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.
-
While it's raunchier than Love, Simon - if less self-assured — writer-director Craig Johnson's film about a teen (Daniel Doheny) attempting to figure himself out is just as "deeply conventional."
-
Adrift, starring Sam Claflin and Shailene Woodley, could have been a generic disaster film, if not for some clever editing that helps pull together its themes.
-
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.
-
Trudie Stylar's coming-of-age film about a queer kid running for Homecoming Queen at his conservative private school is bright and stylized, if a bit thin on plot and characterization.
-
Documentarian Chris Smith aims his camera at Jim Carrey and the actor's on-set behavior while shooting the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon.
-
Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, a semi-autobiographical examination of her adolescence, vividly captures the stirrings of empathy that transform a selfish teen into a clear-eyed adult.
-
The documentary follows a man and woman on the autism spectrum as they negotiate love — and sex.
-
First-time director Kevin Phillips displays a remarkable gift for evoking a time and place, but loses control when this tale of a teenage friendship shifts from character study to grisly thriller.
-
Director David Gordon Green's film stands out from others like it because it prizes "understanding Bauman's perspective and the private burdens of being a hero" over simple uplift.
-
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.