Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics

by Mark Kermode

For decades, the backbone of film criticism has been the hatchet job -- the entertaining trashing of a film by professional reviewers, seen by many as cynical snobs. But with the arrival of the internet, have the critics finally fallen under the axe? With movie posters now just as likely to be adorned by Twitter quotes as fusty reviewer recommendations, has the rise of enthusiastic amateurism sounded the death knell of a profession? Are the democratic opportunities of the internet any more reliable than the old gripes and prejudices of the establishment? Can editing really be done by robots? And what kind of films would we have if we listened to what the audience thinks it wants? Starting with the celebrated TV fight between film-maker Ken Russell and critic Alexander Walker (the former hit the latter with a rolled-up copy of his Evening Standard review on live television) and ending with his own admission to Steven Spielberg of a major error of judgement, Mark Kermode takes us on a journey across the modern cinematic landscape. Like its predecessor, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex, Hatchet Job blends historical analysis with trenchant opinion, bitter personal prejudices, autobiographical diversions and anecdotes, and laugh-out-loud acerbic humour. It's the perfect book for anyone who's ever expressed an opinion about a movie.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Audiobook, Media Tie In, Journalism, Humor, Memoir

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2013

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a continually annoying, longwinded, blokey-jokey, sickeningly ingratiating manner Mark Kermode makes a few interesting observations. These have to be quarried out of the endless self-congratulatory froth that is your standard Kermode paragraph. I was interested in the following.

CRITICS : WHY DO THEY EXIST?

Answer : because you know that their opinions and comments have not been invented by a studio publicity team, unlike the random Amazon or IMDB or Twitter one-liner you may have seen. MK knows, as do we all, that online “amateur” reviews can be gamed. So critics are honest. Well, yes, but does that make them useful? All the film critics in the world were raving about I, Daniel Blake, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, to mention three recent films, and each one was terrible in my little opinion. And then again, if it wasn’t for critics I would not have seen Beyond the Hills (a 2 hour drama about a Romanian nunnery), Love and Friendship (a costume drama from a Jane Austen short story, yawn), James White (an indie about a guy whose mother is dying) or Rams (a drama about two elderly sheep farmers in Iceland) – all of which were brilliant.

You can’t win with critics – Mark Kermode thinks Inarritu’s great movie Babel to be complete rubbish – he’s so wrong! – but he also thinks The Exorcist is one of the all time great movies – he’s so right!



(Note the festoons of quotes from apparently intelligent people persuading you to see this load of old codswallop.)


DO CRITICS HAVE A FUTURE?

Or have the amateur loonies (that’s us) taken over the asylum? Well, did critics ever have a future? Did fans consult Roger Ebert or Philip French before heading for the cinema? Reviews and metacritical scores mostly work on me by putting me off things - if the tomatometer reads 35% I no longer want to see your movie. But it doesn’t work the other way round - Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows and Finding Dory all get 95%-plus at Rotten Tomatoes and they were unwatchable, tiresome and dull respectively. In my opinion.

Perhaps you can find either a critic or blogger or (even) Goodreader whose taste is somewhere near your own and stick with that voice. But basically you can’t trust anyone – even though you still need to be able to make some kind of reasonable guess about which film or book is worth devoting your time and money out of the ten billion on offer in our everything-permanently-available culture.

CAN YOU TRUST YOURSELF?

MK discusses the dark filthy secret of preview audiences in the movie business. This is where an audience of allegedly normal people are shown a movie before it’s been finally edited. They are then asked what they thought. In the famous example of Fatal Attraction, the original version has Alex Forrest (the Glen Close character) committing suicide. The preview audience hated that, they wanted Michael Douglas to “kill the bitch” as the phrase was. And the problem is – they were right. Their crass knee-jerk lust for revenge made Adrian Lyne the director reshoot the entire end and come up with the fantastic blood-bath we get in the movie we know and love or hate. Well, you know, it’s a great piece of trash, it ain’t Citizen Kane, so who cares about artistic integrity.
But what if there were preview audiences when Shakespeare was around and after they saw the first version of Hamlet they complained that it was too depressing and they really wanted Hamlet and Ophelia to get together in the end, and what if Willie the Shake had thought oh well, these plays of mine, who really cares, I only write to them to pay the bills, I’ll do a rewrite, it’s not like Hamlet is Citizen Kane.

