For 1,332 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Scott Tobias' Scores

  • Movies
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 The Tree of Life
Lowest review score: 0 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Score distribution:
1,332 movie reviews
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Taken's subject matter is too serious for an escapist chop-socky movie, and the sleazy, exploitative tone undercuts the thrills.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    It's just another gangster movie for the pile.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Calls on De Niro to drum up the sort of emotional intensity that's been allowed to atrophy of late. City By The Sea isn't always worthy of him, but it makes enough demands to bring out his best.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    The film has an earnest quality that asserts itself more and more as it sputters along, and the men reveal more personal reasons to insert themselves into the boy's life. It's a good lesson for other films of its ilk: Leaving the world of indie disaffection is an important first step on the road to greatness.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    It lacks that extra layer or two to make it interesting. The script and direction is all bones, no flesh.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    As with "Women In Trouble," Gutierrez unveils a series of loosely connected characters and subplots that concern players in and around the porn industry, but the intended colorful irreverence looks a lot like standard indie quirk.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Careening from bubbly romantic comedy to bitchy melodrama to the darker matters of murder, incest, and suicide, the film possesses the catch-all qualities for which Bollywood cinema is known, but Bose exerts about as much control over them as the conductor of a runaway train.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The film suffers for her (Brenda Blethyn) egocentrism.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Looks and sounds like a black comedy, but by the time DeVito reaches the cutesy, nonsensical ending, he's lost the will to follow through on it.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    It's the sort of film Robert Altman might have made if he cut his teeth working for The Disney Channel.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    For all its swaggering bravado, Pacino's turn in Two For The Money is the reverse image of his "Devil's Advocate" character: Instead of the omniscient, all-powerful operator he presents himself as, he's a gambler grasping at a lifestyle that's always just beyond his means.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Take a cue from Guzmán, who serves as a kind of court jester, bouncing in and out of scenes in a one-man quest to bring levity to the occasion. The movie could stand to have more of his Christmas cheer; instead, it's a recast "Family Stone."
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    What started out as a fleet one-off swashbuckler with novel supernatural elements has become loaded and graceless, with each new entry barreling across the goal line like William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Nowrasteh constantly overplays his hand, not realizing that some horrors speak for themselves.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Fur is that rare movie that's TOO understated, so quiet and deliberate that it effectively buries consuming passions.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    It would be tempting to call Storytelling a narrow and simplistic examination of the creative process, if only Solondz weren't so quick to agree.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Confusing gender issues like the ones dredged up in Ex-Girlfriend call to mind another Reitman dud, the pregnant-Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy "Junior," and the sophistication level has only slightly improved since then.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Super exists in the no-man's land between indie quirk and raw exploitation, and when it works, it's thrillingly off-balance.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Loses its sass too quickly.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    "Titanic" without the metaphors, the class-consciousness, the love story, or anything resembling a theme, Poseidon invests so little in its screenplay that it might as well be an episode of "The Love Boat" gone horribly awry.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Spinning a handsome Disney adventure out of a videogame is a testament to Bruckheimer’s commercial savvy. The fact that it still isn’t particularly good seems beside the point.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Like so many late-period Allens, it leaves behind the feeling that he's made this movie before, but better.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    The film works best as a passionate tale of obsessive love, with two people brought together under harrowing circumstances.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    The best scenes play like "Frankenstein" revisited, with a comically bedraggled Pacino cast as the mad scientist trying to protect his runaway creation from a rabid public.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Many of its fiercest detractors may be surprised to find that it's a far more sobering piece of speculative fiction than they might have imagined.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Curiously lifeless, Lucky You feels like poker without stakes; it goes through the motions with nothing to play for.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 83 Scott Tobias
    With a few self-conscious exceptions, Soderbergh makes an earnest attempt to return to that place and time in both history and American filmmaking, and his risk-taking pays fascinating dividends.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The key mistake was Ahmed's choice to direct it himself; it's promotional when it might be revealing of impasses (and commonalities) between cultures and the complex tactics comedians use to address it.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Disney has once again constructed a digital environment out of cutting-edge special effects, only this time, it isn't merely silly; it's as dry and talky as a PBS panel show.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Includes a few half-hearted ironies about how people are really serving dogs, not the other way around, but even those gags are cribbed from a retired Seinfeld routine.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Four Brothers regresses into gallows comedy, rampant misogyny, and one preposterous Hollywood action setpiece after another.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    No doubt the list of talent involved in this remake sounded great, but the project hasn't been thought through as anything more than an arch exercise in style. And even in that trifling end, it fails utterly.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    There's at least one good movie in The Man Who Copied's 124 minutes, but Furtado never settles on it.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Moves forward on the conviction of its performances. Brody, in particular, shows uncommon sensitivity as a politically committed and temperamental photographer who responds to MacDowell's half-crazed resolution with heartbreaking zeal.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Though hampered at times by Rock's limitations as an actor and a director, I Think I Love My Wife stays faithful to the spirit of Rohmer's original, grappling honestly with the uncertainties of settling down and the temptations that lurk outside even the most stable marriages.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    None of it sticks, but with the door left open for a third Men In Black movie, the one advantage of forgetting everything is not knowing exactly what's coming two summers from now.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Take Lola Versus, a Greta Gerwig vehicle that feels like a pilot awaiting pick-up from a network that doesn't exist.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Major characters drop in and out of sight, WWII begins and ends without much fanfare, and full decades pass in the space of a few cuts.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    An empty lake, drained of any tangible substance and refilled with wispy, pseudo-poetic metaphor.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    By showing up and not embarrassing itself too much, the film far exceeds the standards established by the likes of the Shelley Long/Corbin Bernsen team-up "Frozen Assets" and 2012’s dire sperm-heist comedy "The Babymakers."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    In its amalgam of classic Hollywood war movies and courtroom dramas, Hart's War takes the audience to a place that never existed in order to teach it a lesson it already knows.