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"

More

2010 Stories by Karina Longworth

• Another Year Will Give You Seasonal Disaffected Disorder

  published December 29, 2010

  Another Year, the 10th feature-length British soap written and directed by Mike Leigh, concerns a year in the life of Tom (Jim... More >>

• Blue Valentine's Got Lady Problems

  published December 29, 2010

  When the MPAA handed Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine an NC-17 rating this fall, cynics suggested that the so-called “kiss of... More >>

• The Red Chapel Crashes North Korea

  published December 29, 2010

  The Red Chapel documents director Mads Brügger’s trip to Pyongyang with Jacob and Simon, South Korean–born comedians... More >>

• 

  Year in Film: Sofia Coppola's Journey to Somewhere

  published December 22, 2010

  Sofia Coppola had her 21st birthday party at the Chateau Marmont—a fact she had forgotten until Phil Pavel, the manager of the hotel,... More >>

• Grieving Tastefully in Rabbit Hole

  published December 15, 2010

  Based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire, John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole plops us down in the... More >>

• The Company Men Takes Pity on the Emasculated Exec

  published December 8, 2010

  Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate,... More >>

• Spalding Gray in His Own Words in And Everything Is Going Fine

  published December 8, 2010

  “Maybe I should just tell you some of the facts as I remember them,” Spalding Gray says a few minutes into And Everything Is Going... More >>

• Hollywood Rehab: Henry Jaglom's Self-Aware Queen of the Lot

  published December 1, 2010

  A sequel to his 2006 Hollywood Dreams, Henry Jaglom’s Queen of the Lot again stars Tanna Frederick as Maggie, an... More >>

• 

  Christina Aguilera Stripped of Her Assets in Burlesque

  published November 24, 2010

  “She doesn’t sing that way because she’s had it easy.” This is how Tess (Cher), the long-suffering owner of the nightclub... More >>

• How Southfork Brought Down the Soviets in Disco and Atomic War

  published November 10, 2010

  With tongues partially in cheek, director Jaak Kilmi and screenwriter Kiur Aarma, who grew up in the same neighborhood of Tallinn, Estonia, in... More >>

• Rachel McAdams, Married to Her Job and Loving It in Morning Glory

  published November 10, 2010

  In the climax of Morning Glory, Rachel McAdams is dressed in a flesh-colored, diaphanous cocktail dress, its halter top and tight bodice... More >>

• 

  Great World With Zach: On the Road With Galifianakis in Due Date

  published November 3, 2010

  In Due Date, a skinny, scowly, and dryly self-referential Robert Downey Jr. meets a chubby, beardy, quasi-autistic Zach Galifianakis... More >>

• Paparazzo Boy Meets Idealistic Girl in Alien Love Story, Monsters

  published October 27, 2010

  A road-trip romance thick with sci-fi circumstance, Monsters imagines a bizarro-world present, in which a NASA probe has crashed,... More >>

• Sons of Medellin Collide in The Two Escobars

  published October 13, 2010

  In a 1994 World Cup game against the USA, Columbian soccer superstar Andrés Escobar scored a decisive goal—against his own team.... More >>

• 

  Jackass Goes All Fancy 3D, But the Gag Remains the Same

  published October 13, 2010

  The ultra-lo-fi, skate-culture-spawned, extreme-stunt brand that turned its freak show of featured players—including a midget (Jason... More >>

• 

  Ed Norton's Double Life

  published October 6, 2010

  Movie stars make a living peddling distinct, definable personalities. Edward Norton, a movie star who might have enjoyed the comparative... More >>

• Death's No Big Deal and Parenting's a Breeze in Life As We Know It

  published October 6, 2010

  Set up on a blind date by their married best friends, Holly (Katherine Heigl) and Messer (Josh Duhamel) show each other the worst of themselves... More >>

• Ryan Reynolds and an Oddly Powerful Cell Phone Unite in Buried

  published September 22, 2010

  Paul (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver for a KBR-type contractor in Iraq, is captured in an insurgent attack and wakes up buried in a... More >>

• A Tale of the Toronto Film Festival

  published September 22, 2010

  It was the best of TIFFs, it was the worst of TIFFs. While the trade pubs breathlessly trumpeted the flurry of deals that took place at the... More >>

• How to Hallucinate Without Drugs: Watch Enter the Void

  published September 22, 2010

  A very, very loose and highly symbolic adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void unfolds in... More >>

• Doc or Not, Catfish Is Stranger Than Fiction

  published September 15, 2010

  What is Catfish? That question is an implicit part of the film's marketing campaign, which, with the tagline, "Don't let anyone tell you... More >>

• Joaquin Phoenix Goes a Very Long Way to Prove a Very Minor Point in I'm Still Here

  published September 8, 2010

  I’m Still Here—“that Joaquin Phoenix movie”—capitalizes on an anxiety that’s very of-the-moment, uniting... More >>

• When Not LOL-Funny, Machete Is Downright Dull

  published September 1, 2010

  In 1993, inspired by his second cousin Danny Trejo's work in Desperado, Robert Rodriguez wrote a screenplay around the character of... More >>

• Going the Distance Is a Not-Very-Good Romantic Comedy

  published September 1, 2010

  "What really matters is what you like, not what you are like," says John Cusack in High Fidelity, a very good romantic comedy about a... More >>

• 'Baster' Gets a Makeover in The Switch

  published August 18, 2010

  The Switch is a loose adaptation of a Jeffrey Eugenides story called "Baster," published in The New Yorker in 1996 and deemed fit... More >>