ROTTEN TOMATOES: Evan Williams

EVAN WILLIAMS

Agrees with the Tomatometer 83% of the time.

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.

Publications: The Australian

Total Reviews: 48

LISTING OF ALL REVIEWS & ARTICLES

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh 3/5	Fresh 66%	The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)	" If fantasy is your thing, take a trip through Gilliam's mirror and drink your fill, but don't blame me for your indigestion." Posted Nov 1, 2009
Fresh 3/4	Fresh 94%	In Search Of Beethoven (2009)	" There are too many snippets of music, too many talking heads, too little to define that great arc of the composer's life and spiritual development. But no one who cares about the man and his music will miss it. For that I give credit to its subject." Posted Oct 30, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 73%	Mao's Last Dancer (2009)	" We must be thankful that Beresford's grand, lucid and absorbing film tells [Li's] story with such passion and conviction." Posted Oct 5, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 64%	Charlie & Boots (2009)	" It's a superbly relaxed and good-natured film." Posted Sep 6, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Rotten 55%	The Soloist (2009)	" Its power may owe more to Beethoven and Bach than the skills of the filmmakers, but it can be recommended to all who like a strange and moving story." Posted Aug 30, 2009
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 52%	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)	" It would be impossible to make a completely dull film of Godey's story, but Scott has succeeded in reducing it to an empty, mechanical spectacle." Posted Aug 30, 2009
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 95%	The Cove (2009)	" By any measure, this is a horror film: graphic, shocking, uncompromising. The horrors, moreover, are real: the annual slaughter of thousands of dolphins in a secluded cove in Japan, where they are trapped in nets and hacked and speared to death." Posted Aug 23, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 100%	Balibo (2009)	" Robert Connolly has made a brave and deeply disturbing film." Posted Aug 19, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 94%	Beautiful Kate (2009)	" Beautiful Kate just keeps drifting along, its spells of passion and anguish, its sex scenes, its crude language, its occasional touches of horror lost in a miasma of dreamy mood swings and jumbled flashbacks." Posted Aug 9, 2009
Fresh 3.5/5	Rotten 43%	Fragments (2009)	" I'm making it sound very grim and depressing, but miraculously it's not. The interlocking sections are beautifully constructed, and in a large and notable ensemble cast, the performances are vivid and convincing. The children are especially good." Posted Jul 17, 2009
Fresh 3.5/5	Rotten 50%	The Fox and the Child (2008)	" The Fox and the Child is more than a wildlife documentary. It invites us to contemplate alternative worlds of sensation and experience, to enter the consciousness of other species, to explore our contacts with them." Posted Jul 17, 2009
Rotten 2/5	Rotten 15%	Year One (2009)	" The film is lumpy and self-conscious, the dialogue not very witty." Posted Jul 10, 2009
Rotten 2/5	Rotten 43%	The Proposal (2009)	" The Proposal could have been a terrific screwball comedy, but the end results are well below average." Posted Jun 28, 2009
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 19%	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)	" Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is even more spectacular than its predecessor, but spectacle without a decent narrative or interesting characters soon becomes tedious." Posted Jun 28, 2009
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 65%	Coco Before Chanel (2009)	" In fairness to Anne Fontaine, the director, this isn't meant to be the full story of Coco's life. The events of the film seem to have been carefully chosen." Posted Jun 28, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 83%	Two Lovers (2009)	" The film never feels dark or gloom-laden. The performances are so sensitive, so convincing, that we are drawn inescapably into a real world of pain and solace." Posted Jun 12, 2009
Rotten 2/5	Rotten 32%	Terminator Salvation (2009)	" For once I found myself hankering for Arnold Schwarzenegger." Posted Jun 12, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Rotten 39%	Inkheart (2009)	" Readers who want to exercise their imaginations may prefer to stick to the written word. If a story gets boring, you can always skip a few pages and move on. In the cinema there isn't much choice." Posted Apr 10, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Rotten 33%	Knowing (2009)	" The final message may be trite, even saccharine, but Knowing would be pretty well unbearable without it. Proyas has made a truly haunting and terrifying film." Posted Apr 3, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 100%	Two Fists, One Heart (2008)	" The screenwriter, Rai Fazio, of Sicilian background, was a boxer from the age of four, trained by his father. So he knows what he's talking about." Posted Mar 27, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 60%	Salvation (2008)	" The final moments have an unexpected snap of black humour and suspense, and every so often we are astonished by an image of striking beauty and strangeness." Posted Mar 27, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 60%	W. (2008)	" An absorbing and weirdly enjoyable portrait of a slight, meritless man and his calamitous presidency." Posted Mar 6, 2009