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The film is an old-fashioned morality play writ extra-large, applying a heavy, austere tone to a sequence of events that can't bear the load. The burden falls mostly on Kevin Kline, who trades in his lithe, expressive comedic gifts for a dramatic role that fits him like a straitjacket and a pair of lead shoes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Von Trotta lingers for so long on the backstory and framing story that the movie's heart never comes to the fore.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Kutcher and Peet are a low-wattage pair, with little of the verbal riffing that counts as seduction in most romantic comedies, but they have real chemistry together, and A Lot Like Love happily indulges their silly, juvenile one-upmanship.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Though Scarlet Diva contains flashes of pungent black humor and self-deprecation, it's hard to know how seriously Argento takes herself, or how much her real life has been inflated for dramatic effect.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Constructed out of poorly supported accusations, vague innuendo, and naked emotional appeals, Bush's Brain has a Rove-esque quality of its own.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Saw III may be the best of the trilogy; hopefully, it'll encourage its makers to wrap the franchise on a relatively high note.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Silver means to get across the adrenaline rush of lives lived in dangerous extremes, but winds up trivializing their accomplishments and making them seem like men of hearty appetites, but little intellectual depth.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Though Brooks has a broad, crowd-pleasing sensibility, he knows how to appeal to the masses without insulting anyone's intelligence, and that's a rare gift these days.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Walter has the case down cold and arrives at suitably ambiguous conclusions about terrors both real and suggested, but he gets there through a mix of dimly lit interviews and ominous underscoring that wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries."
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The big musical setpiece, rife with possibilities for humor and uplift, needed to be funnier and more energetic than the half-hearted lyrics and choreography bother to muster.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Shot on shaky-cam digital video, filtered through what appears to be an old sweatsock, the film mimics Dogme-style realism in its vision of modern persecution, but in the end, it offers the sort of touchy-feely mysticism that belongs to the crystal-ball and tarot-reading set.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Impossible to swallow as truth, this Rambo treatment is equally hard to enjoy as escapism.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Both too obvious and needlessly complicated, Ju-On juggles several non-chronological chapters based on different characters, ensuring that none of the corpses-to-be make much of an impression.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    At the movie's center, Schreiber approaches the role with a seriousness that lacks joy or any other colorful inflection.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    McCarthy’s voice comes through strongly enough to excuse the film’s excesses and cast its more generic plot elements in a new light.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Afternoon Delight is one of those bad films that seem to drift further and further away from a recognizable reality the more we get to know it.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    21
    Short of counting the cards out loud, these geniuses seem to do everything they can to get caught.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Shooting in digital video, director Jeff Renfroe needlessly amps up the proceedings with jittery camerawork, jump cuts, and other technical hiccups meant to disorient the audience.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    With the exception of Hilary Swank, whose earnestness spoils the fun, a stellar cast seems in on the joke.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    With no greater ambition than reworking the Police Academy movies, Broken Lizard comes up with a winning formula: one part laughs to two parts goodwill.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    More than any masculine heroics, Pearce's primary job is maintaining the tone: smug, irreverent, and giddily punch-drunk.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    The X-factors tend to be the script and the performances, and those elements largely betray him in Bullet To The Head, which is a perfunctory exercise whenever Hill isn't busying himself with gun battles, ax fights, and other mano-a-mano confrontations. He can only do so much.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    She was simultaneously a pariah and a marked woman, and Amenta respectfully honors her quixotic, deeply lonely quest for justice.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    A major disappointment that lacks the courage to follow through on its premise's themes.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    The film too closely resembles what it's attempting to spoof--minus the obvious payoffs, of course.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Broderick’s tendency to hang all his problems on corporate greed and heartless bureaucracy leads to some strange missteps.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The idea of a toy store as a living, responsive being is a good one, but Helm doesn't take that idea to imaginative places.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Rather than cast actors who can't dance or dancers who can't act, Step Up splits the difference with stars Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, who pull double duty with uninspired competence.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    It reduces a large cast to an unwieldy collection of simpletons and caricatures.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    The FP feels like a junky, disposable lark, created for a midnight audience to swallow, belch, and forget about the next morning.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    It's hard to say what, aside from novelty, is gained by having the boy believe he's from Mars, because the core emotion in the film comes from the simple, common premise of an adoptive father and son trying to forge a life together.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Stiller's continued efforts to court the broadest possible audience has taken the edge off his comedy. Whenever he shares screen time with Williams, it looks like the grim future he's mapping out for himself.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Until its pat, implausible conclusion, the film has the edgy nerve of a classic amour fou, charting a complex relationship with the sort of bumpy, unpredictable spirit that would do Cassavetes proud.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Doesn't have the content to match the form, never cohering into anything more substantial than a glum navel-gazer about a little girl lost, unable to find a permanent home (literally or figuratively) on either side of the Atlantic.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Director Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down) doesn't always have a firm handle on what is and isn't appropriate; the film makes a few sharp detours into misogyny, and the level of smuttiness is surprisingly high, which may be a function of Efron wanting to grow away from his core audience too fast.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    The emotions at play in Bella are no doubt heartfelt--and must have resonated with a few hundred people, anyway--but they're so cut-and-dried that the mawkish script virtually writes itself.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The one appealing aspect of Before The Rains is that there are no villains, just three characters who are driven first by shared desires, then by a natural impulse for self-preservation that brings them into conflict.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    Shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Bratt’s character is stuck in old ways of thinking, and the movie, for all its well-meaning social intent, is right there with him.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Though he invests every ounce of his considerable charisma in the lead role, Russell Crowe still comes across as a man unworthy of the paradise offered to him.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Boarding Gate's surfaces are often so staggeringly beautiful that its superficiality becomes forgivable, with the pleasant distractions of Assayas' multi-layered frames, Argento's sinewy allure, and snippets of Brian Eno ambience on the soundtrack. Why can't all movies this inane be this accomplished?
