Scott Tobias

Within the mishmash of influences on the stoner action/comedy American Ultra — namely, Repo Man, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Pineapple Express, and a pile of pointless hyper-violent comic books — the film nearly finds itself in the cognitive dissonance of a pothead who discovers his inner badass. There's something funny ...

"I can make you legit."

That's the promise Jerry Heller, a veteran rock manager, makes to Eric "Eazy-E" Wright in an early scene in Straight Outta Compton, a mostly exhilarating biopic about L.A. hip-hop legends N.W.A. The phrase missing from the end of that first sentence is "...with the white ...

For the dozen or two regulars at The Salt Well in the San Fernando Valley, watching the house band is like stepping into a musical time machine, where everyone has aged but the song remains the same. By any standard, Ricki and the Flash rates as a better-than-average bar band, ...

Those keeping up with the National Cinematic Lampooniverse (NCL) will be interested to know that Vacation isn't a remake of the three-plus-decade-old Chevy Chase comedy, but a continuation of the series. It takes place in a world where the events of Vacation, European Vacation and Christmas Vacation have happened and ...

For gearhead purists, the Fast and the Furious franchise is an ongoing heresy, the sins adding up with each new sequel. The appeal of the genre has always been its simplicity: Greasers racing for pink slips, their muscle cars grinding and screeching and speeding into the horizon.

The Fast and ...

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 ...

After beginning his career with the art-damaged, sex-and-death duo of Japon and Battle in Heaven — two difficult, provocative and at times willfully obscure curiosities — the gifted Mexican director Carlos Reygadas had a breakthrough with 2007's Silent Light, a quietly astonishing domestic drama about a Mennonite family under duress. ...

Pop-culture deaths, especially when they come at an early age, have a tendency to turn human beings into instant icons, embalming them in the mythology of lyrics, performances, photos, quotations — and suicide notes where applicable.

When Jeff Buckley, the supremely gifted singer-songwriter, drowned in May 1997 — at age ...

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 ...

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. I point this out because it's the best element of the movie — a cascade of dreamy synthesizers that registers as appropriately futuristic ...

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. (The ...

Antonio Campos' Simon Killer embarks on an inexorable journey toward its titular outcome, and the closer it gets, the worse it becomes. As a portrait of alienation and dislocation — its protagonist a free man in Paris, but far from unfettered and alive — the film is frequently masterful, suggesting ...

Of all the great filmmakers, Stanley Kubrick may be the one most associated with control — there's nary an inflection, gesture, camera movement or prop out of place in his movies, and significance invested in every detail.

Tales of his perfectionism have become the stuff of legend: projects developed over ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. Best known for an operatic trio of revenge thrillers — the second, ...