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 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. -
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.) -
Director Tomas Alfredson buries a pulpy serial-killer yarn under an avalanche of portentous, boring, art-house fussiness. -
The documentary follows a man and woman on the autism spectrum as they negotiate love — and sex. -
Stephen King's tale of a shape-shifting clown that haunts a small Maine town gets an adaptation that features fine performances but relies on a barrage of repetitive jump scares. -
"It may be style over substance," says critic Scott Tobias of this spy thriller starring a butt-kicking Charlize Theron, "but wow what style!" -
Universal is trying to get a franchise of monster movies going, but Tom Cruise's tired turn as a man who accidentally awakens a sleeping mummy doesn't get them off to a very good start. -
Director Patty Jenkins understands the scale of a screen superhero who is a true demigod, not an ordinary millionaire or spider-bite victim.