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Until he finds a style to better communicate ideas or emotions, Figgis' plans to reinvent cinema will have to go back to the drawing board.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The big names don't do needy as well as "Big Love's" Ginnifer Goodwin.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Cody’s script fails in the fundamentals.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    If her adoring public doesn't mind paying for the same movie twice, Legally Blonde 2 stands to leave her star power unquestioned.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    With his bleached-blond hair, implacable European accent, and nerdy devotion to cool rationality, Ribisi acts like a cross between a young Reich officer and the Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons," and his unashamed hamminess steals the movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    John Waters covered the same territory in his underrated 1998 comedy "Pecker," but without Waters' colorful mix of outrageousness and affection, Posner can't stir up the rancor to score even a few glancing blows at an easy target.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Given an irresistible premise, Nathanson doesn't trust his material enough to follow through without excessive mugging, but his sense of the absurd leads to amusing digressions along the way.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    While it's not always necessary for filmmakers to relate that closely to their material, Feig's marked distance from the story of a sullen boy who parts the Iron Curtain may account for its generic artlessness.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    It isn't particularly original--for one, it owes an unacknowledged debt to the French film "Them"--but as an exercise in controlled mayhem, horror movies don't get much scarier.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    In reviving the beloved Disney property, Robinson attempts to resuscitate the fast-motion shots and sub-Three Stooges physical comedy of classic Herbie, but the new model seems distantly related to the innocent, peppy little car of old.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    It's a tribute to the film's goofy, inconsequential charm that it's still possible to laugh as someone sneaks a bomb past airport security.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Turns into an edited-for-TV version of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"--flat, bloodless, and utterly bereft of period grit.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Ultimately, Lakeview Terrace isn't about race so much as it's about being a man, which has been LaBute's fallback theme from the start.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Feels more like a clever student short that got out of hand than the Kafka-esque nightmare that director Greg Harrison (Groove) likely intended.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Part of the problem is Mark Ruffalo, whose tortured sensitivity in "You Can Count On Me" and "We Don't Live Here Anymore" made him seem like Marlon Brando's heir apparent, not Will Smith's.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    A feeble and self-congratulatory heart-warmer.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    It never coheres as well as it should, but the film makes a fine mess.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    The film belongs to Linney, whose caustic putdowns and status-seeking veneer barely hides her genuine hurt over her husband's philandering and her distant relationship to her own child. No doubt her diaries would be more compelling than the nanny's.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 0 Scott Tobias
    It will always be "too soon" for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which processes the immense grief of a city and a family through a conceit so nauseatingly precious that it's somehow both too literary and too sentimental, cloying yet aestheticized within an inch of its life.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    If anything, The Ringer doesn't go far enough to exploit its edgy premise, but it does have two conceits that consistently pay off: Knoxville turns out to be a lesser athlete than his competitors, and he's so bad at acting "retarded" that only the unchallenged buy into his ruse.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    You, Me And Dupree isn't terribly democratic about spreading the laughs around; whenever Wilson disappears from the screen, the comedy evaporates in kind.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    It's an extremely cynical perspective, enforced by some disappointingly turgid melodrama, but keep in mind, this movie was made before an almost uniformly poor and black population was left to rot in New Orleans floodwaters. Even at his worst, von Trier can still strike a nerve.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Baruchel and Eve never shed that awkward first-date chemistry, which speaks less to their talents or the possibilities of mismatched romance than to a movie that forces them together like animals being mated in captivity.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 91 Scott Tobias
    There's genuine pain at the core of Heidecker's character - or at least a numbness where the pain used to reside - but the film is keen on obscuring it.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    It's also, in its sick, sick way, a real crowd-pleaser.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Tobias
    Summer Phoenix has a screen presence that's simultaneously distancing and transfixing, an inscrutability that makes her seem either mysterious or a complete blank.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    The film has a warmth and raucousness that's surprisingly disarming.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 0 Scott Tobias
    Even the most narcissistic jerk, like the one played by Jim Carrey in the loathsome comedy Bruce Almighty, would be expected to dream up untold pleasures for himself, acting as a self-serving genie with infinite wishes.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Saw
