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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This British heist film, based on a true story, assembles Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent and other venerable actors but lacks the stylistic flourish that great caper movies demand.
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Paraguay's Oscar submission to this year's best foreign film category is a tender, quietly magical gem about a middle-aged aristocrat forced to start over.
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This flat attempt to map contemporary anxieties over the template of more grisly films like Saw only "recalls the mechanized horror trend while sanding off its serrated edges."
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Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly star as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in a film that struggles to keep its energy up as it follows the decline of two great film comedians.
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Director Travis Knight takes over from Michael Bay, and sets about getting viewers to care about characters instead of assaulting our senses. The result is surprisingly watchable.
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The first half is a tense, painfully real family drama about the lingering toll of opioid addiction; the second half lurches into thriller territory thick with stock types and cliches.
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The debt John McPhail's tuneful horror comedy owes to Shaun of the Dead proves too deep to clamber out of, but the songs are fun and Ella Hunt's feisty lead performance is charming.
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The sequel to Wreck-it Ralph is awash with jokes about cross-promotion, brand extension, comments sections and Disney clichés; it feels like the way we live now — with more heart.
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The film follows Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman) through his three-week presidential bid that fell victim to monkey business, but what director Jason Reitman brings to it is familiar — even quaint.
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Documentarian Frederick Wiseman aims his camera at the daily rhythms of life in and around a small town — and holds his focus long enough to find something beyond media stereotypes.