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Mark Kermode's Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music
How can a film score make you cheer, shiver, cry or punch the air?
How do directors communicate their musical vision to composers?
And when does a soundtrack take on a life of its own?
In Mark Kermode's Surround Sound the award-winning film critic, together with radio producer Jenny Nelson, embarks on a full-throttle trip down the glorious rabbit hole of film composition.
Celebrating the emotional connection that audiences form with film music, exploring the evolution of film scoring from silent films to the present day, and examining how what we hear has an impact on what we see, Mark talks to some of his favourite composers and delves into the movie music he loves.
Including interviews with extraordinary talents from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood to Oscar-winning composers Rachel Portman and Howard Shore, and telling the stories behind iconic soundtracks such as Jocelyn Pook’s Eyes Wide Shut, Michael Kamen’s Brazil and Vangelis’s Blade Runner, Mark Kermode’s Surround Sound is a thrilling take on how great scores are brought to life on the silver screen.
How do directors communicate their musical vision to composers?
And when does a soundtrack take on a life of its own?
In Mark Kermode's Surround Sound the award-winning film critic, together with radio producer Jenny Nelson, embarks on a full-throttle trip down the glorious rabbit hole of film composition.
Celebrating the emotional connection that audiences form with film music, exploring the evolution of film scoring from silent films to the present day, and examining how what we hear has an impact on what we see, Mark talks to some of his favourite composers and delves into the movie music he loves.
Including interviews with extraordinary talents from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood to Oscar-winning composers Rachel Portman and Howard Shore, and telling the stories behind iconic soundtracks such as Jocelyn Pook’s Eyes Wide Shut, Michael Kamen’s Brazil and Vangelis’s Blade Runner, Mark Kermode’s Surround Sound is a thrilling take on how great scores are brought to life on the silver screen.
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Published September 16, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 26, 2025
Another great outing from Kermode. It’s much less anecdotal and far more informative than his other books, most likely due to the co-authoring, and teaches you a lot about the intricacies of soundtracks.
July 28, 2025
For the most part, The Good Doctor, Mark Kermode's work here was eminently interesting. Sweeping us across a vast keyboard of film scores, from the not so silent inaugural movies at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the big blockbusters of contemporary cinema.
I say, 'for the most part' because it was inevitable that The Good Doctor was always gonna, at some point, focus on movie genres that just aren't to my taste or liking. A prime example being when he talks in the book about Bollywood. For me, that particular genre of movies and music has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever, so when Dr. Kermode is discussing the finer points of how the Bollywood scores came about, it meant absolutely nothing to me. But thankfully the part on the Indian 'subgenre' is relatively short, and I'm not pointing this out as a criticism of the book per se, just that the author covers as wide a base as possible, so obviously, the broader the scope, the more chance of him hitting a bum note with someone!
So, in contrast to Bollywood's bum note, I really enjoyed the author's relatively detailed history of the birth of film scores and their historical context. I found it amazing to learn, that because early film scores were played live in venues over usually short films, that generally, no two screenings were ever the same! Just as across the century or so of film scoring, no two composers or musicians go about composing a score the same way. Some start from scratch, while others work off the script, or the visuals, while some work alone and others prefer to collaborate and indeed, a myriad different paths are taken to produce the movie scores that we all know and love. Where some even turn into soundtracks to our own lives.
I was also particularly fascinated learning more about the politics of it all too, like,
'Michael Micheux's 1925 film 'Body and Soul'. The film which features the motion-picture debut of Paul Robeson, was part of the so called 'race film' genre: American films produced by Black filmmakers specifically for Black audiences, featuring African American casts who were often excluded from more widely celebrated US studio pictures. When Micheux applied to the Motion Picture Commission of the state of New York for an exhibition licence for the picture, he was flatly denied. According to the Commission, 'Body and Soul' was an 'immoral' and 'sacrilegious' work that would 'tend to incite crime', a verdict that forced the director to make significant edits and alterations before the film was deemed fit for public consumption.'
Although shocking, not entirely unexpected, given the age the film was made. Unfortunately though, the same shenanigans has happened and is still happening all through the years from those days to this. As the author points out in the book, the furore in Britain in the 1980's over 'video nasties', and in 1989 we had Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing' causing untold controversy across conservative America. And of course, we also had William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece of horror and cinema in general, ‘The Exorcist’. Unbelievably banned in British theaters till 1999 (every cloud has a silver lining I suppose though, because this is when my fiancée at the time and I took the opportunity to go see the movie for the first time, in a CINEMA! And it was amazing!). And for my own tuppence worth, the spirit of 'Body and Soul' still echoes out through the likes of the Kneecap and Bob Vylan controversies. With that set of talented artists evoking a similarly egregious response from the establishment as the movie did back in its day. Sadly, nothing changes, and unfortunately we’re condemned to repeat the same establishment bullsh*t again and again!