    Though dumber than a box of rocks, Saw forges ahead with the kind of conviction and energy that will keep bad-cinema junkies sitting bolt upright.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Working under a limited budget, Catania stirs up a thick gothic atmosphere and delivers the goods with a certain amount of proficiency, but when professionalism is the best thing a film has going for it, there isn't much else to discuss.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Truth be told, Sachiko Hanai is probably an accomplished "pink film"; just don't mistake it for something classier.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    Random silliness rules the day, but the gags are frequently surprising.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Cruise is thrown into many sticky situations, with legions of trained assassins surrounding him on all sides, but he never once suggests that things aren’t entirely under control. It’s profoundly boring to watch a hero without weaknesses; after all, even Superman has Kryptonite.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Part courtroom drama, part otherworldly shocker, the film basically restages the Scopes Monkey Trial and comes out once more against Mr. Darrow, and it's got the spine-twisting, tongues-speaking, devil-channeling hellion to prove it.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The dialogue and the movie seem as canned as a Must-See TV laugh track.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Perhaps the oddest thing about The In-Laws is that it's aimed at an audience old enough to remember not only the original, but also how much funnier it seemed at the time.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The racing sequences are the series' meat and potatoes, but in terms of story, Tokyo Drift barely offers a stalk of asparagus.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Embellishments to Neil Simon's original script were inevitable, but when you're adding an "Uncle Tito," you're definitely on the wrong track.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    On record and in her movies, Moore is sold as wholesome and real, which sometimes translates as generic and blah, in spite of her genuine appeal and accessibility.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The film doesn't seem to know how it feels, much less how others are supposed to feel about it.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    There's ample opportunity here for a sharp consumerist satire, like a dryer cousin to the candy-colored pop-culture send-up “Josie And The Pussycats,” but Hartley misses his own joke.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Perhaps because the present-day characters are such insufferable twits -- especially the brooding Penn, who's given to tossing around stanzas by Yeats and Dylan Thomas -- the modern story feels like a device, a flimsy entr&#233;e into events that would be better accessed directly.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    At once too real for escapism and too ridiculous for a credible espionage thriller, The Sum Of All Fears unfolds like a cruel joke and treats imagined human tragedy as the punchline.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    There's a surprising intelligence and gravity working beneath its bubbly surface, informed by an unusual degree of empathy for its adolescent audience and a rare willingness to confront the darker regions of youth experience.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    It’s when the small moments become large ones that Feste overreaches and the shaky performances don’t bail her out.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    It uses a story about family as a vehicle for glorifying gangsterism. In other words, it's empty, amoral, and - in the style of other Besson productions - surprisingly easy to digest.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Though Clarkson acquits herself reasonably well in a terribly conceived role, her entrance interrupts David’s hilariously twisted mentorship of Wood and sends the movie careening in a far less promising direction.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Wang loses himself in an old-fashioned script that tries to recall the classic screwball ensembles of Golden Age Hollywood, but lacks the cascading wit to pull it off.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Stranding an able supporting cast in mostly disposable roles--including Jacqueline Bisset, Mary Kay Place, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Amber Benson--Cox writes himself into several corners, then plots honking contrivances to get out of them.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    While The Marine proves a poor showcase for the charisma-impaired Cena, it's a terrific vehicle for world-class heavy Patrick, who is clearly enjoying himself as the kind of deranged lunatic who interrupts a long string of felonies to confirm the details of his new cable package.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Charlie Kaufman could have made a great movie out of Click, a soupy existential comedy about a "universal remote" that lets a man magically rewind, fast-forward, and pause his life.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    There's a good movie here, but we get it in pieces that are sometimes hard to decipher.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The film does coast along smoothly to the inevitable, which is a credit to the always-game Reese Witherspoon, who's courteous enough to pretend she doesn't know what's coming, then make it look like a huge surprise.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Currently stopping by theaters briefly en route to DVD, the film tries to position Jameson as the next Linnea Quigley, the B-movie queen behind such enduring titles as "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers" and "Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama."
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Feels tentative and weak whenever it isn't simply baldly derivative. It's old-fashioned to the point of ossification.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Though he labors endlessly to account for her behavior, which is explained away by flashbacks to her decadent parents and a glamorous mother-figure played under Vaseline lens by an uncredited Sandra Bullock, Bacon fails to make her seem human.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Veering wildly from macabre Southern Gothic to quirky small-town romance, Home Fries is too busy cross-pollinating genres to bother with consistent behavior and tone.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    In Jewison's hands, this cat-and-mouse game plays like third-rate John Le Carr&#233;, treading lethargically over high-minded intrigue that mixes fact, fiction, and unlikely speculation in dubious relation to the historical record.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Craigslist Joe takes Garner on a 21st-century hitchhiking trip that not only didn't end in his gruesome murder, but in a month to remember fondly. It's an inspiring experience. For him.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    The characters in The Burning Plain are so narrowly defined by tragedy that they reveal no other facets of humanity.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Judging by the far more interesting adults in the film--Braga, a terrific Laura Linney as Webber's mother, and Hawke as his father--the solution for Webber and Moreno is to grow up and not be so full of themselves. In their current state, they make for unpleasant company, and so does the film.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Duller than a rain delay on the Golf Channel.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The brain trust responsible in part for last year's "The Cat In The Hat," Eurotrip seems like the result of a particularly half-hearted brainstorming session.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Madea's Family Reunion represents an advance on Diary, if only because it dials down Madea's shtick (she no longer waves a gun around) and irons out some of those awkward tonal transitions. The chance that Perry's followers will leave disappointed is approximately 0 percent.