Paul Attanasio

Paul Attanasio
Paul Attanasio's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Washington Post
Publications: Washington Post

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
24% The River (1984) Rydell shoots the movie as if it had been commissioned by the Department of Agriculture. His scenes have such brute intentionality, they never come to life -- they're instant, airless cliches. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 17, 2020
57% A Love in Germany (Eine Liebe in Deutschland) (1983) Why great directors occasionally deliver an outrageous clunker is anyone's guess, but here's another one for the books -- A Love in Germany, Andrzej Wajda's meditation on the banality of evil, with the emphasis on banality. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 24, 2020
62% Out of Africa (1985) This may be the silliest serious movie since Reds. When you finally get the heck out of Africa, it's not a second too soon. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 29, 2020
40% A Chorus Line (1985) A Chorus Line is a kind of 'Murphy's Law: The Motion Picture' -- everything that can go wrong does. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 6, 2019
40% Rocky IV (1985) Say what you like about the original Rocky, at least it was about something -- a sweet pug up against the system, and in love with a dowd. Rocky IV appears to be an epic about Sylvester Stallone's penchant for self-abuse. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 2, 2018
79% Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) "Down and Out,"... is a failed fish-out-of-water story. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
89% The Breakfast Club (1985) Taking place almost entirely in one room, "The Breakfast Club" is the kind of movie -- and the kind of play -- that's hardly seen anymore. And good riddance. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
75% Pretty in Pink (1986) ... in the end "Pretty in Pink" is as fraudulent as the junk it's supposed to transcend. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
50% The Razor's Edge (1984) An adaptation of the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, this longtime pet project of Murray's will only disappoint his many fans. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
95% Desert Hearts (1986) ... this is an astonishingly polished and nuanced first film. It deserves to be celebrated, not quibbled with. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
83% The Flamingo Kid (1984) The movie has an engaging surface, but it's all surface -- it's like watching an outsize TV. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
93% Manhunter (1986) ... "Manhunter" is a gory and gorgeous cop thriller... - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
29% Breakin' 2 - Electric Boogaloo (1984) Such aggressive photography could lend John Candy the grace of Gregory Hines. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
96% The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) ... an unremarkable documentary about the San Francisco politico... - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
80% Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) 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. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
93% Witness (1985) What saves "Witness" is its cast, and Weir's artistry in orchestrating and modulating their performances. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
57% Vision Quest (1985) That's the problem with all of "Vision Quest" -- when the movie ends with Louden narrating off-screen his "live for today" philosophy, it's plausible in his mouth, a joke for adults. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
87% Once Upon a Time in America (1984) The movie's four hours long, but no one had the time to write a single real character. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
93% The Killing Fields (1984) ... a visually arresting epic guaranteed to capture the hearts and minds of its audience. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
No Score Yet Marie - A True Story (1985) Despite a truly remarkable study in Wonder Bread villainy by Jeff Daniels, "Marie: A True Story" is never more than a TV-style docudrama about Fighting Back. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
38% Creator (1985) How did a movie this mindlessly saccharine ever get made? - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
71% The Little Drummer Girl (1984) Like an enchanted escape artist, director George Roy Hill has pulled off that rarest of Hollywood feats -- the thriller of ideas. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
50% Power (1986) Before it turns slack and sentimental, "Power," Sidney Lumet's foray into the world of political consultants, crackles with a kind of moral static. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
76% Body Double (1984) ... "Body Double" finds Brian De Palma at the zenith of his cinematic virtuosity. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
51% Dune (1984) As you would expect from visionary director David Lynch, it is a movie of often staggering visual power, the most ambitious science fiction film since "2001"; it's also stupefyingly dull and disorderly. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
57% Mischief (1985) "Mischief," in other words, is echt teen sex comedy, hitting its marks in the way a skilled carpenter drives home his millionth nail. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
89% The Brother from Another Planet (1984) Sayles is no storyteller; despite the verve of its language, "The Brother From Another Planet" eventually sags of its own weight. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
43% Agnes of God (1985) What "Agnes of God" needed was a director like David "Scanners" Cronenberg, the Bergman of blood, who would compose a fantasia upon it, drag it down to its B-movie roots. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
58% Falling in Love (1984) Can contemporary romance be this flat? - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
93% Lost Horizon (1937) Great directors are perhaps best understood by their failures, and such is the case with "Lost Horizon. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
67% Ladyhawke (1985) Unfortunately, director Richard Donner never quite gets the tone right, and the pace is positively stuporous. The horses gallop, but the film barely canters. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
86% An Unfinished Piece for Mechanical Piano (Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino) (1977) "An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano" is buoyed by a cast that is uniformly excellent... - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
36% Mrs. Soffel (1984) In "Mrs. Soffel," director Gillian Armstrong is so enthralled with her feminist message that she never lets her story breathe. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
33% Protocol (1984) "Protocol" is the kind of corny screwball comedy you thought nobody made anymore. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
70% Micki + Maude (1984) Who expected Dudley Moore to be a cerebral actor? - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
45% The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) "The Legend of Billie Jean" is partly intended as a satire of the American machine of celebrity, but it's mostly supposed to be taken straight, and much of the fun of the movie lies in trying to tell the two apart. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
31% Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985) They're not movies so much as variety shows featuring talented young comics. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
20% Iron Eagle (1986) ... there's no apparent logic to any of this, except as a way to capitalize on the current vogue for imperialist fervor and steal the thunder from Paramount's "Top Gun,"... - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
77% Better Off Dead (1985) Mired in this is Cusack ("The Sure Thing"), an unusually adept verbal comedian not so adept (to his credit) at this kind of slapstick. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
96% Stranger Than Paradise (1984) Daring in its conception but made with a watchmaker's care, "Stranger Than Paradise" is a playfully eclectic, formally perfect gem. It is also a persistently funny film that owes as much to "The Honeymooners" as it does to the avant-garde. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
30% Secret Admirer (1985) Director David Greenwalt has brought "Secret Admirer" a sense of visual style, some energy and a few good zingers, but the movie (which he cowrote with Jim Kouf) is smothered by the formula. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
88% A Private Function (1985) "A Private Function" is an amusing farce in the tradition of old Ealing studio comedies like "The Lavender Hill Mob," and like those movies, it never quite ignites. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 4, 2018
85% Runaway Train (1985) "Runaway Train" isn't just bad -- it's bodaciously bad, grotesquely overblown, lurid in its emotion, big ideas on its brain. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
56% Lady Jane (1986) Overall, the movie is cloddishly composed, with awkward zooms and theatrical blocking. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
No Score Yet Moving Violations (1985) ... just "Police Academy" all over again, without laughs. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
9% Supergirl (1984) Movies like "Supergirl" succeed when they have fun with their material, rather than making fun of it. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
31% The Best of Times (1986) ... what it really resembles, more than anything, is a teen comedy populated by adults. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
48% The Jewel of the Nile (1985) Director Lewis Teague uses the frame the way a magician uses a hat or a handkerchief: surprises are always popping into it, or out of its shadows. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
82% The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) Thank heavens these spies come in from the cold -- it's frozen their brains. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018
58% The Last Dragon (1985) An intoxicating blend of comedy, kung fu, corny romance, special effects and rock videos, it's as electrically sleepless as the New York it's set against. - Washington Post EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 3, 2018