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 1,914 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 3.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Scott Tobias' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Sansho the Bailiff
Lowest review score: 0 AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 975 out of 1914
  2. Mixed: 722 out of 1914
  3. Negative: 217 out of 1914
1914 movie reviews
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Double Life of Veronique
    The film wilts under the harsh light of rationality; after all, how could anyone make sense of a heroine whose doppelgänger is both distinctly separate and inextricably connected to her? And yet these parallel lives rhyme so tunefully through the reflective cinematography and sweeping score that any confusion or disbelief tends to melt away.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    I Am Cuba
    I Am Cuba is still propaganda of the first order, a beautiful and sensually overwhelming tribute to the land and its people.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Eyes Without a Face [re-release]
    There’s no other movie quite like it.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Bambi
    More than any self-declared masterpiece in the Disney catalog, Bambi has earned the right to be called timeless, because its concerns are transcendent and universal.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Fireworks
    Kitano infects the lyrical, meditative beauty of classical Japanese cinema with the jarring, low-down savagery of Western genre pictures. What emerges is more than the sum of its parts, an original and profound statement on mortality, how rich human life can be, and how quickly it can be taken away.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    A peculiar and destabilizing tone that's far from the standard Hollywood oater, but entirely fitting for two larger-than-life characters fulfilling their roles in history.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Gerry
    Conceptually bold and rapturously beautiful Gerry, a minimalist landscape film that's unlike anything on the American independent scene.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Leopard (re-release)
    Virtually every Super Technirama frame of Luchino Visconti's 1963 masterpiece The Leopard could be described as "painterly" in its ornate details and exquisitely balanced color compositions. (Review of DVD Release)
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Lake of Fire
    If nothing else, the film puts the lie to the notion that an abortion could ever be frivolous or lightly considered. On that point, everyone in Lake Of Fire agrees, whether they acknowledge the other side or not.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    City Lights
    There’s dignity and folly to The Tramp in City Lights, and everything in between.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Used Cars
    Savagely funny...taken as a rancid, festering slice of Americana, it seems more potent than ever.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Adaptation.
    Kaufman strikes just the right balance between playfulness and sincerity, leaping freely from one absurd situation to another before pulling back on the reins.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
    Chantal Akerman’s radical 1975 masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles turns the term “realism” on its face, exploring the contours of a woman’s life through the mundane routines that never make it into movies.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Her
    Her is a 21st-century love story that perfectly captures the mood of the times and finds new inroads into the exhilaration and heartbreak that have existed since the first “I love you.”
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Departed
    When a director of Scorsese's caliber is working at the top of his game, it's a reminder of why we go to the movies in the first place.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Great Escape
    McQueen speeding across the German countryside and leaping over the first of two barbed-wire fences leading into Switzerland may be the film's most iconic and enduring image. Dubious or not, it's a triumph of sorts that a tale that ends in war crimes could have such a rousing conclusion.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Rear Window
    In its perfect fusion of popular entertainment and high art, Rear Window ranks among Hitchcock's best.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
    The film never loses its intensity from the first moment Leatherface's sledgehammer drops. It's horror without a safety net: Survival isn't guaranteed for anyone, heroism and struggle are often futile, and as the old adage says, you can never come home again.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Master
    It's a feisty, contentious, deliberately misshapen film, designed to challenge and frustrate audiences looking for a clean resolution. Just because it's over doesn't mean it's settled.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Jaws
    Spielberg balances terror on the water with a rich portrait of an island police chief (Roy Scheider) torn between public-safety concerns and a community that thrives on the tourist dollar.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Straw Dogs
    Though studio interference and his own personal demons hampered his later work, Straw Dogs shows a master in control of his effects, which made an artist of Peckinpah's sensibility an especially dangerous man.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Turin Horse
    The Turin Horse has a burnished beauty that's awe-inspiring, like a clear window into a faraway world as it dangles, and then falls, off the precipice.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The 39 Steps
    Hitchcock would make richer films in Hollywood, but The 39 Steps came off the line as the Model T of cinematic plot machines.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Silent Light
    At bottom, Silent Light is less about faith than matters of the heart, and in Reygadas' hands, the ache is bone-deep.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    The Wrong Man
    The Wrong Man, an overlooked masterpiece from his greatest decade, eschews suspense for the straight-up nightmare of an innocent man dragged through the justice system.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    35 Shots of Rum
    The film evolves into a simple, intimate, acutely emotional portrait of a family reaching a painful crossroads.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Collapse
    There are many layers to the man and the movie, and it’s hard not to leave the theater shaken.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    High and Low
    Miraculously, High And Low turns the mundane follow-through of police work into the stuff of white-knuckle suspense.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Knocked Up
    No one writes for ensembles better than Apatow, and his players are all skilled at giving his work a loose, improvisational feel.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Time Out
    Cantet's masterful study of a white-collar businessman in decline.
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