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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Trudie Stylar's coming-of-age film about a queer kid running for Homecoming Queen at his conservative private school is bright and stylized, if a bit thin on plot and characterization. -
The creaky fourth entry in the Insidiousfilm series focuses on its in-house team of poltergeist-busters — a wise move — with a prequel that supplies the origin story for Elise (Lin Shaye). -
Paul Thomas Anderson's film about a London dressmaker in the 1950s is "a rare combination of audacity and precision, impeccably tailored yet full of mystery and magic," says critic Scott Tobias. -
Munro Leaf's classic children story about a pacifist bull becomes a formulaic animated film indistinguishable from scores of others. -
Filmed over four years, Jonathan Olshefksy's bracing and beautiful film follows Christopher and Christine'a Rainey as they invite local rappers into their basement music studio. -
Director/star James Franco fondly — and hilariously — chronicles the making of the cult-movie fiasco The Room, evincing a deep understanding of the unhinged ambition at its core. (Go figure.) -
Gary Oldman (and a pair of latex jowls) star as Winston Churchill reckoning with the lonely decisions that imperil thousands of soldiers' lives. -
Documentarian Chris Smith aims his camera at Jim Carrey and the actor's on-set behavior while shooting the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. -
Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, a semi-autobiographical examination of her adolescence, vividly captures the stirrings of empathy that transform a selfish teen into a clear-eyed adult. -
Director Tomas Alfredson buries a pulpy serial-killer yarn under an avalanche of portentous, boring, art-house fussiness.
