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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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. -
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. -
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. -
Unlike the more allegorical Meet the Feebles or Team America: World Police, this latest excuse to make jokes about puppet-sex isn't interested in doing anything more than make jokes about puppet-sex. -
Ken Marino directs this conventional if disjointed ensemble rom-com about disparate Los Angeles dog owners. The film finds its legs whenever it leans into its alt-comedy cast and cameos. -
Photographer/documentarian Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles) offers many examples of excessive wealth around the globe, but the resulting portrait lacks a clear point of view. -
When the film puts its four leads together, it sparkles. When they're apart, it's simply "a pleasant, low-stakes affair, as numbing as a two-glass buzz." -
Reynolds plays a vain, pathetic version of himself in a film full of moments so sappy and overplayed they feel "less like self-deprecation than elder abuse." -
Director Duncan Jones' latest film, a direct-to-Netflix sci-fi/noir tale set in a dystopian Berlin, so narrowly focuses on its hero's traumatic backstory it neglects its fantastic setting. -
The longest, and last, of the Maze Runner films puts its bland teen heroes through the usual paces, but there are enough strong character actors around to keep things interesting.
