Paul Attanasio

Select another critic »
Washington Post
For 189 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 31% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 68% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 15.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Paul Attanasio's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 50
Highest review score: 100 'Round Midnight
Lowest review score: 0 Silver Bullet
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 44 out of 189
  2. Mixed: 95 out of 189
  3. Negative: 50 out of 189
189 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Three Amigos!
    The script of Three Amigos (Martin's collaborators were producer Lorne Michaels and singer Randy Newman) plays like it was slapped together by a few friends with a tape recorder enjoying a charming weekend at the beach. You can't tell one amigo from another, the gags are silly (a "singing bush") and far between, the dialogue full of inane wordplay. Sample: "We could take a walk and you could kiss me on the veranda." "The lips would be fine."
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Solarbabies
    Solarbabies is a hilariously bad movie that doesn't make much sense and isn't much good when it does. Director Alan Johnson has stolen most of his visual ideas from Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner") and George Miller ("The Road Warrior"), and he hasn't the slightest idea how to direct actors. That said, the movie has its campy pleasures.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Pale Rider
    This new western is less than a success for Eastwood, who directs as well as stars. It's Eastwood riding on earnestness, and running on empty. [28 June 1995, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
    • 17 Metascore
    • 12 Paul Attanasio
    Armed and Dangerous
    It takes a director with a true genius for disaster to put together SCTV veterans John Candy and Eugene Levy, the fine character actors Kenneth McMillan and Robert Loggia and the delicious new comic actress Meg Ryan and come up with a movie without a single laugh in it. Indeed, who but Mark Lester could have pulled it off? Lester's idea of directing is to turn up the music and wreck a lot of cars -- this isn't a movie, it's a Volvo ad.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Soul Man
    Chong breathes some occasional life into Soul Man, as does Arye Gross, who displays a rich variety of comic attitudes as Mark's roommate. What surrounds them, though, is a black comedy with so little gumption, it ends up a vague shade of gray, composed of a collection of cheap jokes excused by smug platitudes about race -- in short, a movie called Soul Man whose soul, it seems, is quite lost.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
    In Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, a great deal of engine noise and clanking iron is drowned out by the audience's resounding ho-hum. It's comic books in a Cuisinart, all costumes and cute monikers and no story, a sort of case history of just what's wrong with sequelitis. [10 July 1985]
    • Washington Post
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    The Decline of the American Empire
    From the opening shot, an endless, unmotivated dolly move up a corridor that conveys no information, establishes neither theme nor setting and serves no other purpose, you know that you are in the presence of true film ineptitude, which only deepens as The Decline of the American Empire continues.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 37 Paul Attanasio
    True Stories
    True Stories is united not by narrative, but by Byrne's sensibility, and this is where it descends from being a boring piece of whimsy into something reprehensible.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    The Boys Next Door
    The Boys Next Door is just another exploitation movie about murderous nuts -- exactly what you wouldn't expect from Penelope Spheeris, the director of "Suburbia." [12 Nov 1985, p.B11]
    • Washington Post
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Paul Attanasio
    Absolute Beginners
    What's left here is not so much a movie as an assault so unpleasant, it leaves you wondering what you could have done to deserve it. [27 May 1986, p.B3]
    • Washington Post
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Twice in a Lifetime
    Amateurish, emotionally fraudulent. [28 Jan 1986, p.C4]
    • Washington Post
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Explorers
    The kids are uniformly godawful, particularly the lamentably named Phoenix; their wooden line readings play in long, flat scenes that look like some 12-year-olds' school project. And talking about the movie's sense of pace is like talking about Pikes Peak's sense of pace. Explorers is a veritable jungle of thematic and story threads that are never picked up. [12 July 1985, p.D6]
    • Washington Post
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    The Mission
    The Mission is everything a movie should be -- magnificently produced, epic in scope, serious in theme -- everything, that is, but good. Hamstrung by an unworkable script, the disastrous casting of Robert De Niro and, presumably, the strain of shooting in the Colombian jungle, director Roland Joffe' has come up with an indigestible lump of sanctimony that rarely goes beyond its good intentions.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    52 Pick-Up
    John Frankenheimer has directed 52 Pick-Up in a style so devoid of nuance, the movie almost watches itself. From the crosscutting between Scheider and Ann-Margret that opens the film (an exchange of glances so portentous you think an earthquake is about to hit Los Angeles) to the way every emotion is underlined with tight close-ups, 52 Pick-Up is so aggressively explicit that it might have been made for an audience of trained apes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Crossroads
    So when the movie turns out drab and predictable, it's depressing -- you think Hill has become a stranger to his own sensibility. [24 March 1986, p.C3]
    • Washington Post
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Johnny Dangerously
    Heckerling seems lost and distracted here -- the framing is careless, and the film moves with a stuttering pace. Why is this talented director being channeled into projects like this?