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Though a clearly gifted new filmmaker, Lugacy doesn't get a handle on the combustible material, and she gets scalded in the process.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    While competently staged and punched up by Lock, Stock's changing camera speeds, it doesn't have the wit or intrigue to sustain its half-length.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    As her character resorts to increasingly cruel and devious pranks, Hudson only seems funnier and more endearing.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The leads are immensely appealing, but the sum of their experiences equals nothing more profound than two earnest people wrestling with a tough decision.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Solomon handles their crises of conscience with a studied compassion that hangs over scenes like a lead weight, though the actors (particularly Dunst) do their best to bring more range to his gray palette.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    There's no depth, surprises, or wit to the screenplay, which seems motivated by the sole desire to generate the vilest, most disgusting people and images imaginable.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Much of Oz The Great And Powerful’s fate is tied to James Franco’s performance as Oz, and the center barely holds, with Franco often looking as overwhelmed by the task as he was by his hosting job on Oscar night.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    There’s an overlay of gender politics, but it isn’t so firmly ingrained in the material that it transforms Levine’s throwback ’80s slasher film into a much nobler, more thoughtful endeavor.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The big reason Chaos Theory doesn't work is that the gears are visibly grinding away, cranking out neat little ironies and life lessons without any liberating surprises.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Drive Angry feels like a five-minute Comic Con show reel that's been expanded beyond its limits. It's agonizingly cool.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Mayron tries for a junior-league "All About Eve," but that backfires horribly, not least because her diabolical Eve (Perabo) is more charismatic and imaginative than her heroine.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Though serviceable as a primer on Soviet history under Stalin, the film's sloppy assemblage of dull interviews and stock footage never comes close to illuminating a life that the Russian people have long cherished as a precious enigma.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Estela Bravo's disgraceful documentary Fidel could have been financed by the man himself.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    By the time the film escalates into a suitably ridiculous Grand Guignol finale, all connection to reality has been severed.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Essentially the same heartwarming goo about three generations of men quarreling and bonding, with Kirk just as feisty as ever.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Tobias
    A chilly and extraordinarily controlled treatise on film violence, Funny Games punishes the audience for its casual bloodlust by giving it all the sickening torture and mayhem it could possibly desire. Neat trick, that.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Director Carter Smith suffers from another, more common problem: In trying to squeeze every plot point from the book into a 90-minute movie, he failed to capture its chilling essence.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    A more accurate way to describe it would be "conceptual nightmare"--crass, schizophrenic, culturally insensitive, horribly paced, and shameless in its pandering to the lowest common denominator.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Seems as much an imposter in the drag-queen world as its heroines; it fronts the sort of safely asexual gay characters found on network TV.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    The Village may have finally emptied his usual bag of tricks, but considered on its own merits, its skillful fusion of Grimm fairy-tale horror and pointed social parable find Shyamalan in peak form.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    There isn’t a whiff of humility or self-deprecation to Clay, Roque, Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, a collection of black-ops douchebags and our ostensible heroes.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Perhaps someday, in the greatest twist of all, Shyamalan will be remembered as the Hitchcock of the early 21st century. Until then, movies like Devil will be misunderstood as schlock.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    The indie rom-com/sitcom L!fe Happens is a case study in how bad movies can turn an ordinary, relatable situation into a grotesque distortion with only a passing resemblance to the way actual human beings live and interact with each other.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    With a cast this gifted, some of the throwaway jokes stick, but when Along Came Polly goes for its biggest, grossest laughs, the strings show well in advance.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The lesson here is that dogs don't need "attitude." They're loveable enough on their own.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Madison couldn't be more wholesome if they served it with a tall glass of fresh milk.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Take away the death and revelations that follow, and Catch And Release has the makings of a weekly half-hour network comedy--call it "Four's Company."
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Director Rob Whitehair doesn't do much to complicate what's essentially a promotional featurette for Wiede and Tucker's Wild Sentry organization, presenting the anti-wolf faction as rabid, irrational, and extreme. But he can't be blamed for wanting to stoke the drama a little: Without it, True Wolf would be a lesson in the care and feeding of an exotic pet.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    The only redeeming moments come from Walken, whose assured, effortless screen presence stands out from his faceless co-stars. Taped to a leather chair and bleeding profusely from a severed finger, he's still the most powerful person in the room.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Between the performances in the bedroom and on stage, 9 Songs gives off plenty of heat, but the whole project seems half-thought-out and hastily arranged, hampered by butt-ugly DV photography that turn skin tones grimy and make the Brixton scenes look as high-grain as a bowl of Mueslix.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Okay, so when does the fun start?
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Wiseman's Total Recall isn't intellectualized like "Blade Runner," or even that much more sophisticated than his "Underworld" movies.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Tobias
    John Woo's smart thriller Paycheck may not intend to be political, but it's marked as much by its era as post-Watergate thrillers like "The Parallax View" or "Three Days Of The Condor."
