Scott Tobias

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NPR, The A.V. Club, The Dissolve, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Verge, UPROXX, Variety, Village Voice
For 1,832 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 3.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Scott Tobias' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 The Seventh Continent (1989)
Lowest review score: 0 Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 922 out of 1832
  2. Mixed: 693 out of 1832
  3. Negative: 217 out of 1832
1832 movie reviews
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    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Our Time Machine
    Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    Children of Paradise (1945)
    The film remains an exemplary piece of popular entertainment, full of vibrancy and wit, with unforgettable characters and a delicate, bittersweet tone that considers their emotions in balance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Heimat is a Space in Time
    The overall effect of Heise’s work is mesmeric, persuasive and cumulatively powerful, as each piece of the puzzle falls into place and he lands on overarching insights into a German century and what it portends for the future.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Zombi Child
    The film can feel worked-over and schematic, as if Bonello was too preoccupied with serving the thesis to trust his peerless intuition.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    In the Tall Grass
    Natali whips up an atmospheric frenzy in kind, but every new addition is a subtraction. Two characters condemned to an eternal game of “Marco Polo” is scary enough on its own.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    The Harder They Come
    While it was ultimately the songs—You Can Get It If You Really Want, Many Rivers To Cross, Pressure Drop, and the title track, among other classics—that carried the day, The Harder They Come remains a powerful testament to their meaning.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The Song of Names
    It’s a fatally old-fashioned and lugubrious historical drama, muting the emotional payoff it labors so hard to deliver.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Disappearance at Clifton Hill
    Shin’s film gets tangled up in its own web. ... His film leaves a vivid impression without quite leaving a mark.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The Elephant Queen
    There’s no denying the emotional pull of Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble’s storytelling or the vivid rapture of the images, but “The Elephant Queen” adheres too closely to the parameters of family-friendly nature docs, and the formula doesn’t always serve it well.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    The Son
    Schindel is more interested in suspense gamesmanship for its own sake, and all other provocations fade from the canvas.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Girls with Balls
    Lavant’s performance as a wordless, deranged, bloodthirsty cult leader is the one note of genuine eccentricity and menace in a film that’s mostly devoted to slapstick comedy and decapitation.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Toy Story 4
    While it falls short of its predecessors, the film is generally more confident and inventive than any of the non-Toy Story Pixar sequels.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    All Is Well
    Trobisch has made a drama of tragic accommodation — limited not to one woman’s sexual assault, but to the everyday interactions that all women must navigate carefully.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Bolden
    Pritzker and Rothschild’s script feels like such a composite of jazz biopics that its only in the performance sequences, parceled out stingily amid the misery, in which Bolden really comes alive.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    The Silence
    The Silence posits a grand evolutionary struggle between mankind and its winged tormentors, but every moment feels like regression.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Midnight Traveler
    Shot on three mobile phones, Fazili’s Midnight Traveler is a documentary that feels like a modern-day message in a bottle, an urgent appeal for help from a family that’s still searching for a home.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Unicorn Store
    The message here is that there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for adulthood, but the film doesn’t bear it out.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    High Life
    Claire Denis’ grotesque, mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind new science fiction movie.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Billboard
    Zelker’s three-ring circus of digital and social-media content needs a compelling main event, and this movie seems unlikely to inspire many to check out the supplementary materials.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    IO
    The dynamic between Sam and Micah shifts the film into romantic melodrama, as lifeless and as chaste as the windswept apocalypse that surrounds them.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Maria by Callas
    First-time director Tom Volf plainly adores Callas — sometimes to a fault — but his film stands as a necessary corrective to decades of bad press. It’s an unalloyed tribute to her as a musical genius who gave all of herself to the public.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Where Hands Touch
    Amandla Stenberg carries the magnetism she brought to her breakthrough role in the YA romance “Everything, Everything,” but she’s betrayed by a stilted rendering of a rarely illuminated piece of history.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    Tartakovsky’s instincts are to keep the action moving quickly and let one piece of kid-friendly slapstick tumble into the next, but when the jokes are this consistently uninspired, it doesn’t matter how fast they’re dispensed.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    Incredibles 2
    Compared to the CGI chaos that tends to engulf DCEU and MCU movies, especially in crossover teamups, the clean zip of Pixar animation feels exhilaratingly rare, like a lost language rediscovered.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Who We Are Now
    Newton has made a beautiful little film about sacrifice and redemption, and he earns it one tiny brushstroke at a time.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Vampire Clay
    Nothing this absurd should be this boring.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 95 Scott Tobias
    The Rider
    It doesn’t matter what’s real and not real in The Rider. What matters is that it’s true.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Los Angeles Overnight
    Chrisoulakis and screenwriter Guy J. Jackson attempt a violent, moody neo-noir about Tinseltown fringe-dwellers, but their conceit is flimsy and under-realized, grafting a boilerplate heist story onto a bitter commentary about the corrupting forces of the film industry.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    The China Hustle
    Jed Rothstein’s wildly entertaining documentary The China Hustle blows the lid off another multibillion-dollar heist built on complex financial instruments and a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Our Blood Is Wine
    Oenophiles may swoon over the delicious native varietals that tease Quinn’s palate, but Railsback’s thin and disorganized documentary doesn’t go down so smoothly.
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