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Tough Guys
    You know something's wrong when screen writers James Orr and Jim Cruikshank have to jury-rig a couple of chase plots, involving an over-the-hill hit man (Eli Wallach) and an aging detective (Charles Durning) just to move things along.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    2010
    2010 is a one-man tour de fizzle, a yawnfest so plodding it seems to have been made by the famous monolith itself. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
    • 49 Metascore
    • 25 Paul Attanasio
    Poltergeist II: The Other Side
    There are movies that make you want to mince words, and then there's Poltergeist II: The Other Side, a movie so ineffably bad, you can't even find the words to mince. [23 May 1986, p.D2]
    • Washington Post
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    The Care Bears Movie
    The best cartoons recognize the dark side of kids, their penchant for violence, their fearful fantasies. The Care Bears Movie just patronizes them.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
    The most elementary requirement of an action movie is that the hero know the score, be in command -- it lends tension to the moments when he's not in command -- a requirement that screen writer Christopher Wood blithely neglects. Aw, forget it -- just tell me when it ends.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    8 Million Ways to Die
    The movie is one of those can't-miss projects that, uh, misses...Altogether, this is about the most listlessly paced thriller you could imagine: Ashby's penchant for letting his actors improvise just results in endless dithering; and the image is weirdly flat -- the movie's shot almost entirely in profile. Actually, there aren't just 8 million ways to die -- now we know there are 8 million and 1. [25 Apr 1986, p.D2]
    • Washington Post
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    The Bedroom Window
    Yet another tiresome pastiche of old Hitchcock films, particularly "Rear Window" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much." We've seen it before, done (needless to say) better. The craftsmanship of the film aspires to the second rate. And it's a little wiggy to try to create a silky kind of glamorous intrigue in Baltimore.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Clue
    Clue is based on the popular Parker Brothers board game in which the players try to guess, well, whodunit, and where, and with what weapon. You leave it with one conviction: stick with the game.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 37 Paul Attanasio
    Iron Eagle
    A ridiculous rabble-drowser with the heart of a bully and the soul of a thief.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    A View to a Kill
    There is some magnificent stunt work, which only underscores how inadequate Moore has become. Moore isn't just long in the tooth -- he's got tusks, and what looks like an eye job has given him the pie-eyed blankness of a zombie. He's not believable anymore in the action sequences, even less so in the romantic scenes.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Extremities
    Extremities pretends to be a serious movie, and in a film culture where women are routinely exploited and revenge is taken blithely, it is, at least, a departure. But we don't learn anything about men and women, or revenge, from "Extremities" -- we just watch people score debating points, to the tune of J.A.C. Redford's stale TV-movie score.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 37 Paul Attanasio
    Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation
    Like the original "Care Bears Movie," Care Bears Movie II is nothing but an insidious feature-length toy commercial. But since Funshine Bear has taught me to look on the bright side, I will admit that the animation in the sequel is of a higher quality.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Paul Attanasio
    Morons from Outer Space
    The gags just aren't very funny, relying overmuch on the usual British understatement...Morons From Outer Space has, by my count, eight laughs (which works out to 62 cents a laugh). [21 Nov 1985, p.C16]
    • Washington Post
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Paul Attanasio
    Summer Rental
    Summer Rental is the kind of movie that could make you wish you had poison ivy -- at least the scratching would occupy your mind. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]
    • Washington Post
prev
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »