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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A 14-year-old girl finds herself drawn to bull riding in this "humble and low-key to a fault" debut feature. -
Rachel Mason and her siblings grew up unaware that their parents ran a gay bookstore. Her "affectionate but thinly realized" documentary skims the surface of stories that deserve deeper dives. -
This documentary about an under-recognized abstract painter presents "an extensive case for Klint as a major artist while casting a jaundiced eye on how art history gets written." -
Writer/director Alan Yang turns away from his proven track record in comedy for this "earnest, drippy" multi-generational drama that traffics in underwritten, wanly dramatized conflicts. -
Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska's film about a young woman (Raffey Cassidy) questioning her place in a remote religious cult wears its broad allegory on its (woolen) sleeve. -
A young couple seeking a house in the 'burbs encounter an unexpected (sub)development and cannot leave. Despite its Twilight Zone premise, the film's "eccentricity and wit" carry it a long way. -
Leigh Whannell's update of the H.G. Wells novel traffics in a "psychological realism that's unusual for the genre," which effectively transforms it into "Gaslight with a horror twist." -
The premise — young Belgian Muslim sets out to murder one of his teachers — has drawn sharp criticism; the film itself is "hugely flawed" but more thoughtful than the controversy surrounding it. -
Stars Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield have great chemistry, but this earnest romantic drama feels "curiously flat and under-seasoned." -
Levan Akin's tale of two male Georgian dancers who find happiness in stolen moments together goes through all the usual dance-movie paces, but the chemistry between its two leads is strong.