That said, I think all movies which have had reshoots done after previews should be flagged as such, like you have to identify artificial flavourings and colours in food products.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kermode is my goto film critic for new movies. Why because his tastes and mine align more times then not. It used to be Ebert for exactly the same reason. This book was an interesting look into the world of film criticism as a profession.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was always a keen listener to Wittertainment - the flagship film show on Radio 5 live.
Firstly from the more conventional way of just listing to the radio, to eventually downloading the podcast each week.
It's true when Kermode states that many listers find entertainment in the show even if they don't intend to go to their local multiplex.

He's notorious rants were always a joy to behold, but do they serve a purpose as bad reviews stick. I'd certainly avoid a film on DVD if I'd known Dr. Kermode had bad mouthed it...

The other aspect of the show that I really enjoyed was the rundown of the previous weeks Top 10 box office during the times I had a Cineworld Unlimited Card, hearing contributors to the show giving options on films I'd already seen is far more intresting than hearing a view of a film I've got little interest in seeing.

Kermode makes some intresting points of how the internet has made an impact on how we judge a film, now browsing through Netflix or Prime I'd rather check the films rating on IMDB first.

There's a similar case when it comes to books too, which he mentions during the topic of Amazon and DVD reviews.
The ownership of Goodreads was cited and it's certainly true that certain reviewers judgments I trust the most and always interested in their comments of books I'd previously read.

Maybe with so much choice these days it has made us quite picky with our selections?
Theres also a few intresting anecdotes to help bolster the books length.
Nothing too explosive but there's atleast something intresting for all cinephiles to enjoy.

[Clara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me state first off that I am a big fan of Mark Kermode, and that this two-star rating might be a little mean. But as The Good Doctor himself taught me, diminished expectations count for a lot, and when you know that something has the potential to be so much better (I devoured "The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex" with glee), the disappointment is that much greater.

"Hatchet Job" meanders in no discernible order through the world of film criticism and puts the case forward for the sanctity of good old-fashioned film journalism in an area increasingly dominated by the blogosphere. Kermode talks about his life as a critic, making the most of free sandwiches, the arrival of the fax machine, then the internet, and a bit about his dog (in fact, too much about his dog). By far the thing which he does most, however, is go off on pages-long mildly amusing asides about particular films or various anecdotes from his time in the business.

The book is by no means a disaster. It provides enough entertainment to keep you going to the end pretty painlessly. It's just that the urgency of the central argument is somewhat watery, and after 300 pages or so, I couldn't help feeling that the topic of film criticism was just a loose vehicle for writing a book about 'funny film stuff' and a chance to throw about as much Kermodian wit as possible.

[Holly Cruise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've already read both of Mark Kermode's previous books on cinema and the contents thereof, so I am definitely the target audience for this book. Sure enough, I enjoyed it, although I suspect it was more of an appendix to the previous books rather than a great standalone in itself.

I like Kermode's writing/ranting style - being a listener to the Five Live film podcast and all - and this definitely supplies plenty of that. There are also some interesting insights into the, admittedly somewhat niche, world of the film critic. It doesn't have the firm narrative structure or thesis of his previous books, but there are entertaining anecdotes to be found and it never lost my interest.

Lightweight but enjoyable.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kermode is back again, and this time he's defending his profession and job. Hatchet Job is Mark Kermode writing about film criticism in an age when everyone can create a blog and express their opinions to the world on the internet. Also exploring the questions of why people should even bother listening to critics, and why movie studios pulling tweets for movie posters is less reliable than someone who has been paid for their review and had their work run past an editor. Often citing Roger Ebert as the benchmark for criticism, he goes into past instances when critics have got it very wrong about movies and very right, only for the film to tank at the box office.

But rather than be against the rise of online reviews and blogging, he actually defends and says when it's done well they're as valued to the world of critiquing and cinema as some who's a 'professional'. He's trying to embrace the future rather than fight it.

It's very well written and, in some points, even funny. As someone who listens to him weekly on his film review podcast, I notice that sometimes his books can often be made up of stuff he's just repeating that he read on the radio, but there wasn't much of that hear (the only example I can think of his the A.I Artificial Intelligence anecdote).

