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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2011 Stories by Karina Longworth

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  COVER STORY

  Best Films of 2011: Why You've Never Heard of Margaret

  published December 22, 2011

  Margaret, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), starring Anna Paquin with key supporting performances... More >>

• Best Films of 2011: People of the Year

  published December 22, 2011

  Kristen Wiig Six years of Saturday Night Live was threatening to calcify Kristen Wiig's brand of highly physical yet... More >>

• Best Films: 10 for 2012

  published December 22, 2011

  Red Tails Remember back in 2005, when George Lucas was making the press rounds to promote Revenge of the Sith, and... More >>

• Hugo: Scorsese Milks the 3-D Trend for a Cause

  published November 24, 2011

  Martin Scorsese's first foray into big-budget family filmmaking — as well as his inaugural effort in 3-D — Hugo is a... More >>

• The Skin I Live In: Really Extreme Makeover

  published November 3, 2011

  The morality of the mad-scientist tale has remained more or less fixed since the beginning of sound cinema: From Dr. Frankenstein's hubristic... More >>

• Footloose: Still In Step

  published October 13, 2011

  In hindsight, the 1984 hit Footloose can be seen as the link between the old Hollywood model of a let's-put-on-a-show musical,... More >>

• Ides of March: No Game Change

  published October 6, 2011

  A procedural on the political manipulation of medium and message, George Clooney's fourth directorial effort is bookended with scenes of... More >>

• Brighton Rock: Cruel Obsession

  published September 22, 2011

  In Brighton Rock, Rowan Joffe's adaptation of Graham Greene's 1938 novel, Sam Riley plays Pinkie, a baby-faced junior thug who... More >>

• Contagion: Time for Widespread Panic

  published September 8, 2011

  Currently the fifth-to-last film on Steven Soderbergh's ever-expanding pre-retirement slate, Contagion opens on day two of a... More >>

• Our Idiot Brother: The Littlest Lebowski

  published August 25, 2011

  In Jesse Peretz's Our Idiot Brother, Paul Rudd plays Ned, a kind of Upstate New York version of "The Dude" Lebowski — a man... More >>

• One Day: Fated Attraction

  published August 18, 2011

  Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by David Nicholls, based on his novel, One Day stars Anne Hathaway... More >>

• The Help: Mean Girls Vs. the Maids

  published August 11, 2011

  More than just the Hollywood It Girl of the moment, Emma Stone is a real actress, and in The Help, she gets an ostentatious,... More >>

• The Change-Up Misses the Plate

  published August 4, 2011

  A uniquely Freudian entry in the body-switching comedy canon, The Change-Up stars Jason Bateman as standard-issue anal-retentive... More >>

• Another Earth: Same Crap

  published August 4, 2011

  There may be nothing as Old Hollywood as the narrative about a pretty girl summoning up a dose of pluck to triumph over adversity. And yet Brit... More >>

• Crazy, Stupid, Love: Not Crazy Enough

  published July 28, 2011

  In the first scene of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Emily (Julianne Moore) tells Cal (Steve Carell), her high school sweetheart and... More >>

• Captain America Ignores its Roots for Easy Money

  published July 21, 2011

  Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in 1941, Captain America was among the first American comic books intended... More >>

• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

  published July 21, 2011

  In Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Nina (Li Bingbing) is a Shanghai career girl who drops plans to move to New York when she... More >>

• Horrible Bosses Sings the White Man's Lament

  published July 7, 2011

  There's a scene in Horrible Bosses in which Jennifer Aniston, playing a dentist who habitually sexually harasses her weakling... More >>

• Bad Teacher and the Downside of Equal Rights in Hollywood

  published June 23, 2011

  From Tad Friend's New Yorker profile of Anna Faris (which Jezebel.com reblogged under the headline... More >>

• Conan O'Brien Can't Stop: Try Harder

  published June 23, 2011

  "I am angry," Conan O'Brien admits in Rodman Flender's tour doc Conan O'Brien Can't Stop. "I'm trying not to be...but sometimes... More >>

• Green Lantern: Pretty Dim

  published June 16, 2011

  It's 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that builds toward a... More >>

• Midnight in Paris: Nothing Gold Can Stay

  published June 2, 2011

  A nebbishy screenwriter who longs to publish a novel, Gil (Owen Wilson) is tentatively working on a book set in a nostalgia shop—much to... More >>

• L'amour Fou: A Fashionable Life

  published May 26, 2011

  L'amour fou opens with unbroken footage from designer Yves Saint-Laurent's 2002 speech announcing his retirement from fashion, after... More >>

• Bridesmaids: Still a Man's World

  published May 12, 2011

  Bridesmaids is a high-profile test case. Directed by Paul Feig (a sitcom journeyman most lovingly known as the creator of... More >>

• Super Masked-Man Fantasy is Uneven and Annoying.

  published April 21, 2011

  When a local crime boss (Kevin Bacon) lures away his wife (Liv Tyler), lifelong pushover Frank (Rainn Wilson)—under the influence of a... More >>