Scott Tobias

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NPR, The A.V. Club, The Dissolve, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Reveal, The Verge, UPROXX, Variety, Village Voice
For 1,922 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Scott Tobias' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Hard Boiled
Lowest review score: 0 The Real Cancun
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 979 out of 1922
  2. Mixed: 726 out of 1922
  3. Negative: 217 out of 1922
1922 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Mad As Hell
    There’s a promotional bent to Mad As Hell that whiffs more of branding than rigorous documentary filmmaking.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The Loft
    Whatever fun there might be in the guesswork is wiped away by the realization that Van Looy has made a puzzle for a puzzle’s sake, to no discernible thematic end.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Black or White
    The trouble with Black Or White is that it feels reverse-engineered, as if Binder wanted to deliver one big statement about race, and rigged an entire movie to make that possible.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Timbuktu
    Timbuktu’s delicate tone is totally unexpected and specific to Sissako, who keeps finding notes of vulnerability.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Everly
    At the most basic level—and this is as basic as movies get—Everly delivers exactly what it promises, though as with most American films with sex and violence, the emphasis is heavily weighted toward the latter.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Mortdecai
    Mortdecai’s farcical mechanics are actually well worked out, which is a credit to Koepp, an ace Hollywood screenwriter (Jurassic Park, 2002’s Spider-Man) who directed the fun late-summer sleeper Premium Rush two years ago. It’s just the jokes that are astonishingly unfunny.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Mommy
    Mommy puts all its personal baggage on the table like Ally Sheedy emptying her purse in The Breakfast Club, and Dolan is to be admired for sharing so much of himself, and doing it with such evident passion. But it isn’t enough for an artist simply to share—he has to shape, too.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Manny
    Though co-directed by Leon Gast, who made the exceptional “Rumble In The Jungle” documentary When We Were Kings, Manny stays entirely on the surface of Pacquiao’s life and of a sport that’s rife with dirty dealing and chicanery.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    The Duke of Burgundy
    What makes The Duke Of Burgundy so affecting is how deftly Strickland and his remarkable actresses bring something as exotic as lesbian S&M into the realm of the ordinary and relatable. Viewers can see themselves in Cynthia and Evelyn, whether they’re hand-washing each other’s undergarments or not.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Play
    Little about [Östlund’s] work is simple-minded or cut-and-dried. His films marinate in viewer discomfort.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Involuntary
    Beyond theme, however, these stories are united by the agonizing, low-level tension Östlund brings to bear on every scene, which vary in importance, but not in consequences for the characters involved.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Blackhat
    Though the pacing is lumpy, to say the least, Blackhat occasionally bursts to life when Mann breaks out one of his signature action setpieces, which have the distinct pop of heavy artillery and the immediacy of video.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Stretch
    It’s a backhanded sort of praise to say Stretch is a movie that goes nowhere fast.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Loitering with Intent
    The film’s sketchy conception is a telling sign that Martin, Godere, and director Adam Rapp have nothing particularly funny or insightful to say about the creative process.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Predestination
    There’s a clarity to Snook’s emotional journey that’s absent from the rest of the film—a fact that’s partly deliberate, since Heinlein and the Spierigs mean to dive into the soup. But amid the murky genre experimentation, it’s a beacon of truth.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
    For all the formidable intellect that went into its conceit, When Evening Falls On Bucharest has a slightness that isn’t helped much by the weight of the discussion, which occasionally presses it into a flat soufflé. But Porumboiu’s insight into the filmmaking process itself is often fascinating.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Leviathan
    Leviathan itself feels like a brave, lonely act of rebellion against the system, deeply pessimistic about the possibility of it ever working in the people’s favor. It advocates for a stiff drink.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Selma
    DuVernay stages well-known public events like the “Bloody Sunday” march with scrupulousness, scope, and a gut-wrenching visceral power. But Selma’s true success is as a chamber piece, not a thundering historical epic.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    The Gambler
    Wyatt is a supremely confident filmmaker. His style is multitudes sleeker than Reisz’s original, but his eclectic taste, particularly in the soundtrack, reveals a true connection to the earlier era.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Winter Sleep
    This isn’t merely about the follies of a misanthrope, it’s an epic tragedy about life in the Ivory Tower and the inability to understand—much less empathize with—other human beings.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    We Are the Giant
    One of the problems with We Are The Giant is that not all the stories carry equal weight, both in terms of effectiveness and in the sheer amount of time Barker spends on them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Wild
    Cheryl is a thoroughly realized, warts-and-all character, and the flashbacks contribute to that. But like their heroine, the filmmakers do some fumbling to get to their destination.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Still Alice
    It’s undeniably moving, but straightforward to a fault.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    The Babadook
    It would be enough for The Babadook to get by on scares alone—the eponymous spook is eminiently franchise-able—but Kent doesn’t give the audience that kind of distance. Her agenda is more personal.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    The Imitation Game
    The constant in The Imitation Game is Benedict Cumberbatch’s terrific performance as Turing, which has much in common with his delightfully mercurial Sherlock Holmes, but with an underpinning of repressed emotion and quiet despair.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Penguins of Madagascar
    What Penguins Of Madagascar needs is a roomful of ruthless editors to take jokes out of the script, particularly the ones aimed at pleasing the grown-ups in the audience.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Bad Hair
    Rondón treats her characters with toughness and empathy, without devising easy outs or slipping into sentimentality.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty
    Save for the vague aura of danger surrounding Guzmán—which palpably engulfs the filmmakers as they get deeper into the cartel’s “Golden Triangle”—Drug Lord has trouble forming a coherent point of view.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Life Partners
    Fogel and Lefkowitz go for a loose, funny vibe that allows them the freedom to serve a range of different characters and subplots, but the center of their movie doesn’t hold.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Jessabelle
    Director Kevin Greutert, who cut his teeth on the Saw series (editing the first five and directing Saw VI and Saw 3D), whips up some generic Louisiana atmosphere, but his PG-13 shock effects are ineffectual, and he’s eventually given over entirely to a story that twists into melodramatic knots. The takeaway from all this: Sometimes less is more.
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