He may come across as an old grumply man ranting about how 3D is ruining cinema and that Michael Bay is the devil, but for the time being, at least, he's still worth listening too.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't quite put my finger on exactly why I didn't enjoy this book as much as Kermode's previous books about movies. Maybe it is simply that he has already used so many of his best anecdotes in his previous books. Or maybe it's just that I'm not as interested in what he, a film critic, has to say about film criticism as I am in what he has to say about films.

And it probably doesn't help that I've heard many of the best lines in the book before. The one-sentence hatchet-job review of The Straight Story (which I liked) as 'Forrest Gump on a tractor' or Mannequin “by, for and about dummies” or Knowing “You're better off not.” Some of his pet grumbles, such as people reviewing films that they haven't actually seen (apparently not so unusual as you might think) or attention-seeking internet critics deciding to undermine how the whole press-screening system works by ignoring embargoes I have definitely heard before on his Friday afternoon Wittertainment show. And I'm already well aware of his (probably perfectly reasonable) opinion of the works of Michael Bay (I've only ever seen one Michael Bay film, Bad Boys and if it is typical of his output, then I've no desire to watch anything else he's done. No, actually, that's not quite true. I've seen the first Transformers film in Dutch. The fact I didn't understand a word of what any of the characters were saying might not have made a great deal of difference.)

All that said, it's reasonably diverting – I quite enjoyed his explanation, using the example of Casablanca, of why audience-testing films can ruin them, and for all that Kermode has the same slightly distracting habit of disappearing off on tangents that last for several pages before returning to his original point that I'm guilty of myself, it didn't take me long to read.

[Tomrhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just by typing this sentence I have already placed myself in the category of the apocalyptic anonymous blogger. I am immediately turned into someone who seem to think that, just because that a vast majority of the western world has access to the internet, they all must surely be interested in my inane opinion about everything under the sun. One of those individuals that Dr Kermode points at as an issue in the current world of criticism. And the interesting thing is... I agree with him, I am an incredibly dangerous thing.
First off, I need to declare a vested interest. I am a huge fan of Mark Kermode's work, and even though I don't always agree with his views, I respect his dignity as a critic, and will always place stock in his views (and will often pass off his analysis as my own, when my intelligence fails me). And to an extent, with this book he is already preaching to the converted, as I do believe that the presence of professional, identifiable critics are vitally important in the analysis of human culture. However, with all this being true, I can't help being disappointed with his latest book.
Kermode sets out to examine the death knell of the professional critic. The internet has well and truly pulled the rug from beneath the feet of printed media, and the role of the traditional critic is uncertain. When anyone with an internet connection can opine about a certain film, or spew their bile, or make money from false opinions, it begins to cheapen the value of The Honest Critic. However, Kermode has a handy tool against this potential problem. Strip anonymity from the critic. This way there is jeopardy to the review. Why would this person say this if he had something to lose in saying it? Or conversely, it is easy to track down an affiliation between the critic and the film. I think there is great value in this, and will always prioritise the views of those identifiable critics and those (often silly) anonymous critics. Kermode himself has himself reaped the rewards for being a 'brand' (although I am sure he would hate that word) to attach a review to. And even if I disagree with him on a certain review, I always appreciate his honesty and passion about films. When Kermode believes something, he BELIEVES it (often in the face of common critical consensus, a habit that has led to him being branded a contrarian).
In the end (spoiler alert) Kermode sees the value of the internet, and attempts to reconcile old printed media and digital media. In effect, printed media needs to stop being so fusty and 'Move with the times granddad' and digital media needs to grow up from it teenage stroppiess and not assume that freedom is the be all and end all of cultural development (well done you, you have the right to your opinion but that does not automatically give it weight or validity). When done right (i.e. with identifiable critics and accountability), such as denofgeek or empireonline, it works!
I have only focussed on one aspect of Kermode's thesis in this review, as I feel it is the most topical aspect, but there are other very interesting arguments. The idea that getting the first review is not necessarily guaranteeing a correct review, and also having to be dignified enough to admit your wrong, and the idea of being snippy (read: nasty) in a review doesn't give the opinion more weight.
So all very interesting and well argued. So why was I disappointed? To be honest, I felt that there were to may digressions in the arguments. All these digressions were interesting, but only succeeded to muddy and dilute the strength of the argument. There were many asides that I felt were unnecessary, and would only lead me to lose track of Kermode's point, and had to flick back a few pages to reacclimatise myself. And with one of the Good Doctor's main strengths as a critic being that he pinpoints exactly the areas of a film that work and those that don't (again, although I don't always agree with him, I always understand WHY he feels a certain way towards a film), it only serves to frustrate me when he takes so long getting to his main argument.
With all that being said, why listen to me? Who am I anyway?

