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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Though some elements generate fresh sparks, the remake "mostly has the beat-for-beat quality of the live-action Beauty and the Beast, the current standard-bearer for pointlessness." -
Wreck-It Ralph, from the creative forces at Disney-Pixar, constructs a multidimensional behind-the-scenes world of arcade games. Critic Scott Tobias says the misfit characters are the perfect vehicles for the message that even the biggest of "wrecks" can find a place to fit in. (Recommended) -
For the fourth X-Men outing, director Matthew Vaughn and the Marvel machine relaunch the series with style, with a Cold War-era high-wire act that's nimbler and cleaner than any origin story has a right to be. (Recommended)
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A Grindhouse spinoff starring schlock veteran Rutger Hauer, Jason Eisener's gorefest is as uncomplicated as it is gleefully disreputable — and it's decidedly disreputable. -
Cultures clash when the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond sets out to adapt his show for Russian audiences. But a lack of focus distracts from what could have been a smart look at "universal" comedy. -
Jim Mickle's horror movie ditches the schlock, channeling Terrence Malick to create a vampire apocalypse that's compellingly deranged — and decidedly devoid of teen romance. -
The studio behind Ice Age and Robots stuck to formula with its latest kids' flick, a mild and predictable adventure about a pair of endangered macaws on the run in Brazil. -
Tony Gatlif's drama of Roma persecution in Vichy France thrums with the sights and sounds of Gypsy culture — but standard war-movie tropes blunt the impact of its story.
