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Evan Williams

Evan Williams's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
Biography:

Evan Williams has been a film critic for The Australian and The Weekend Australian since 1981. He has reviewed films regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald (1968-71), Australian Playboy (1979-80) and Quadrant (1992-98) and was a member of the Australian Film Institute Jury in 1978 and 1979. He chaired the Commonwealth Film and Literature Board of Review, appointed to hear appeals against film classifications, from 1988 to 1993. A former Associate Editor of The Australian and the Sunday Telegraph and former editor of The Sunday Australian, he won a Walkley Award for journalism in 1970, wrote speeches for Prime Minister Gough Whitlam from 1973 to 1977 and headed the NSW Government’s cultural sector from 1977 to 2001. He is a trustee of the Sydney Opera House and a Member of the Order of Australia.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Let It Be (1970) 81% EDIT “There is no story, no screenplay, none of the visual gimmickry of Richard Lester's Beatles films, or the brilliant animation of Yellow Submarine. It is not even a good documentary.” – Sydney Morning Herald May 9, 2024 Full Review Midnight Cowboy (1969) 89% EDIT “Mr. Voight's and Mr. Hoffman's performances are pretty well impossible to fault. I found the film profoundly touching and funny, and quite hypnotically enjoyable to watch.” – Sydney Morning Herald Mar 11, 2022 Full Review Oliver! (1968) 90% EDIT “The show survives on Bart's music; and Onna White has devised the wonderful dance routines with some brilliantly ingenious effects.” – Sydney Morning Herald Mar 3, 2022 Full Review Gallipoli (1981) 91% EDIT “Weir's objective was not to show us Gallipoli through a documentary lens, but with an artist's vision. He has succeeded magnificently.” – The Australian Jul 7, 2017 Full Review Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) 62% EDIT “The film is touching, spectacular and surprisingly coherent. It also has something the others lacked entirely: old-fashioned charm. This time, The Force is with us.” – The Australian Dec 15, 2015 Full Review Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) 54% EDIT “Everything in Phantom Menace exists in a bright noisy vacuum.” – The Australian Dec 15, 2015 Full Review Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) 83% EDIT “There are all sorts of hints in the latest escapade (notionally directed by Richard Marquand) that we are meant to be taking it seriously.” – The Australian Dec 15, 2015 Full Review Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) 79% 4/5 EDIT “The special effects, of course, are incomparably good and the digital photography achieves a dazzling clarity.” – The Australian Dec 15, 2015 Full Review The House of Magic (2013) 76% 3.5/5 EDIT “I haven't seen a more captivating kids' film for a long time... well, not since Toy Story, perhaps not since The Wizard of Oz.” – The Australian Jan 9, 2015 Full Review We Are the Best! (2013) 97% 3/5 EDIT “For all their moodiness and irascibility, the girls come across as warm and believable, and there are funny moments when they take to the streets to raise money for a new guitar.” – The Australian Jan 4, 2015 Full Review Men, Women & Children (2014) 33% 3/5 EDIT “[This] film may be tedious and overburdened, but moments keep coming back to haunt me.” – The Australian Dec 4, 2014 Full Review The Best of Me (2014) 12% 2/5 EDIT “The Best of Me turns into a half-baked dramatic thriller, with violent confrontations, gunfights, plenty of nasty characters and one big scary action scene.” – The Australian Oct 31, 2014 Full Review John Wick (2014) 86% 3/5 EDIT “Reeves is in his element: a natural in hard-edged action thrillers from Speed to The Matrix, he has the benefit of a screenplay that gives him little to say.” – The Australian Oct 31, 2014 Full Review Tammy (2014) 24% 2.5/5 EDIT “The filmmakers never quite find the balance between real-life experience and freewheeling nonsense that drives the best comic road movies.” – The Australian Oct 17, 2014 Full Review A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) 68% 3.5/5 EDIT “For all its slick contemporary surface and fashionably nasty trimmings it's really a throwback to the age of 1940s noir.” – The Australian Oct 17, 2014 Full Review Tusk (2014) 45% 2.5/5 EDIT “Parts of it are funny, parts are suspenseful and parts of it - to put it mildly - are hideously awful. Horrible may be a better word than horrific.” – The Australian Oct 16, 2014 Full Review The Judge (2014) 49% 3.5/5 EDIT “Duvall is a specialist with slightly deranged, broken-down characters, and he's done nothing better than this.” – The Australian Oct 16, 2014 Full Review The Conjuring (2013) 86% 3/5 EDIT “This one never really takes hold and goes horribly wrong about 20 minutes before the end.” – The Australian Oct 14, 2014 Full Review Gone Girl (2014) 88% 4/5 EDIT “There's no denying that it's an entertaining movie, made by a consummate filmmaker, though not, perhaps, quite as important as it would like to be.” – The Australian Oct 9, 2014 Full Review Annabelle (2014) 28% 2/5 EDIT “Being startled is not the same as being scared, and speaking on behalf of other hardened critics, I have to say we weren't scared for a moment.” – The Australian Oct 3, 2014 Full Review Wish I Was Here (2014) 45% 3.5/5 EDIT “As Aidan, Graff combines depth of insight with an endearing naivety, and the rest of the cast could hardly be better.” – The Australian Sep 26, 2014 Full Review The Little Death (2014) 61% 3.5/5 EDIT “The Little Death is bold, brave and original.” – The Australian Sep 26, 2014 Full Review The Inbetweeners 2 (2014) 69% 1/5 EDIT “The dialogue is relentlessly fast but never funny, unless you consider four-letter words funny in themselves.” – The Australian Aug 28, 2014 Full Review In Search of Chopin (2014) 80% 4/5 EDIT “It's one of Grabsky's best films, using his well-established formula of readings from letters and diaries, talking-head appearances by musicians and other authorities, and an abundance of well-chosen musical excerpts, linked by [his] sensitive narration.” – The Australian Aug 19, 2014 Full Review The Expendables 3 (2014) 32% 3.5/5 EDIT “Yes, it's pretty much the same mixture as before, but slicker and more polished, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.” – The Australian Aug 19, 2014 Full Review
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