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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"It may be style over substance," says critic Scott Tobias of this spy thriller starring a butt-kicking Charlize Theron, "but wow what style!"
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Meanwhile, Back at the Raunch: This tale of four women letting loose in the Big Easy hits familiar beats, but Tiffany Haddish's "incandescently filthy" turn as Dina proves a revelation.
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This raunch-fest comedy about a wild (and lethal) bachelorette party stumbles out of the gate, but once Kate McKinnon's Aussie-for-no-particular-reason character shows up, so do the laughs.
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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.
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Director Patty Jenkins understands the scale of a screen superhero who is a true demigod, not an ordinary millionaire or spider-bite victim.
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"Go, Go Power Rangers!" - but should you? The film's playful, earnest tone and "gung-ho chintziness" slowly won critic Scott Tobias over.
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The sequel to Danny Boyle's blisteringly original 1997 movie lacks that film's structure and insight, but the cast can still generate fitful flashes of energy and charm.
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Charlie Day and Ice Cube lead a great cast, but this comedy, filled with cruel pranks and retrograde notions of masculinity, "leaves a sour aftertaste," says critic Scott Tobias.
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A dog cycles through several canine lifetimes while teaching a series of owners to live, laugh and love. Critic Scott Tobias found the film's repeated, mawkish depictions of doggy death "wearying."
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Janelle Monae, Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer star in this drama about the brilliant African-American women whose mathematical skills NASA eagerly exploited ... without publicly acknowledging.