Karina Longworth

Karina Longworth (born July 10, 1980) is an American film critic, author, and journalist based in Los Angeles. She is one of the founders of the film culture blog Cinematical and formerly edited both Cinematical and the film blog SpoutBlog and, while living in New York, was heard regularly on the Public Radio International show The Takeaway. From 2010–2012, she was the Film Editor and lead critic at LA Weekly.
Longworth has contributed to numerous magazines, including New York Magazine, Filmmaker, TimeOut New York, Cineaste, and Las Vegas Weekly, as well as the online publications Slate, indieWIRE, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, The Village Voice, and Vanity Fair's Little Gold Men blog.
She is dating film director Rian Johnson.

• 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts in Video from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• 2002 Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film from San Francisco Art Institute
• 2005 Masters of Arts in Cinema Studies from New York University

• January 2005 – March 2007: regular contributor to the film blog Cinematical.com
• March 2005 – February 2006: editor in chief of Cinematical.com (Cinematical was bought by AOL in October 2006)
• October 2006 – June 2007: worked at AOL after the takeover of Cinematical
• March 2007 – October 2008: columnist at NewTeeVee.com
• February 2009 – December 2009: weekly contributor on the national public radio show The Takeaway
• June 2007 – October 2009: editor of the daily film culture blog SpoutBlog at Spout.com (now owned by indieWIRE)
• January 2010 – January 2013: film critic and editor at LA Weekly
• January 2013 – present: freelance writer, author and researcher; Adjunct faculty at Chapman University

In April 2014 Longworth launched "You Must Remember This," a podcast that covers lesser-known Hollywood stories from the early- to mid-twentieth century. Distributed by the Panoply network in association with Slate Magazine, there have been over ninety episodes so far, all written and narrated by Longworth. It has become one of the top film podcasts; the Washington Post called it "laceratingly funny".

When she was still a web critic for SpoutBlog, Longworth appeared in the documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, explaining the virtues of blogging – for creating a back-and-forth dialogue with readers. About blogging she went on to say, "I have a Master’s Degree in Film Studies, but I’m no more qualified to blog than a high school student in Vermont." No more qualified she may be, but as to influence, the New York Times has called Longworth, "freakishly smart" and Variety said, "... it's the ever-proliferating bloggers – Spout, Cinematical, Movie City News and Hollywood Elsewhere – that have become the instant barometers for how a film plays."

Online film critics are considered by some to be the next wave of film criticism. In 2007 Variety said, "As the pool of well-paid print critics shrinks in size, the next generation of film fans may come to trust critic/bloggers like … Spout’s Karina Longworth, who helped to create the major film blog Cinematical" The New York Times has commented, "Are print critics really so all-important and sacrosanct with the Web full of debates about all manner of film in places like indiewire.com, cinematical.com and blog.spout.com?"