Scott Tobias
Scott Tobias is the film editor of The A.V. Club, the arts and entertainment section of The Onion, where he's worked as a staff writer for over a decade. His reviews have also appeared in Time Out New York, City Pages, The Village Voice, The Nashville Scene, and The Hollywood Reporter. Along with other members of the A.V. Club staff, he co-authored the 2002 interview anthology The Tenacity Of the Cockroach and the new book Inventory, a collection of pop-culture lists.
Though Tobias received a formal education at the University Of Georgia and the University Of Miami, his film education was mostly extracurricular. As a child, he would draw pictures on strips of construction paper and run them through the slats on the saloon doors separating the dining room from the kitchen. As an undergraduate, he would rearrange his class schedule in order to spend long afternoons watching classic films on the 7th floor of the UGA library. He cut his teeth writing review for student newspapers (first review: a pan of the Burt Reynolds comedy Cop and a Half) and started freelancing for the A.V. Club in early 1999.
Tobias currently resides in Chicago, where he shares a too-small apartment with his wife, his daughter, two warring cats and the pug who agitates them.
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In director James Gray's rapturously realized historical drama, an explorer's obsession with finding a remote Amazonian civilization causes him to question his place in the world. -
This remake of a wry 1979 comedy about three retirees risking it all for a big score ditches the original's sense of urgency to focus instead on subplots and sentiment. -
This impressive debut from director Osgood Perkins, about schoolgirls left at a Catholic school over winter break, "feels like a throat-clearing exercise for a horror prodigy," says our critic. -
"Go, Go Power Rangers!" - but should you? The film's playful, earnest tone and "gung-ho chintziness" slowly won critic Scott Tobias over. -
The sequel to Danny Boyle's blisteringly original 1997 movie lacks that film's structure and insight, but the cast can still generate fitful flashes of energy and charm. -
Anna Kendrick stars as a wedding guest stuck among the misfits in this labored, low-energy film from director Jeffrey Blitz. -
Charlie Day and Ice Cube lead a great cast, but this comedy, filled with cruel pranks and retrograde notions of masculinity, "leaves a sour aftertaste," says critic Scott Tobias. -
The Dark Knight lightens up, already: In this frenetic, loosely structured Bat-sequel to 2014's The LEGO Movie,Will Arnett's arrogant Batman finally gets over himself. -
A dog cycles through several canine lifetimes while teaching a series of owners to live, laugh and love. Critic Scott Tobias found the film's repeated, mawkish depictions of doggy death "wearying." -
Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson deliver strong performances, but director Vincent Perez's staid historical drama swathes its subjects' radical actions in too much art-house-reverence.