[Kaoru · Rating 4 out of 5]

His first book was about all the mad stories he experienced in his life as a movie reviewer, his second one was about the sorry state that mainstream cinema more or less is in these days... and since both of these things are pretty much the topics he loves to talk about the most, there's actually not that much left for him in his third book. But here it is anyway, and its topic is about... movie reviewing. What it used to be like, how it's happening today and what it might evolve into. Or something.

Of course, there are some very interesting bits and chapters about Roger Ebert, Amazon-reviews, test screenings and bloggers. But Mark Kermode is Mark Kermode, so very soon he will go off into tangents so far off the original topic that you wonder how the hell he even got there. He can't even tell the story about his encounter with a furious director straight without interrupting it with a very lengthy detour about his love for "Shock Treatment" (That sequel to "Rocky Horror" that almost no one on earth has ever seen). Not that I mind or anything. Because, really, if you pick up a book by Mark Kermode this is exactly what you want. (And aside from his movie reviews this is exactly what you're listening to his radio show on BBC 5 for.) Here's no Simon Mayo who impatiently demands "So on with the actual story....!" or a news feature forcing a break. This is raw and (mostly) unedited Kermode stuff from beginning to end. And it's entertaining, incoherent, funny, irritating, insightful and sometimes infurating. Certainly, it won't win over anyone who isn't a fan already but for everyone who already is is in for a treat.

And you would want the audiobook version, of course. Because what's the point of a Kermode text if the words aren't spoken by the man himself?

[Jeff Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have raised this from 3 stars to 4 on the simple basis that the book maintains its focus and stays interesting throughout. That may be an odd thing to say, but whilst I was enjoying the first few Chapters I was thinking 'How is this book going to avoid just padding or repeating itself - how much can he actually write about being a film critic?'; but to his credit the book remains repetition free and engaging right to the end, linking up arguments and concepts as it goes along, whilst remaining utterly readable (which it should be - he's a professional writer!).

Kermode may be a 'marmite' figure and this won't help change anyone's opinion on that, but I like the fact he is quite happy to accept this, highlight times when he may have courted controversy, but always remained true to his opinions. The final chapter when he subsequently revisits a film and completes a full 180 turnaround is well presented as he faces the director in question and apologises to him - much to the directors surprise (no spoilers - you'll have to read it to find out who...)

A few films popped up that I will track down, but that is not the purpose of this book, it's about the critic, not the films themselves, and is a fascinating insight into their world, and what the future may hold, as in our modern 'online' world everyone is a critic (to coin a phrase); including yours truly as I write this...critiquing a professional critic about a book he's written on what it means to be a critic - like falling into an Escher painting!

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Hatchet Job’ contains Kermode’s hilarious and digressive meditations on film criticism as it was and as it is now. The chapters proceed in a rambling form, structured through lengthy and artfully articulated anecdotes. At the outset, Kermode comments that his best-known and most popular reviews are deeply negative ones. This accords with my tendency to seek out his views on anything made by Michael Bay. Moreover, my favourite review of his has to be the magnificent rant about Sex and the City 2, in which he sings the Internationale. I’ve previously read his book The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex: What's Wrong with Modern Movies? which critiques chain cinemas and 3D. This one is very similar in tone and structure, although perhaps not quite so entertaining. Probably because I have stronger (mostly negative) feelings about 3D than I do about film reviewing in the 21st century. Still, the comparisons between book and film reviewing were interesting, as they made me wonder how much more effort I’d put into goodreads reviews if they were my job rather than a tool of procrastination.