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    The word "slight" doesn't even begin to describe how minor the quirky indie comedy From Other Worlds turns out to be, though its sheer lack of pretension may be its greatest asset.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Hallström's approach to the material is tasteful and restrained to a fault.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    In the context of Coppola's life and career, the film has a searching intelligence and ambition that can't be entirely dismissed; with his own money and nobody looking over his shoulder, Coppola has gone uprriver again in an effort to reinvent himself and cinema in the process. He ultimately fails, but he can't be faulted for trying.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    These are all legitimate concerns, which Navarro supports with testimony from economists, politicians, union leaders, and businesspeople, but they're undermined at every point by a sky-is-falling hysteria that registers as white noise. It's the documentary equivalent of a raving street-corner derelict.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    What does it all mean? Nothing much greater than the sum of its seriocomic vignettes. To that end, Women In Trouble tends to sputter to life whenever the stories get racy.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Only Edie Falco, appearing as a bereft mother leading a citizen's group that searches for missing children, suggests the great film that Freedomland might have been.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    All these stereotypes are meant to exalt small-town values, but The Final Season is proof that it's hard to paint masterpiece in broad strokes.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Tobias
    For most of the way, the film is perceptive about the hot-and-cold volatility of wounded relationships, when couples are struggling to communicate yet familiar enough to exploit each other's weaknesses.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The result is a middling Frankenstein-like hybrid of spectral mayhem and murder mystery, constructed entirely out of borrowed parts.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Trust The Man presents itself as a funny, insightful Manhattan relationship comedy in Woody Allen mode, but morphs into the phoniest of Hollywood rom-coms.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Monte Carlo finally resolves itself in a farcical climax that at least shows a little energy, but it isn't enough to overcome the discomfiting tensions and indifferent formula filmmaking that plagues nearly every scene.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Gulager shows that he truly is PGL's most gifted alumnus.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Naim directs The Final Cut as if it were the pilot to a TV series: He teases the audience with all sorts of story threads, focuses on a minor self-contained mystery, and leaves the rest for future episodes that will never come.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    The film goes off the rails in the final third, sacrificing subtle character work at the altar of blood-and-guts survival horror. As mood-killers go, it's like a jab to the back of the neck.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 75 Scott Tobias
    The Abandoned is a rare horror film that moves from the real world into a kind of psychic space, and slowly suffocates its characters inside their own heads.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Lawrence is fortunate to have appealing pros like Grant and Bullock around to bail him out with romantic chemistry and enough crisply delivered one-liners to survive the barren stretches of script.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    A deadly earnest, relentlessly solemn affair.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Leave it to Giamatti to bring gravitas to the fat guy in the red suit; he's naturally the straight man in the sibling duo, but whenever Fred Claus goes for the heartstrings, he's the only one capable of plucking in tune.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    With his flamboyant ridiculousness, Travolta does, however, give From Paris With Love a pulse, which is more than can be said for the film’s petulant hero, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    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.)
    • 42 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Few of the scenes in The Perfect Game feel authentic, but the ones in Monterrey are especially lacking in flavor.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    It’s a busier and less coherent film, too, with a baffling master plot and a crowded pileup of special effects in search of something to do.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    It's now a straight-up crime and retribution flick, capped off by the dumbest wolf-feeding coda a 13-year-old ever dreamed up.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Next bears some resemblance to another Dick adaptation, "Minority Report," about "pre-cogs" who can anticipate murders before they happen, but it doesn't really bother exploring the moral or emotional implications of Cage's power.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    It shouldn't be surprising that writer-director Steve Oedekerk, the man responsible for "Kung Pow! Enter The Fist" and the second "Ace Ventura" movie, considers single-celled organisms as he shoots for the lowest common denominator.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The film is mostly an excuse to do a pregnancy-themed "Love Actually," an overblown symphony of birthing stories that reaches its crescendo in the maternity ward.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    At times, G.I. Joe: Retaliation has a sense of its own ridiculousness — Pryce seems to be having a good time, anyway — but not enough to soften the mass death, hardware fetishism, and militaristic zeal that gets in the way of its escapist fun.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    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.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    It's a tame, hypocritical fantasy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    If Gaudreault's 90-minute pilot ever makes it to television, French-Canadians can look forward to their own Italian version of A.K.A. Pablo.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The film’s biggest problem, beyond the overheated melodrama and paper-thin period trappings, is that the trio's fictionalized dalliances diminish their real art.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Thornton is one of America's finest actors, but after this, "Bad News Bears," and "School For Scoundrels," his run of loveably irascible authority-figure roles should probably come to a close. He's kicked around one child too many.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The generic intrigue and chase scenes take over, leaving poor Muniz at the mercy of stunt doubles and chintzy special effects.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Nearly everything that happens in Olympus Has Fallen is ludicrous, yet because the fate of the president and the nation hangs in the balance, the crisis is treated with the gravitas of Paul Scofield at the West End.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Too much of The Limits Of Control feels canned and airless, so stifled by Jarmusch's obsessions that it loses all sense of surprise.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The ugliness on display in Running Scared has neither "Sin City's" context nor its wit, and it offers little more than stylish excess for its own sake, with no clear aspirations other than to twist people's arms until they yelp "Uncle."
    • 41 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The result is two bad movies in one: a gimmicky romantic comedy, and one of those seasonal headaches that submits loud family dysfunction as a vehicle for Christmas cheer.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    For a film about growing up, Illegal Tender loses itself in a lot of silly juvenilia.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    At times approaches the flavor and shapelessness of real life.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The loaded cast does what it can with the paper-thin characterizations, but Vantage Point gets hijacked early by its high-concept premise, and it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers thriller with the numbers out of order.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    The mythology has deepened, largely to the negative, and the formula is as rigid as the fixins of a fast-food sandwich-tastes the same in every city. But the effects are eternally reliable.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Much of the second half is spent waiting for the other shoe to drop, though you don't have to have 20/20 vision in order to see the big twist coming from miles away. Once it arrives, the film officially disembarks from reality with an over-the-top climax and denouement that play shamelessly to the bloodthirsty masses.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The major problem with Pattinson’s ascendancy to the Dean throne: His soulfulness is a pose, an effect achieved more by hair and makeup (and yes, genetics) than the scenes where he’s required to emote at high volume.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Though pitched as a thriller, Robinson’s woefully underbudgeted film plays instead like a chamber drama, so simple and unadorned that it could just as easily be staged as an off-off-Broadway play without anyone telling the difference. And that isn’t entirely to the film’s detriment, either: With a cast choked with great character actors like Ed Harris, William Fichtner, and Lance Henriksen, less is sometimes more.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Botches what could be the most mischievous power since Scott Baio's telekinesis in the 1982 comedy "Zapped!": a wristwatch that speeds up time for the user until the rest of the world seems to be standing still.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The Sisters is still somewhat compelling thanks to Bello, whose unguarded, provocative work continually resuscitates this corpse of a melodrama whenever it lays fallow.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The film feels more at home with sex than war, like a romance novel where the swinging lovers find their passions stirred by bombs exploding in the distance. Their three-way dalliances are so frivolous and silly that once the action turns dark, Duigan and his cast leave audiences unprepared for the emotional fallout.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Stripped down to the barest genre essentials, Saw is a spring-loaded killing machine, packed with sadistic little deathtraps and ludicrous macabre twists, and its quickie sequel offers more of the same, which should again appease viewers who enjoy being jerked around.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    As the plot unfolds, brick by brick, the structure starts to wobble until it finally collapses into unintentional comedy.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The "What The Bleep Do We Know?" crowd may well receive the film's wisdom like communion, but the rest of us are free to gag when Salva tries to jam it down our throats.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    A film so utterly lacking in conviction, it needs a 25-year-old Tom Cruise vehicle just to keep its spine straight.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    There's hardly a character, plot twist, or musical theme in the whole enterprise that isn't primed to go straight for the tear ducts, as if Johnson assumes that his audience is incapable of mounting a defense.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    It's neither remotely convincing as true-to-life drama or lurid and propulsive enough to work as exploitation. It's just bad.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters continues a tradition of adequacy that could be described as “epic-ish” or “majestic-esque.”
