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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  FEATURED STORY

  Top 10 Films of 2012

  published Dec 18, 2012

  See also: *More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage More than ever, boiling this concluding year down to the 10 "best" movies feels both arbitrary and reductive. Ideally, I'd have 25 unnumbered slots. I'd cit... More >>

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  Quentin Tarantino Wants a Second Oscar. Will Django Give It to Him?

  published December 13, 2012

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

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  Cinefamily's Telethon Will Include Robert Downey, Jr. Digging Up a Time Capsule, and More

  published December 13, 2012

  Throughout its five years in existence, Cinefamily has stressed the "family" aspect of its mission: Rather than rely on a single benefactor... More >>

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  Killing Them Softly Review: Violent Brad Pitt Drama Argues Crime Is Just Business

  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 >>

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  Hitchcock Review: Shouldn't the Making of Psycho Be More Interesting?

  published November 22, 2012

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

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  Silver Linings Playbook Review: Where Is the David O. Russell in This David O. Russell Movie?

  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 >>

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  Festival of (In)appropriation Goes Beyond the Mash-up

  published November 8, 2012

  The appropriation of mainstream/commercial culture by artists is nothing new — you can trace it back through Negativland, Craig Baldwin... More >>

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  The Comedy Review: Film Satirizes Hipsters in Ways They’ll Likely Enjoy

  published November 8, 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 >>

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  Skyfall Review: James Bond Now Has a Superhero-Style Origin Story

  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... More >>

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  The Bay Review: Barry Levinson Mimics an Amateur YouTube Documentarian

  published November 1, 2012

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

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  Sean Baker on His Film Starlet, an Insider's Look at 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 >>

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  Fun Size Review: Gossip Girl Creator Josh Schwartz's First Film

  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 >>

• Wake in Fright, the Lost Grind House Movie That Left Martin Scorsese Speechless

  published Oct 18, 2012

  As director Ted Kotcheff told Senses of Cinema magazine, when Aussie grind house creeper Wake in Fright premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, "There was an American seated in one of the rows ... More >>

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  Argo Review: Ben Affleck's Film About the CIA Going Hollywood

  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 >>

• Want to See Cannibal Holocaustr Check Out Video Nasties, Cinefamily's Series on Censored Movies

  published Oct 04, 2012

  In 1982, when the U.K. distributor of 1980 Italian mondo faux snuff film Cannibal Holocaust sent an anonymous letter of "complaint" regarding the obscenity of its new release to dowager, Thatcher ac... More >>

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  Detropia Review: Chronicling the Downfall of a Great American City

  published October 4, 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 >>

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  Toronto Film Festival 2012 Report: The Master, Spring Breakers and More

  published September 20, 2012

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

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  COVER STORY

  Mondo Kim's Video Was Shipped from New York to Sicily. Then Things Got Really Strange.

  published September 13, 2012

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

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  The Master Review: Paul Thomas Anderson Reteams With Philip Seymour Hoffman

  published September 13, 2012

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

• Ben Affleck in Terrence Malick's To The Wonder at the Toronto Film Festival

  published Sep 12, 2012

  See our other Toronto Film Fest posts, including: *Cloud Atlas, by the Wachowskis *Threesomes at the Fest, Including James Franco + Vanessa Hudgens *Joaquin Phoenix in P.T. Anderson's The Master As ... More >>

• When Directors Love Their Stars: Frances Ha and Yellow at the Toronto Film Festival

  published Sep 11, 2012

  See our other Toronto Film Fest posts, including: *Cloud Atlas, by the Wachowskis *Threesomes at the Fest, Including James Franco + Vanessa Hudgens *Joaquin Phoenix in P.T. Anderson's The Master For ... More >>

• Joaquin Phoenix Returns in Paul Thomas Anderson's Scientology-inspired The Master

  published Sep 10, 2012

  There's something startlingly noncommittal about many of the initial reviews of The Master that leaked out following the impromptu screenings writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson organized in 70mm-e... More >>

• How Hollywood Movies Led to Genocide: The Act of Killing at the Toronto Film Festival

  published Sep 09, 2012

  The best, most daring and form-defying documentaries in the world right now are being funded by the Danish Film Institute, and so it goes that the nonfiction knockout of TIFF thus far is The Act of ... More >>

• Cloud Atlas Review: The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer Bring Their Adaptation of David Mitchell's Novel to Toronto

  published Sep 09, 2012

  One man's ambitious, iconoclastic, like-nothing-ever-before-seen passion project is another man's Battlefield Earth, and so it goes that for some of us who saw the film's world premiere in Toronto l... More >>

• James Franco + Vanessa Hudgens + Ashley Benson vs. Asia Argento + Charlotte Gainsbourg + Francois Cluzet : Threesomes at the Toronto Film Festival

  published Sep 07, 2012

  See our other Toronto Film Fest posts, including: *Cloud Atlas, by the Wachowskis *Joaquin Phoenix in P.T. Anderson's The Master This is a blog post about two movies that were screened for the press ... More >>