Overall, this book was entertaining and fun. I am still not ready to rediscover ‘AI Artificial Intelligence’ as a hidden gem, though. As far as I’m concerned, that film was too long and excessively schmaltzy.

[Laura Armstrong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having listened to Mark Kermode's other, in my view more rounded and engaging books, I think this could be a book too far. There were some interesting topics covered i.e the reach of the online film reviewing community, the power of audience feedback and other mildly diverting aspects of the critical film process. Sometimes I feel Kermode gets a little too passionate about his subject, which can (well it did for me)be to the detriment of the the overall enjoyability of the read.

[فاروق الفرشيشي · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the main point here is that it's tempting to be rude towards movies, but it's better to look for the good parts and praise the beauty. Even so, a critic is a critic and sometimes he can't help it with bringing the hatchet.

I won't discuss every theme suggested by the book here (although, I am going to list them all for the memory, I don't think I'd like to read it again), but I think that Kermode (with whom I share a lot in film taste) doesn't get what criticism precisely is, for he reduced it into judging if a film is good or bad. Not surprising when he compares critical writing with consumer reviews which is ONLY based on personal, emotional experience with the film/product. For me, criticism is mainly an attempt to understand an artwork, after which, a judgement becomes trivial.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ashamedly my first exposure to Mark Kermode, who through his warm, witty writing style quickly won me over. I enjoyed the balance of funny anecdotes, film knowledge (my Letterboxd watchlist has dramatically expanded), and broader, well-argued points surrounding the continued value of film criticism as a profession.

[Jon Munro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, just not that interesting.

[Matthew Fleming · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great thoughts on what criticism is and how it's changing, although a lot of content under the latter is of course vastly different 12 years later. Goes on a few tangents, and a few of them even work! Not Kermode's finest work, but pretty entertaining and informative throughout.

[Libby Caldwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve long been a fan of Kermode and this book did little to quell that. Frequently laugh-out-loud funny. I like to think I (kinda) know my movie stuff but this book was filled with anecdotes proving the opposite, as I’d never heard of them previously.

An interesting philosophical romp on the value of art and criticism in our society, definitely entertaining enough to carry anyone through.

[Jack Head · Rating 2 out of 5]

absolute stinker. quite like him and trust his reviews, but this felt so show off-y, and full of references that he doesn’t expect anyone to get so that he can gloat about his film knowledge. 300 pages of someone wanking themselves off in a mirror.

[Tom Bensley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Resident film critic over at BBC Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo, droll counterpart to his unfettered enthusiasm, Mark Kermode is well-known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of movies, big flappy hands and cringeworthy impersonations of movie stars. He’s also a fantastic film critic. Learned, insightful and always scathingly honest, much to the delight of his listeners every time another of Michael Bay’s crimes against cinema sends him into a near-possessed rage.

Central to Hatchet Job and Kermode’s biggest concern is the question of whether film critics are relevant anymore. In the pre-internet days, newspapers bestowed the news and opinions from on high—film critics had desk jobs, they were paid to watch movies and their opinions mattered to the public; they were the men and women who talked about movies. Nowadays, absolutely everybody throws around their opinions and hardly anyone is getting paid. Kermode makes the point that, with the advent of user reviews and blogs, film criticism is becoming more of a hobby than a profession.

To answer this question, Kermode talks at length about a lot of different things. He begins with a few choice selections from hatchet job reviews (i.e. very negative takedowns) written by other critics including a typically savvy remark from Roger Ebert’s review of Pearl Harbour: ‘A two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how … the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.’ Kermode inserts his own less elegant snippet from his review of Marley and Me: ‘Less fun than having a real dog put down.’

Eventually Kermode gets around to some historical analysis, charting the advent of the internet and what it has done to the published word. He points out that professional film critics put their reputations and jobs on the line with every review, which gives their reviews more credibility. Anonymity means a writer can get facts wrong, dish out personal attacks and pretty much write a shoddy review without so much as a lick of consequence. Tracking the rise of Ain’t It Cool News, Kermode also wonders whether, in the days of instant publication and viral news stories, is being there first the only thing that matters? He even delves into the algorithm behind Amazon’s ‘user reviews’ and questions the reliability of editing done by robots, especially when there are so many ways to cheat the system.

