Scott Tobias

In 'Sightseers,' A Killing Spree Gone South

Scott Tobias — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Scrub away the gore and the nastier bits of provocation, and Ben Wheatley's Sightseers belongs squarely in the tradition of British classics like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ruling Class — satires that transformed simmering class resentment into brittle, nasty dark comedy.

The key to these films is a disciplined tone: Whatever contempt the filmmakers have for their characters, or whatever types those characters represent, is harnessed by dry wit and an instinct not to overplay their outrageous premises.

'Pain & Gain': Michael Bay's Suffering Fools

Scott Tobias — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

For Michael Bay, the director of Armageddon and the Transformers movies, to comment on the excesses of American culture would be a little like — well, Michael Bay commenting on the excesses of American culture.

And yet that's exactly what he does with Pain & Gain, a stranger-than-fiction yarn about a South Florida crime spree that points and snickers in the direction of precisely the supersized grotesquerie that's long been Bay's stock-in-trade.

Effects-Heavy 'Oblivion' Pines For An Analog Past

Scott Tobias — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

The score for Oblivion was composed by M83, a superb French electronic outfit that derives its name from one of the spectral pinwheels known as spiral galaxies.

Zany 'It's A Disaster': Anything But

Scott Tobias — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:03:00 +0000

For all his success as a stand-up comic, as one half of the brilliant HBO sketch comedy Mr. Show With Bob & David and as the hapless Tobias on Arrested Development, David Cross has struggled to find his footing in the movies, remaining relegated mainly to forgettable character roles.

'Gimme The Loot': The Tagger's Life, Lightly

Scott Tobias — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:03:00 +0000

For the Bronx graffiti artists of Gimme the Loot, Adam Leon's sweet, vibrant debut feature, "Bombing the Apple" is the holy grail of tagging achievements.

"The Apple" in question is the protuberance that emerges from behind the center-right wall in Shea Stadium — they refuse to acknowledge the corporate name Citi Field — every time a New York Mets player hits a home run.

The thought of seeing their supersized insignia rising to the sky, taunting their Queens rivals, is a delicious fantasy to consider; they're like thieves idly plotting to knock over Fort Knox.

'60s Japan, Aglow 'From Up On Poppy Hill'

Scott Tobias — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Of the many wonderful qualities associated with the films of Studio Ghibli — the Japanese animation house co-founded by Hiyao Miyazaki, the visionary director of My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away — serenity may be the most key. Ghibli productions offer the stirring adventures and magical creatures of their American counterparts, and often operate by a wondrously mysterious internal logic, but they do so without feeling compelled to grab a young audience by the lapels.

'Everyman's Journey': Don't Believe Everything You Hear

Scott Tobias — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Some bands are born of passion and deep camaraderie, a collective desire to rebel against authority — or at least to look cool. Others are born because a major label threatens to drop them if they don't find a lead vocalist.

It's possible that Journey started as the former before morphing into the latter. Most people know the band as the hit-making arena rockers responsible for "Don't Stop Believin'," "Open Arms," "Faithfully" and other songs you danced to at your cousin's wedding.

Adolescent Angst Turns Deadly In 'Stoker'

Scott Tobias — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:12:00 +0000

It's a mark of a great filmmaker when a movie is felt first and understood later, allowing audiences to intuit their way through a fog of mystery and sensuality before finally getting a clear view of the landscape.

'Snitch': Johnson And The Rock, At Odds In A Drug Drama

Scott Tobias — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:03:00 +0000

"Inspired by true events" — a phrase that implies the greatest possible distance between something that actually happened and what's about to happen on screen — Snitch tries to be two movies at once.

One is an earnest social drama about the cruel, arbitrary nature of mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders. The other is an action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, the sometime wrestler popularly known under his nom de headlock, The Rock.

A '70s 'Playroom,' Without Much Room For Fun

Scott Tobias — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:04:00 +0000

There's a sequence early in the laughable drama The Playroom that epitomizes everything wrong with it: With her parents out of the house, 16-year-old Maggie Cantwell (Olivia Harris), the eldest of four latchkey kids, sneaks into the garage with her boyfriend on a determined quest to lose her virginity.

'Stand Up Guys' Falls Terminally Flat

Scott Tobias — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:03:00 +0000

Intended as a victory lap for three great stars of advancing age, Stand Up Guys is another entry in the "old folks doing stuff" subgenre, which offers comic affirmation that life is not strictly for the young.

This is the subgenre that had a retirement-home population necking like teenagers in Cocoon, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman jumping out of an airplane in The Bucket List, and ancient astronauts repairing an old Soviet satellite in Space Cowboys.

Spoiler Alert: 'John Dies,' But The Rest? Who Can Tell?

Scott Tobias — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:03:00 +0000

There's a fine line between a genre filmmaker with an offbeat sensibility and a maker of prefab cult movies — someone who appeals too aggressively to a cult audience that doesn't yet exist.

The Hard-Earned Liberty Of 'Happy People'

Scott Tobias — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:03:00 +0000

It's midway through Burden of Dreams, the superb documentary about the making of his glorious 1982 fiasco Fitzcarraldo, and iconoclastic director Werner Herzog has had enough.

His dream project, about a Peruvian rubber baron who tries to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle, has been beset by false starts, delays and tragedies — most notoriously his attempt to drag a steamboat up a muddy hill using a primitive pulley system.

'Gangster Squad': Law? What Law?

Scott Tobias — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:03:00 +0000

Decked out in impeccable suits and a fedora so crisply brimmed it could cut through drywall, Josh Brolin stars in Gangster Squad as a square-jawed policeman of the first order, an Eliot Ness type who would sooner burn a pile of dirty money than pocket a single dollar.

In 1949 Los Angeles, Brolin's Sgt. John O'Mara has been trusted with the task of rebuffing the threat posed by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), an East Coast gangster working quickly and ruthlessly to set up shop.

The trouble for the police is that not everyone is as incorruptible as Sgt.

'This Is 40': Ambling Into Midlife

Scott Tobias — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:03:00 +0000

Consider the premises of writer-director Judd Apatow's first three comedies:

* A lonely tech salesman (Steve Carell) seeks to end a lifelong romantic drought in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
* A mismatched couple (Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl) gets pregnant after a regrettable one-night stand in Knocked Up.