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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    • 30 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The Babymakers
    It's raunchy/sweet in the "American Pie"/"40-Year-Old Virgin" tradition, and as dynamic as a glob of lazy sperm.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Sushi: The Global Catch
    The documentary Sushi: The Global Catch tries to be two things at once: an international survey of the way sushi is marketed, prepared, and consumed, and an argument for sustainability, particularly with regard to the bluefin tuna population. These threads are related, but one nonetheless takes away from the other.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Total Recall (2012)
    Wiseman's Total Recall isn't intellectualized like "Blade Runner," or even that much more sophisticated than his "Underworld" movies.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The Watch
    The Watch perks up when Ayoade's spacey line readings give it something unique and unexpected - otherwise, per Costco, audiences are buying their generic sci-fi comedy in bulk.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 83 Scott Tobias
    Killer Joe
    This is not some nostalgia-soaked throwback to the noir of old, but a rude, shit-kicking thriller that co-opts - and merrily defiles - a classic like "Double Indemnity." Whatever its shortcomings, at least they're never failures of nerve.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Scott Tobias
    The Queen of Versailles
    Greenfield's refusal to pass judgment on the Siegels lends her subjects and their marriage unexpected complexity and depth - especially Jackie, a true force of nature.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Scott Tobias
    Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    Arriving on the heels of "13 Assassins," Miike's gloriously irreverent take on the samurai action genre, Hara-Kiri seems conventional by his standards, especially in a long middle section that occasionally dips into sentimentality.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    The Dark Knight Rises
    The miracle of Nolan's Batman trilogy is the way it imprints those myths with the dread-soaked tenor of the times.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Family Portrait in Black and White
    There's no organizing principle in Ivanova's documentary, which unfolds in a ragged, seat-of-the-pants style that mirrors its subject's day-to-day life all too closely. Nenya's flock proves too big for the film to wrangle.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Farewell, My Queen
    Working from Chantal Thomas' novel, Jacquot doesn't entirely scrape the gloss off this love triangle, which plays neither as a florid bodice-ripper nor as emotionally complex as it might have been. It stays on the surface, but at least that surface is gorgeous.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
    Its insights are modest, but modesty is a virtue for a low-key comedy this doggedly unpretentious.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Madea's Witness Protection
    There aren't many laughs in this vaudevillian gambit, and fewer still in the fish-out-of-water comedy of Madea hosting a rich white family that's chiefly concerned with yoga, wi-fi, and their carb intakes. Still, Perry remains a true outsider artist-nobody makes movies like his. (And please don't try.)
    • 59 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    Knightley is pure Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy, a vinyl-toting sparkplug who serves mostly to shake Carell from his dead-eyed stupor, but the relationship between the two becomes more touching as their wayward journey goes on.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    The Invisible War
    Though Dick focuses heavily on just a few women, The Invisible War builds to a stunning montage of victim after victim telling their story to the camera without pseudonyms or silhouettes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The Woman in the Fifth
    In spite of his considerable intelligence and cinematic gifts, Pawlikowski isn't Roman Polanski, so the delusions and psychosis of his put-upon lead character doesn't have the right intensity. Fifth feels like a literary bauble, chipped by imperfections.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Americano
    Peel away the many layers of reference, and all that's left of Americano is the raw need of a lonely, confused young man who's distant from his family, awash in vague memories, and struggling to find himself. This is less a movie than a patient for pop psychologists.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 16 Scott Tobias
    The Tortured
    There's an opportunity here for screenwriter Marek Posival and director Robert Lieberman to play up the squeamishness of upper-middle-class torturers who don't fit the profile, but they're too busy tending to horror-thriller clichés.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Lola Versus
    Take Lola Versus, a Greta Gerwig vehicle that feels like a pilot awaiting pick-up from a network that doesn't exist.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Dark Horse
    The scenes between Gelber and Blair are the strongest in Dark Horse, because they form a bond not out of shared interests or passion, but a weary kind of compromise.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    It's a celebration of libertine sexuality - nothing more, nothing less - and almost remarkably untroubled by any of the dramatic issues it raises. Much of its 79 minutes is spent marveling over how skillfully the actors simulate the real thing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    A Cat in Paris
    The trouble with A Cat in Paris lies not in its orchestration, which is mostly impeccable, but with what little is being orchestrated. It's well plotted but a little rote, clever but a far cry from ingenious, attractive but not particularly evocative. When it ends, it leaves behind the faintest of paw prints.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Pink Ribbons, Inc.
    It's a crude, angry battering ram of a film, much more concerned with counter-messaging than aesthetics, but it gets the job done.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Men in Black III
    Sonnenfeld's best movies function like elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions, with visual gags popping out on a precise calibration of gears and springs, and Cohen's script, however derivative, is a stable apparatus.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Chernobyl Diaries
    It's mostly boilerplate horror, plucking visual ideas from better sources and relying on the sick novelty of referencing an actual catastrophe.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Moonrise Kingdom
    Moonrise Kingdom is Anderson's most completely satisfying film since the one-two of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," in part because it's the perfect distillation of both.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Scott Tobias
    Oslo, August 31st
    Trier doesn't allow the bleakness of the material to swamp the film in a miserablist tone, but he doesn't hold back, either, in revealing every hairline crack in Lie's fragile psyche.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Virginia
    Connelly, Harris and Amy Madigan, as Tipton's devastated wife, all do their best to bring a measure of soul to Black's creations, but there's something fundamentally synthetic about Virginia, which lays bare its influences without doing much to reanimate them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Polisse
    The best moments of Maïwenn's Polisse, about the dedicated members of a Child Protection Unit in northern Paris, have the same quality, a fly-on-the-wall docu-realism that feels eerily like the real thing.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    Elena
    It's an austere Russian drama with shades of Hitchcock.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Battleship
    Despite some promising early goofiness involving full-contact soccer and the quest for a chicken burrito, Battleship plays it regrettably straight most of the time, as if the fate of the world really might rest on how well the Navy can hurtle projectiles at alien warships. With eyes closed, the movie uncannily resembles a giant baby playing with pots and pans.
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