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

2012 Stories by Karina Longworth

• 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 >>

• 

  COVER STORY

  Quentin Tarantino unchained

  published December 19, 2012

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

• 

  Wake in Fright returns, lurid as ever

  published December 12, 2012

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

• 

  Hitchcock drags without much suspense

  published November 28, 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 >>

• 

  Killing Them Softly argues crime is just business

  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 >>

• 

  Silver Linings Playbook plays it safe

  published November 21, 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 Loneliest Planet travels deep inside a couple's relationship

  published October 31, 2012

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

• 

  Argo bargains for Hollywood love

  published October 10, 2012

  Perhaps more than any other male American star of his generation, Ben Affleck understands the narrative advantage of having Hollywood on your... More >>

• 

  The Master doesn't offer any answers

  published September 19, 2012

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

• 

  Craig Zobel on the making of Compliance

  published August 29, 2012

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

• Julie Delpy Rocks New York

  published August 29, 2012

  "My son is sick right now, covered in zits. It's not contagious—I mean, it's contagious, but don't worry: Grown-ups don't catch it. It's... More >>

• 

  Cosmopolis is a conceptual piece of work

  published August 22, 2012

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

• 

  Celeste and Jesse Forever lacks true charm

  published August 15, 2012

  In Celeste and Jesse Forever, the titular, newly separated female protagonist's unflamboyant queer co-worker (Elijah Wood) tells her... More >>

• 

  The Campaign highlights bad election-season behavior

  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 rules."... More >>

• 

  Trishna is tragic love story of poverty and privilege

  published July 25, 2012

  Michael Winterbottom is multitasking — like that's a surprise. He has made a dozen films in the past decade, as varied as the Steve... More >>

• 

  Katy Perry: Part of Me reveals the essential Katy Perry-ness

  published July 4, 2012

  From bubblegum-bi-curious novelty "I Kissed a Girl" on, Katy Perry has built a career on glorious brain-dead-with-a-wink odes to playacting in... More >>

• 

  Magic Mike's naked ploy

  published June 27, 2012

  When Channing Tatum stood up and revealed his bare ass to the camera a minute or two into Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike — which... More >>

• 

  Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator

  published May 16, 2012

  In his third collaboration with director Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen plays Admiral General Aladeen, the young, dumb dictator of fictional... More >>

• Avengers directed by Joss Whedon

  published May 2, 2012

  At the start of Joss Whedon's long-awaited Marvel superhero supergroup flick, The Avengers, the Tesseract — a powerful,... More >>

• 

  The Kid with a Bike directed by the Dardenne brothers

  published April 11, 2012

  The Kid with a Bike, the new film from Belgian art-house legends Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, begins with Cyril, a scrappy 11-year-old... More >>

• 

  Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye profiles Throbbing romance

  published April 4, 2012

  "You fall in love with someone, and there's this moment where you just want to consume each other and not be individuals anymore.... More >>

• 

  Footnote is Israel's Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee

  published March 28, 2012

  In the first scene of Israel's Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Footnote, Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi)—a fortysomething... More >>

• 

  Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

  published January 11, 2012

  In the first scene of The Iron Lady, which re-teams director Phyllida Lloyd with her Mamma Mia! star Meryl Streep,... More >>

• 

  Movies much anticipated in 2012

  published January 4, 2012

  We know—you're excited about The Dark Knight Rises. And The Avengers. And The Hunger Games. So are we. We're also... More >>