tells the new man in her life she likes "indie" movies, it's both a declaration of... More >>

• Wake in Fright Returns, Lurid as Ever

  published October 3, 2012

  As director Ted Kotcheff told Senses of Cinema magazine, when Aussie grind house creeper Wake in Fright premiered at the Cannes... More >>

• V/H/S

  published October 3, 2012

  In the faux-found-footage horror anthology V/H/S (containing material directed by Joe Swanberg, Adam Wingard, Ti West, and others), a crew... More >>

• Knuckleball!

  published September 19, 2012

  Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg made a name for themselves with films like The Trials of Darryl Hunt, socially conscious docs with... More >>

• TIFF: Meet the Monsters

  published September 19, 2012

  A critic's report from a film festival like Toronto, where something like 300 features were unveiled from September 6 through 16, can be... More >>

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  published September 19, 2012

  As someone who was in college when Napster happened, I'd love to see a period piece re-creating teen life during the last moments before... More >>

• The Master: From the Window to the Wall

  published September 12, 2012

  There's something startlingly noncommittal about many of the initial reviews of The Master that leaked out following the impromptu... More >>

• 

  COVER STORY

  The Strange Fate of Kim's Video

  published September 12, 2012

  From 1995 until January 2009, a music and movie megastore called Mondo Kim’s took up the bulk of a five-story building at 6 St.... More >>

• Detropia’s Moving Portrait of a Great City’s Fall

  published September 5, 2012

  When it comes to cost-cutting, downsizing, and philosophical and practical compromise, how low is it possible to go before there's nothing left... More >>

• The Ambassador: The Horror, the Horror

  published August 29, 2012

  The blitzkrieg of award season is right around the corner, and with it, we can expect an onslaught of stunt performances, designed to wow... More >>

• Sleepwalk With Me: This American Spin-Off

  published August 22, 2012

  It's pretty Pollyannaish to complain when companies that are in the business of making money on movies make certain movies solely to make... More >>

• Exploitation Film: Compliance's Craig Zobel on Documenting Sexual Degradation—with Humanity

  published August 15, 2012

  Like antidepressants, artificial sugars, Botox, and other miracle inventions of the past century, corporate culture became an omnipresent fact... More >>

• Cosmopolis Limos Through the Mind of a Master of the Universe

  published August 15, 2012

  Boyishly lean, with a brooding angularity that suggests both high maintenance and nefarious vacancy, Robert Pattinson has managed to fill the... More >>

• Hijinks and F-bombs on The Campaign Trail

  published August 8, 2012

  The Campaign begins with an on-screen quote attributed to Ross Perot: “War has rules. Mud-wrestling has rules. Politics has no... More >>