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Contains all the elements of a satisfying teen genre picture, but they've been compromised out of existence.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    The film's moralistic streak leaves a sour taste, especially because its battle of the sexes is so wildly off-balance.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Director Jeff Wadlow and screenwriter Chris Hauty are so committed to following through on the "Karate Kid" formula that they don't care for novelty; it's enough for them just to hit their cues and play up the slo-mo MMA brutality. In the future, movies this derivative will be made by robots.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    A hopelessly stolid and distant evocation of Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces."
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Beyond the "hell hath no fury" angle that overlays the story, When Will I Be Loved amounts to nothing more than another repository for kinky Tobackisms: Seen one (and the one to see remains 1978's Fingers), seen them all.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Stone has made an excruciating disaster for the ages.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 67 Scott Tobias
    Yet in its best moments - and there are several good ones scattered across this ramshackle comedy - The Sitter is a reminder that Green's sensibility has always been heavy on whimsy and play, and that maybe he hasn't strayed that far from home.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Working from a novel by Cecelia Ahern, LaGravenese brings some intelligence and maturity to a genre that sorely needs it, but it isn't enough to prop up this long-winded and thoroughly bland romantic comedy.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    When it comes time for the actual robbery, so little has been explained that the plan seems ridiculously easy in some respects and totally improbable in others.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Bad Boys II is the rare case in which escapism involves leaving the theater.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The main pitfall of modern noirs is that filmmakers get so caught up in the chiaroscuro lighting schemes and florid twists of dialogue and voiceover that they forget noir was about expressing more than just attitude and style.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Any resemblance the film bears to real people and real situations is purely coincidental.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    The strange thing about Raising Helen is that nothing out of the ordinary ever really happens.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Paparazzi follows the vigilante playbook in all its banality, without much in the way of moral reflection.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Free Birds feels like Hollywood brining small children for the blockbusters they’ll pay to see when they’re older. It’s littered with quips, but the film puts a premium on loud, effects-driven action that mistakes nonstop intensity for cartoony entertainment.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Writer-director Mary Harron, a supremely intelligent adaptor who did wonders with the screen version of Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho," simply doesn't have the chops to give this story the florid kick it needs.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    An aggressive black comedy that seeks to satisfy a bloodlust already quelled many times over.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Singleton abandons the underground racing subculture that gave the first film its allure, relying instead on lazy thriller plotting that's only a bag of donuts and a freeze-frame away from the average TV cop show.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    Martin makes a fine Clouseau, re-energizing musty old physical gags involving chandeliers and priceless vases, and rolling his tongue around a zesty form of pidgin French. If he ever finds his Blake Edwards, there may be hope for this franchise yet.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Swimming in computer-enhanced mayhem and a non-stop hip-hop-and-techno soundtrack, Blade: Trinity might as well come equipped with joysticks attached to the seats, so everyone can play along.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Wiig’s new comedy sulks limply along with her, unable to bring the kind of energy that might complement her tendency to underplay every scene.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 16 Scott Tobias
    The result is unfit for humankind.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    At a time when movies, even from Hollywood, are finally turning their eyes to conflicts abroad, Annapolis seems conspicuously myopic and reactionary in its denial of the world outside campus, though a movie this formulaic wouldn't pass muster during peacetime, either.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    Arriving late to the scene, Another Gay Movie coughs up the same awkward gags about coming of age via false starts and sexual humiliation, only the genuine sweetness and camaraderie that made the first "Pie" movie bearable has been replaced by glib self-awareness.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Everything and everyone acts as cogs in a relentless plot machine that keeps twisting and twisting like an annoying little gizmo on Christmas morning.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Be Cool more often evokes the image of a screenwriter furiously trying draft after draft to accommodate all the stars. Accommodating the audience becomes a distant priority.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    von Donnersmarck's meat-and-potatoes direction makes The Tourist astonishingly lifeless and awkward, reducing two of the world's biggest movie stars to something akin to shy, pimply teenagers on their first date.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Verbinski orchestrates complex action sequences, including two spectacular bits of derring-do on a moving train, with a precision few in Hollywood are capable of pulling off. Yet The Lone Ranger, like his last two Pirates movies, seems conceived to deliver spectacle by the bulk, which means carrying the baggage of multiple subplots for the purpose of multiple climactic sequences.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    It goes without saying that Evan Almighty, a kid-friendly follow-up to the Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty," is more Ronald McDonald than Holy Bible, but it didn't have to be this epically trite.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    Not a second of it is convincing - or compelling - but then the film is about "utopia," a blandly idealized place unblemished by hardship, malice, sin, or errant golf strokes.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The film is memorable mainly for attractive people sailing and smooching against an attractive backdrop. There's no urgency behind all the preening.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    If it doesn't look ridiculous now, try watching it again in a decade or three. Then it'll be funny for all the wrong reasons.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 16 Scott Tobias
    In many ways, the film is history repeating itself, as the same Weinstein brothers who famously dropped $10 million on "Happy, Texas" in 1999 have overpaid again for "Happy, Texas 2."