In his typically entertaining style, Kermode regularly wanders off on tangents and waxes poetically about movies and directors. The book is always a fun read and is a very well-researched work of non-fiction, but the wide range of topics covered and anecdotes thrown in leave it feeling like a rather loose and baggy undertaking, a shotgun blast that hits the target but shreds a few too many trees around it to be deemed a great shot. Explanations of his morning routine, a lengthy encounter with a filmmaker supposedly scorned by his review and some nostalgic gazing back into the past all take away from what is otherwise a good book on criticism, films and the rapidly evolving publishing industry.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone not familiar with Mark Kermode’s work, he is the Chief Film Critic for The Observer newspaper, he presents The Culture Show on BBC2, and he is part of ‘Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review’ programme on BBC Radio 5 live. In this book, he talks about his role as film critic, and more specifically, the role of a film critic in today’s world, where the internet allows pretty much everyone to be a critic about pretty much anything. And you don’t need to have any specialist knowledge or qualifications to be an internet critic. (I’m well aware that as a blogger, I’m one of these people that he talks about – I’m not particularly qualified to write about books or movies or theatre, but I do anyway, although I don’t claim to offer anything other than my own opinion, for whatever that’s worth.) So with the growth of blogging, tweeting etc., the role of progressional film critic has come under some threat.

Kermode eloquently makes the case for the necessity of professional film critics in such a world – he certainly convinced me, although to be fair, I agreed with his point of view in the first place. He also discusses how advertisement posters for films have now started using quotes from Twitter users as endorsements, and points out the obvious problems with this. For all this though, Kermode does seem to want to embrace the internet and the rise of online bloggers, is also quick to point out the advantages of it – both to himself and to others.

The book is very well written and engaging, and often very amusing too. Each chapter is about a specific point relating to the main theme, but Kermode often goes off at tangents, and uses lots of anecdotes to illustrate what he’s saying – at the end of the chapter, everything ties up nicely.

Overall, if you like Mark Kermode’s film reviews, you will like this book. If you don’t know anything about Mark Kermode or his film reviews, there’s a strong chance you will like this book. I don’t think you even need to be particularly cineliterate to enjoy it – my basic knowledge of any film extends as far as whether or not I enjoyed it. I started reading the book on a long flight, and usually when I’m flying, I end up listening to music, watching a film, or trying to sleep. However, I found myself not wanting to do any of those things, and instead just wanting to keep reading. So for me, this was definitely a winner, and I would recommend it.

[Ugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Mark Kermode as a broadcaster, but going by Hatchet Job I don’t think he’s a very good writer – at least not of books.

I found HJ lacking rather lacking in insight, certainly repetitive and roundabout, linguistically uninspired, redundant (we’re told that podcasts are “(an Internet innovation)” and that “everything in this book is written by me”), and too full of asides, self-criticism/modesty and borderline sycophancy. I also thought it lacked structure: it’s about the business of film criticism, but gives little sense of what’s ahead or why.

However, there were positives:

- A quote from Stephen Fry that’s delightfully dismissive of things like the above paragraph (and what Kermode does for a living): [A critic to Saint Peter at the pearly gates]: “Other people wrote things, performed things, painted things, and I said stuff like “thin and unconvincing”, “turgid and uninspired”, “competent and serviceable””.

- The recognition that many people turn to criticism after they’ve experienced the thing for themselves, not before.

-The chapter on the use by studios of audience previews.

-Kermode’s memories of the film Jeremy, which he saw once as a kid and then again 40 years later.

Ultimately, though, I felt this needed considerably more care and attention – either from Kermode or the editor.

Finally: Kermode has a thing about critics needing to have skin in the game in order for their opinions to be taken seriously, a point he makes ad nauseum. Well, I can be tracked down with little effort, Mark, and I live in London. If you want me to say the above to your face, I’ll buy the beers.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Kermode is my favourite film critic. I listen to his radio show with Simon Mayo religiously. This book is Kermode's views on himself and his use in the world. Basically it's a book on film criticism and the function of film critics in society today. It's written in Kermode's distinctive anecdotal prose which is very easy and enjoyable to read. You don't have to have a massive knowledge of film to enjoy this book, I feel like it was written to appease even the least cineliterate people. My one reservation about this is if you are a regular listener to his show you already have heard the majority of the anecdotes presented in this book, this isn't a major thing though because the majority of them stand up to repeat readings. This was really interesting and I'd definitely recommend it to people who are interesting in reading about the world of the film critic.

