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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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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An animated animal version of Toy Storysounds like a good idea, but when the animals don't act like animals, the film runs low on inspiration.
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Fast & Furious 6 pits Dominic's crew against a wily terrorist in a high-tech battle royale — but it has a devil of a time explaining why everyone should hop into their cars.
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Its tone is ultimately sour, but at its brittle, nasty core, Ben Wheatley's slasher-tourism comedy fits squarely in the tradition of British class-resentment pictures like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ruling Class.
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Carlos Reygadas' beguiling Post Tenebras Lux features a faltering marriage, a glowing red CGI devil and several impenetrable non sequiturs. It's simultaneously beautiful and discordant, comprehensible and elusive; no wonder it earned both boos and the Best Director prize at Cannes.
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The singer-songwriter and the son who's desperate to escape his legacy are the subjects of Daniel Algrant's sympathetic if simplistic biographical drama.
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The action comedy Pain & Gain wants very much to be a sardonic social commentary in the Fargo vein — but the director's appetite for glossy consumerism gets between him and the story's moral.
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Dreaming of a simpler era while throwing a raft of digital effects at the screen, this budget sci-fi adventure can't quite decide what kind of dystopia it wants to explore. Stunning visuals and deliberately robotic performances make for a pretty but confused futurescape.
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The eternally off-kilter character actor David Cross has nearly found a match for his talents in the apocalyptic It's A Disaster. Not everything works in this madcap adventure at the end of the world, but Cross can notch a win on his belt for his turn as baffled straight man in this toxic charmer.
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In most movies, the creepy ex-boyfriend would be an ominous antagonist, or even a supporting character. But in Antonio Campos' eerie thriller, the spotlight is all on the titular nutcase.