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

• "Keyhole": A Dream-World of Ideas, Bolted Shut

  published May 23, 2012

  The latest phantasmagoria of cinematic quotation from Canadian director Guy Maddin, Keyhole is an extremely loose adaptation of the... More >>

• "Polisse": A Lively "Law and Order: SVU" in Paris

  published May 23, 2012

  An episodic ensemble piece based on cases handled by Paris's Child Protection Unit, Polisse is a mutant beast: Imagine an entire season... More >>

• "The Dictator": More Culture Clash Than Comedy Revolution

  published May 16, 2012

  In The Dictator, Admiral General Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen), dictator of fictional North African nation Wadiya, travels to New York to... More >>

• "Here": New Lovers Take an International Road Trip

  published May 9, 2012

  Will (Ben Foster) — a lone-wolf American cartographer on contract to collect data on the ground to match to satellite maps in Armenia's... More >>

• "The Avengers": Superheroes Need Rescue From Predictability

  published May 2, 2012

  At the start of the Marvel superhero supergroup flick, the Tesseract — a powerful glowing cube that fell to the ocean floor after Captain... More >>

• "Sound of My Voice": Low-Budget Thriller Misses Mark

  published May 2, 2012

  Twentysomething Silver Lake couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) talk their way into an unnamed cult that meets to... More >>

• "4:44 Last Days on Earth": How We Lived at the End

  published April 18, 2012

  In writer/director Abel Ferrara's vision of the apocalypse, Chinese joints deliver right up until the end. The media's "live coverage"... More >>

• "House of Pleasures": Carnal Film Embraces Contradictions

  published March 28, 2012

  Early on in Bertrand Bonello's haunting, darkly gorgeous new film, House of Pleasures, a client of the titular turn-of-the-20th-century... More >>

• "Footnote": Scholastic Family Grapples with Truth, Each Other

  published March 21, 2012

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

• "The Kid with a Bike": A Lost Boy Navigates a Modern Fairy Tale

  published March 21, 2012

  In the new film from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Cyril (Thomas Doret), a scrappy 11-year-old living in an urban orphanage, flees school in an... More >>

• Authenticity in Question

  published March 21, 2012

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

• Two-Wheeled Soul Search

  published March 21, 2012

  In the new film from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, The Kid With a Bike, Cyril (Thomas Doret), a scrappy 11-year-old living in an... More >>

• "Casa de mi Padre": Making the Will Ferrell-in-Spanish Movie

  published March 14, 2012

  Casa de Mi Padre is a Spanish-language comedy starring Will Ferrell as a simpleminded, asexual Mexican cowboy who welcomes the return of... More >>

• "The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye": Dissecting Two Lives

  published March 7, 2012

  Directed by Marie Losier, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye chronicles Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle founder Genesis Breyer... More >>

• "Being Flynn": Editing Obscures Emotional Drama

  published March 7, 2012

  Written and directed by Paul Weitz, Being Flynn is an adaptation of Nick Flynn's 2004 memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,... More >>

• Living Cut-Ups

  published March 7, 2012

  Sexuality could be said to course through the veins of Marie Losier's films, but it's often thrillingly murky and atmospheric rather than... More >>

• "We Need To Talk About Kevin": Haphazardly Deconstructs a Tragedy

  published February 29, 2012

  In Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, Tilda Swinton lives out an urban bohemian's worst nightmare. Forced to give up her... More >>

• "Margaret": Teen Angst in Post-9/11 World

  published February 15, 2012

  Shot in 2005—lead actress Anna Paquin, now 29, credibly plays a 17-year-old—Margaret was delayed first by the editing room... More >>

• "Rampart": Woody Harrelson Is a Bad Cop

  published February 8, 2012

  Directed by Oren Moverman from a script by Moverman and L.A. noir master James Ellroy, Rampart tracks the downward spiral of LAPD cop... More >>

• "Safe House": Shaky Cinematography Blurs Action

  published February 8, 2012

  In Safe House, Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a junior CIA agent assigned to babysit a safe house in Cape Town. He's dying to be... More >>

• "W.E.": Madonna Fetishizes Subject at Story's Cost

  published February 8, 2012

  W.E. is the second feature film credited to former MTV queen Madonna and the second film in about a year — after The King's... More >>

• "Declaration of War": The Art of Emotional Struggle

  published January 25, 2012

  The gorgeously scruffy Juliette (director and co-writer Valérie Donzelli) and Roméo (co-writer Jérémie Elkaïm)... More >>

• "Hipsters": A Jazz Musical for the Young Communist Set

  published January 11, 2012

  "Every hipster is a potential criminal," warns a student communist in Valeriy Todorovskiy's musical period piece. These "hipsters" are, in... More >>

• "Carnage": Parents Rage in Brownstone Brooklyn

  published January 11, 2012

  In Carnage, Roman Polanski's adaptation of Yasmina Reza's hit play, posh pair Alan and Nancy (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) come to... More >>

• "In the Land of Blood and Honey": An Anti-Movie Star Makes a Vanity Project

  published January 4, 2012

  It's 1992, and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic) and Danijel (Goran Kostic) are about to hook up in a Bosnian nightclub when they're interrupted by a bomb... More >>