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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    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Million Dollar Arm
    The only splash of cold water comes from Lake Bell as J.B.’s bohemian tenant, who pops his bubble of self-importance (and the film’s) whenever she gets the opportunity... her chemistry with Hamm, who gives his slickster all the dimension he can, offers a nice relief from the broad culture comedy and sentimental button-pushing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Palo Alto
    The mimicry is so pronounced that it’s hard to locate a distinct, original sensibility beyond the film’s apparent influences. But talented young directors often need time to develop into singular ones, and there’s value in Coppola’s sensual, always-sympathetic feel for lost adolescents.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The Sacrament
    Its skillful execution of a bad idea doesn’t make the bad idea any better; in fact, the scrupulousness with which West and his crew evoke the past make the film that much more unsavory.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Walk of Shame
    Brill’s point that there should be no such thing as a “walk of shame” is a good one, but he lacks the conviction to see it through honestly—or humorously.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Ida
    Ida’s piercing intimacy makes the deepest impression, but its vision is deceptively wide-reaching despite a scale that’s deliberately pared-down and small.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The Protector 2
    The bigger The Protector 2 gets, the further it gets away from Jaa’s basic appeals.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    The silver lining: Like its predecessor, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 offers its successor another fresh start, since no one will remember what happened in this movie, either.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The Quiet Ones
    Harris’ wondrous arrogance as Coupland nearly justifies The Quiet Ones, because he’s so absolutely certain of a methodology that’s so absolutely incoherent.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Next Goal Wins
    Next Goal Wins could stand to go deeper into game strategy, or local customs and living conditions, or any number of personal stories, but the victories it does achieve are enormously satisfying.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Blue Ruin
    Like Blood Simple, Blue Ruin deals in crimes of passion, carried out by human beings who are flawed yet tragically relatable—one is about mopping up the blood, the other about the impossibility of stanching the flow.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Wolf Creek 2
    Wolf Creek 2 does all it can to paper over the fact that it shouldn’t exist, but the film severely diminishes the integrity of the first Wolf Creek by turning Mick into a cartoon icon, more Outback legend than man.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Young & Beautiful
    Ozon tosses an abundance of twisted psychology into the stew, but he leaves the audience to sort it out for themselves. Young & Beautiful has the detached air of other Ozon productions, and Vacth gives so little away as Isabelle that she’s eternally an unsolved problem.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 10 Scott Tobias
    A Haunted House 2
    Like sunrise over a steaming pile of garbage, A Haunted House 2 offers another sharp whiff of its predecessor, a Scary Movie-style spoof of the Paranormal Activity movies that makes up in volume what it lacks in invention.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Transcendence
    Transcendence wants to use this future panic to comment meaningfully on our current interconnectedness and inorganic lifestyle, but it’s screaming too much to have that conversation.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    13 Sins
    This ultimately isn’t a film about human fallibility, but about high-concept grotesquerie for its own sake.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Magic Magic
    The film falls apart once its mysteries dissipate. With them go all the dark ambiguities that colored the first hour.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Rio 2
    Amid all the excess busyness, there are formulas within formulas.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Only Lovers Left Alive
    Only Lovers Left Alive accomplishes the neat trick of reinventing a moribund genre as a distinctly Jarmuschian hangout movie.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Stage Fright
    The songs are fine; the slaughter is sub-standard.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    The Unknown Known
    The fact that Morris applies the same basic methodology to The Unknown Known that he did to the The Fog Of War makes the contrast between the two men meaningful, and says something profound about Rumsfeld, too.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Dom Hemingway
    Shepard’s image de-habilitation on Law smacks of gimmickry—and the world has no immediate need for another vulgar British crime picture—but the actor seems invigorated by the change, and the film matches his robustness to a fault.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    Arriving in the middle of Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Winter Soldier is among the best of the nine films released so far—roughly on par with the first Iron Man and The Avengers—but if the film has one major flaw, it’s the obligation to serve a larger franchise that keeps taking on weight.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Finding Vivian Maier
    The question of whether Maier, a recluse, would have ever wanted someone like Maloof to bring her into the light is troubling, and perhaps impossible to resolve, but Maloof’s passion for her work and his boundless curiosity about her history certainly make for a riveting documentary.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    The Missing Picture
    This film confirms that Panh approaches the past not as a historian, but as an artist, and an exceptionally vital one at that.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Bad Words
    Nearly everything good about Bad Words plays off the yin-and-yang dynamic between Guy and Chaitanya—one an endless wellspring of belligerence, the other grinning, excitable, and impossible to rattle.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Teenage
    Matt Wolf’s innovative documentary is a bracing reminder that the notion of adolescence as distinct from childhood and adulthood is a relatively modern phenomenon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Honey
    ts small achievement is in trying to understand the life-and-death choices of two people who aren’t as certain about what they’re doing as they initially appear.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    The Grand Budapest Hotel
    There’s nothing lost in his continued refinement of style; if anything, it makes the pleasures of his work that much more acute.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Particle Fever
    As much as any documentary since Errol Morris’ A Brief History Of Time, Particle Fever excels at expressing advanced scientific theory through graphics that are simple, attractive, and utterly approachable.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Stalingrad
    Bondarchuk mingles the you-are-there grittiness of close-quarters combat and constant assaults from above and below with war-movie clichés that haven’t been updated since before the real Battle Of Stalingrad. It’s history written with airbrush.
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