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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Gabrielle Union stars in a thriller that fails on the fundamentals, and never capitalizes on its setting — a tricked-out, high-security family estate.
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Critic Scott Tobias says the updated Anna Faris/Eugenio Derbez take on the 1987 comedy is "not a particularly funny film, but it's big-hearted and sincere, with fine chemistry between the two leads."
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Director John Krasinski's tense, well-acted horror film is about a family attempting to survive an invasion by terrifying creatures who hunt via sound.
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In the age of digital animation, Nick Park and his team at Aardman are still animating with their actual digits; this lovingly made tale of a prehistoric soccer rivalry is full of charm.
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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).
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Munro Leaf's classic children story about a pacifist bull becomes a formulaic animated film indistinguishable from scores of others.
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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.)
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Director Tomas Alfredson buries a pulpy serial-killer yarn under an avalanche of portentous, boring, art-house fussiness.
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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.
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The film, based on Jeannette Walls' memoir of her nomadic, impoverished childhood, clings to the book's lyrical imagery in ways too overdetermined to work on the big screen.