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    The photography hook gives Shutter the potential to be a genuinely creepy ghosts-in-the-machine story like the original "Pulse," or better still, a horror twist on "Blowup." But one effective scene lit solely by a camera flash isn't enough to rescue this from the J-horror slushpile.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    It's loud, relentless, and difficult to endure, capturing the experience of ground-level alien warfare with woeful verisimilitude.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Only God Forgives suffers from the disconnect between its stylistic high-art archness and its content’s pulp gratuitousness. Refn gives every sequence a hushed consideration, but there’s rarely a sense that he’s earned it with equivalent profundity in theme.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Borderline-experimental in the way it challenges the limits of perception. It's forward-thinking, visionary, and much of the time unwatchable.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    It's a con job that feels like a precisely attenuated work of art, elegantly weaving flashbacks and ellipses into the story in an effort to conceal how shamelessly manipulative it is in the end. And as always, Smith comes out a winner.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 10 Scott Tobias
    Looks like a cheap polyester suit, an entirely synthetic composite of scenes from other movies.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Casual moviegoers looking for a bubbly romantic comedy with Brittany Murphy will get more than they bargained for in Little Black Book, which builds to a nasty twist that's more Lars von Trier than Meg Ryan.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Caught in a pretentious no-man’s land between horror and melodrama.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Right up to the ludicrous finale and an even more improbable denouement, everything rings Hollywood-false. More galling still, the filmmakers' inventions take the zing out of the facts.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    While it's a pleasure to watch the likeable Johnson open up and come out of her shell, Phat Girlz belongs to Mo'Nique, a grating, belligerent woman who alternates self-deprecating fat jokes with drama-queen meltdowns and simpering pleas for acceptance. Save it for the talk-show circuit, please.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 10 Scott Tobias
    Kedma makes for a clumsy, lugubrious history lesson.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    The whole three-ring circus winds up in a church for a redemptive finale, but by then, Diary has committed too many sins for even the most generous soul to offer salvation.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    A few individual performances survive - Liotta finds a little of his old edge, and Pacino briefly revisits Serpico territory - but they're smothered in the slow-burning absurdity.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 58 Scott Tobias
    The film has one thing going for it--it's certainly never boring.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The best parts of Runner Runner feel like a Rounders facsimile—right down to the metaphor-heavy narration—and the worst seem like a case of mission drift, as if the filmmakers set out to make a behind-the-curtain thriller about online gambling, but got hung up in paying off the plot.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Once the torture finally commences, the film attempts to float a political point about the Third World taking back First World health-care privileges, but the chief torturers' sadistic humanitarianism is never seriously considered.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Complain all you want about the affable slobs in Judd Apatow comedies; at least they're not tools.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 42 Scott Tobias
    Yes, perhaps the audience will like its favored couple more, but all the engineering that goes into making them sympathetic results in a film that feels agonizingly synthetic and alien.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    The film disappoints on its own terms, failing to drum up any sympathy for a self-pitying rich kid who can't pry his eyes from his navel.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Tobias
    Beyond fulfilling the dreams of a seemingly nice fellow, the whole venture is a victory of hype over substance, loudly accomplishing nothing.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Tobias
    Weintrob's background in interactive media keeps the film's technology unusually current, but his predictable tongue-clucking over Internet relationships places him squarely in the Luddite camp.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    Slips into the no-man's land between screwball and melodrama, squandering both the comic opportunities of an irrational search for drugs and the raw desperation of a piano prodigy who's held captive by his mother's dysfunction.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    A sort of retarded "Top Gun," Rob Cohen's Stealth revisits the world of cocky fighter pilots and war games turned real, but it has some serious moral quandaries on the brain, and too much thinking gets it into trouble.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Tobias
    Basically a prim, desexualized "Carrie," told from the prom date's perspective and featuring Peter Coyote in the Piper Laurie role.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    To think that a semi-major studio financed a production this low-rent and listless is amazing: Since when did MGM start making student films?
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Tobias
    Perhaps due to the talent of everyone involved, Dreamcatcher moves with an oddly exhilarating awfulness that sets it apart from more run-of-the-mill horror films, which lack the imagination and budget to be so thoroughly misconceived.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    An abysmal sequel that abandons the found-footage concept, along with the pockets of wit and originality that made its predecessor salvageable.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    The film looks to do for reflective surfaces what "Amityville 4" did for killer lamps.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 33 Scott Tobias
    If there were a shred of sincerity to its straight-faced exposé of African strife, the film would be easier to forgive, but since it's really just a cheap horror-thriller about an ancient predator, the austere tone does it no favors.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Scott Tobias
    The best that could be said of Yogi Bear is that it doesn't diminish its source material.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Tobias
    What results are surprises without sustenance.
http://www.metacritic.com/critic/scott-tobias?filter=movies&num_items=30&sort_options=metascore&page=39
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