[Muhammed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this amusing, entertaining look at the relevance of film critics and film criticism in an age of blogs, Twitter reviews and internet leaks, written by one of the UK's leading film critics Mark Kermode. As a film blogger myself (shameless plug www.moaboutmovies.wordpress.com) Kermode makes sound points about amateur film critics, and makes a great case for the continued place of professional film critics today. Along the way he throws in some entertaining anecdotes, including the time he apologised to Steven Spielberg for trashing 'A.I.'.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious, rambling, heartfelt, self-effacing -- only one of those adjectives applies to Kermode's film criticism: all four apply here. Between lamenting the deaths of Alexander Walker (!) and Roger Ebert, and sounding the alarm about the use of "community reviews" -- such as this one -- to evaluate artistic works, he offers a potent defense of the value of professional critics, especially in a century where all that is solid melts into air. I'd ask for more structure, but if you approach this as a collection of interrelated essays, you'll dig it.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Kermode is one of the best film critics working today who shows both his devotion and frustration with the modern world of media and the rise of the amateur reviewer (i.e. this review). He lays out the history of film and its prickly relationship with the media via a series of essays which looks at the advent of technology and in particular the advent of social media. Interesting, informative and witty.

[Reka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very entertaining and informative book about film criticism, incorporating its past and its future, full of interesting facts about the process of filmmaking, distribution and exhibition. A good read to anyone interested in films or the film industry.

[Alex Wormall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny, insightful and impassioned argument for the continuing existence of professional film critics in the modern age. Every bit as entertaining as you'd expect if you follow Dr K on the radio/net or have read any of his previous books

[Darren Humphries · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Kermode is my film critic of choice. Not because I always agree with him (The Exorcist is, at best, OK and I sincerely dislike Mary Poppins), but rather because even when he is tearing a film to shreds, it's because he loves films and that still shows through. He's also not above saying that he knows a film is absolutely terrible and yet he still loves it. His shows with Simon Mayo on 5live are the only podcast I listen to regularly, albeit always at least two months behind.

It is therefore no surprise to me that this examination of the job he does so well is erudite, insightful, well-researched and eminently enjoyable. There are facts, figures, views and anecdotes in equal measure. The book is both backward-referencing and forward-looking. It is idiosyncratic and very much in his voice. Nobody else could have written this book.

OK, if you have no interest in films or film criticism then this will not be for you (in which case why on earth did you pick it up in the first place?), but for everyone else this is an insight into the art of film criticism past, present and future, wittily told and fun to read.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, although its main drawback is that it's a bit too long for what it is. there are definitely sections that could have been trimmed, and some personal stories that could have been edited down, but overall, it was a good read.
There was plenty to make me chuckle, such as the many one-liners from critics, as well as some interesting debates around what makes a critic and how the internet affects who gets to be one. The book is over 10 years old now, so it is a bit behind the times on certain things, but it's interesting to look back and see where social media and technology was when he wrote this.
I enjoy his tone in this book, and I like that he will admit to enjoying things that other hate without sounding like a contrarian. I think this is a good book for anyone who has an interest in films or the film industry. You can learn a bit about how press screenings work, and whether audience feedback is a good idea.

[Gareth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The publishers have tried to make this book look like a comedy read, but whilst it has a few chuckles, it's really a serious-minded look at the profession of being a film critic, and the future of criticism now that everybody seems to be online doing it.
As with "The Movie Doctors", this book is at its best when its simply Kermode writing about movies, regardless of whether he loves or loathes them. His pieces on The Devils, Exorcist II, Casablanca, A.I Artificial Intelligence etc are marvellous.
The sections on critics become a bit samey after a while. Really his introduction establishes his defence of the job and after that there is just reinforcement.
Worth reading for his film analysis, his piece on Roger Ebert and some good anecdotes.