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

• Killing Them Softly Makes a Killing in Obama's America

  published November 29, 2012

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

• The Comedy Satirizes Hipsters in Ways They'll Likely Enjoy

  published November 29, 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 >>

• The Trouble With Hitchcock: Shouldn't It Be More Interesting?

  published November 22, 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 >>

• Looking for Director David O. Russell in Silver Linings Playbook

  published November 15, 2012

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

• Skyfall Lays Bare the Unknowable Spy

  published November 8, 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 >>

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

  published November 1, 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 >>

• Sean Baker's Latest Film Goes Inside the Porn Biz

  published November 1, 2012

  Sean Baker's Starlet stars Dree Hemingway (Ernest's great-granddaughter) as Jane, a 21-year-old "girl next door" porn performer whose... More >>

• Wake in Fright Returns, Lurid as Ever

  published October 25, 2012

  As director Ted Kotcheff told Senses of Cinema magazine, when Aussie grindhouse creeper Wake in Fright premièred at the... More >>

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

  published October 25, 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... More >>

• With Argo, Ben Affleck Asks Us to Love Hollywood Again

  published October 11, 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: You Aren't Expecting What Paul Thomas Anderson Is Giving

  published September 20, 2012

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

• From Toronto, a Glimpse of this Year's Most Bracing Films

  published September 13, 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 >>

• Compliance's Craig Zobel on Documenting Sexual Degradation

  published September 6, 2012

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

• Sleepwalk With Me Can't Quite Rise to the Level of Radio

  published August 30, 2012

  It's Pollyanna-ish to complain when companies that are in the business of making money on movies make certain movies solely to make money. And... More >>

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

  published August 23, 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 Suffers from a Scattered Narrative

  published August 16, 2012

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

• 2 Days in New York's Julie Delpy Rocks the Big Apple

  published August 16, 2012

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

• High Jinks and F-Bombs on The Campaign Trail

  published August 9, 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 >>

• Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry: Even China Can't Shut Up the Artist/Gadfly

  published August 9, 2012

  Chinese artist, activist, and antagonist Ai Weiwei became a worldwide cause célèbre last April when he was arrested by... More >>

• The Queen of Versailles: Time-Share Royalty's Time Might Be Up

  published August 9, 2012

  "I don't want to give you lessons in self-denial and social responsibility," an art dealer tells her billionaire boy client in Don DeLillo's... More >>

• Savages: Oliver Stone's Drug-Trade Drama Settles for Sensation

  published July 5, 2012

  "Welcome to the recession, boys," says John Travolta's DEA-double-agent profiteer in Oliver Stone's Savages, based on Don Winslow's... More >>

• A Tour Doc Reveals Katy Perry's Essential Katy Perry-ness

  published July 5, 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 Reveals Is Cast But Is No Revelation

  published June 28, 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 >>

• Safety Not Guaranteed: Subverting the Rom-Com

  published June 14, 2012

  With her high cheekbones, feline brown eyes, and heart-shaped mouth, actress Aubrey Plaza is bombshell hot. But in an unusual twist for a... More >>

• Moonrise Kingdom: Young Love, Wes Anderson-Style

  published June 7, 2012

  It's 1965, the rainy end of summer on the rocky coast of a fictional New England isle. Twelve-year-old Sam (Jared Gilman), a scrawny,... More >>