Fresh 4.5/5	Fresh 62%	The Reader (2008)	" It is a majestically sombre, always gripping film, told with immense restraint and no hint of sensationalism." Posted Feb 27, 2009
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 86%	Rachel Getting Married (2008)	" The pace never slackens, the prattle is relentless. And in the end I was moved." Posted Feb 20, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 85%	Ghost Town (2008)	" Sorrow and darkness aren't far below the surface of this lovely comedy, which makes our laughter more agreeable, and more frequent." Posted Feb 6, 2009
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 93%	Milk (2008)	" The film is dedicated to Milk's memory, but it's Penn that most of us will remember." Posted Jan 30, 2009
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 82%	Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)	" Johansson, fast becoming the Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow of Allen's mature years, treads a deft path between sensuousness, vulnerability and self-delusion." Posted Jan 2, 2009
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 25%	Four Christmases (2008)	" Projectile baby vomiting is a recurring gag. I cried mistletoe well before the film was halfway through." Posted Dec 12, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 71%	American Teen (2008)	" Written and directed by Nanette Burstein, it's like an intricate and many-layered slice of reality television transferred to the big screen, by turns funny, sad, painful, embarrassing, crude and strangely moving." Posted Dec 1, 2008
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 81%	Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (2008)	" Hicks has made one of the best films I have seen about the mind of a creative artist." Posted Nov 19, 2008
Rotten 2/5	Fresh 63%	Newcastle (2009)	" It is deflating to realise that even when doing what they love best, these characters are less than real." Posted Nov 14, 2008
Fresh 4.5/5	Fresh 90%	Hunger (2008)	" One of the great films of the year: stark, brave andunforgettable." Posted Nov 7, 2008
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 86%	Celebrity: Dominick Dunne (2008)	" His interviews suggest candour and humility and a wonderful enthusiasm for whatever cause he's espousing." Posted Oct 31, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 64%	Brideshead Revisited (2008)	" *Those with warm memories of the BBC television serial in the 1980s will find much in this Brideshead* to enjoy.**" Posted Oct 31, 2008
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 100%	Man On Wire (2008)	" Marsh uses a combination of interviews, film of Petit as a young man, authentic newsreels and enacted reconstructions to produce an unforgettable experience." Posted Oct 17, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 61%	The Duchess (2008)	" Intelligently written, superbly acted, beautiful to look at and happily free of anachronisms." Posted Oct 10, 2008
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 28%	Eagle Eye (2008)	" It has been shot and edited with that hectic, all-too-familiar brand of impressionistic choppiness often used by Hollywood directors to make a silly story unintelligible." Posted Oct 3, 2008
Fresh 4/4	Fresh 96%	WALL-E (2008)	" A rich and provocative work of art that manages to be fun." Posted Sep 19, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Rotten 34%	The Edge of Love (2009)	" An intense and strangely beautiful film..." Posted Aug 29, 2008
Fresh 3/5	Rotten 19%	The Clone Wars (2008)	" The characters are more likable than usual." Posted Aug 29, 2008
Fresh 4.5/5	Fresh 92%	Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)	" It's an exhilarating film, one of the best he has given us." Posted Jul 10, 2008
Fresh 4/5	Fresh 80%	Standard Operating Procedure (2008)	" Standard Operating Procedure is a brilliantly, almost self-consciously, stylish film." Posted Jul 10, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 87%	Mongol (2008)	" Even the most intense human drama is somehow reduced by the landscape." Posted Jun 20, 2008
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 50%	Sex and the City - The Movie (2008)	" Here is an unashamed celebration of materialist values, an orgy of labels, brands and product placements as sinful, by implication, as the behaviour of the characters." Posted Jun 7, 2008
Fresh 3/5	Fresh 80%	The Flight of the Red Balloon (2008)	" I fear many viewers may lose patience. But those who stay to the end of this delicate and beautiful film will be amply rewarded." Posted May 30, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 86%	Shine a Light (2008)	" As a concert film it's among the best: intimately shot, smoothly edited, endlessly involving." Posted May 30, 2008
Rotten 2.5/5	Rotten 27%	Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)	" If further proof were needed of my dispiriting theory that the best novels rarely make the best films, it is to be found, richly scented and sumptuously packaged, in Love in the Time of Cholera." Posted May 25, 2008
Fresh 3.5/5	Fresh 77%	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)	" It's a film well tuned to its own sense of nostalgia and the images of its time." Posted May 25, 2008

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EVAN WILLIAMS

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