Nevertheless, and in keeping with that spirit, the first film officially credited as being the original ’rock ‘n roll’ movie, is Richard Brooks’s ‘Blackboard Jungle’ (1955). Which features Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’, albeit in nothing more than the opening credits. But here, Mark Kermode traces ’rock ‘n roll/blues’ in film scores way back, much, much further. Blues and Jazz would feature in many of the early movies made for Black audiences, like Dudley Murphy's sixteen minute 'St Louis Blues' (1929), Mamie Smith voiced 'Jailhouse Blues' (1929) and King Vidor's all-Black musical 'Hallelujah' (1929), which according to film historian and blues musician Dr. Mike Hammond,
"It would seem with the coming of film sound, there was a genuine move to record blues or blues/jazz through this new format. This tied in with the Harlem renaissance, and the increasing influence of African American idioms on Tin Pan Alley writing."
Which all seems to bring me nicely full circle on other books I've read recently, that cover the Harlem renaissance (see my reviews of 'Amiable With Big Teeth' by Claude McKay and 'Left of Karl Marx' by Carole Boyce Davies). It’s always a delight and indeed, a consummate pleasure when I see the dots connecting, on any given subject (in this case the Harlem renaissance) from different books I’ve read and it does make one feel like somewhat of an insider, haha.
Obviously the book is crammed full of The Good Doctor's favourite scores from obscure art house productions and suchlike, that most normal film buffs have probably never heard of, let alone seen! And although many are probably far too avant-garde for my tastes, there were however a few of the lesser known movies mentioned by The Good Doctor that I've now added to my ’to do list’, like Perry Henzell's Jamaican drama from 1972, 'The Harder They Come', with a heavy reggae soundtrack, long before Bob Marley came to prominence. Which also influenced future films like, Theodoros Bafaloukos's 'Rockers' (1978), Franco Rosso's 'Babylon' (1980 a film which I've actually got on DVD, seen and enjoyed, haha!), Perry Henzell's 'Countryman' 1982 and some years later, Don Lett's 'Dancing Queen' (1997). Ed Bailie, music supervisor on Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' acknowledges the on going debt that that show has to 'The Harder They Come'. So it's definitely crept into my future viewing, because although I don’t really listen to reggae on a regular basis, I do appreciate its beauty and its somewhat rebellious nature, with great influence on other genres which I do listen to, quite a bit actually, such as punk, ska, hip hop and contemporary Irish rebel music. Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ being a particular highlight. ’Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery….. etc’, absolutely love it!
Finally to finish up, I have to disagree with The Good Doctor on one particular point that he makes in the book however, namely when he labels Jordan Peele's 'Us' as a 'masterpiece'!? Whaaaaaat?!!! I personally thought that that film was awful! Indeed, it came across to me as a complete mess, and although I kinda just about saw what the director/writer was trying to say, where the ’Us’ in the title was representing the ’U.S.’ and was in fact ’mirroring’. The confusing, hard watch of a movie, just seemed muddled and pretty bizarre, and where 'F*ck the Police' by N.W.A. was the ONLY redeeming feature the movie had! And unlike The Good Doctor, I thought there was absolutely nothing enjoyable about the rest of the movie’s soundtrack, bland, generic pop music that’s designed to suck the spirit out of any listener, the polar opposite of what the creators would have been aiming for, I’d have presumed haha! However, my opinion may change, as is often the case (two prime examples being, I didn’t get on with either ‘American Psycho’ or ’Master & Commander’ on the first watch, for various reasons, but I now love both movies, and in the case of the former, it’s thankfully became one of my favourite films!), if I ever deem to give the film a rewatch in the future.
For me personally, the film scores and soundtracks that I love and always fall back on are, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’, Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s, ‘The Pick of Destiny’, Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, John Landis’s ‘American Werewolf in London’ and Monty Python’s Eric Idle scored ’The Meaning of Life’. My favourite film composer would have to be Ennio Morricone, but I also love Hans Zimmer’s opening score on ‘Gladiator’, to which the accompanying battle scene, is for me, the best battle scene in cinematic history, with Hans Zimmer’s score bringing home the violence, energy and cinematography! While Ennio Marricone’s, ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ brings home cinema’s best ever piece of cinematography in ’The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. Where Tuco runs blindly (ecstatically) round Boot Hill cemetery at the thought of getting his hands on all the gold, and then Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie climatically face off in the center circle at the bottom of said graveyard, fantastic, no equal cinematography and score to match!
All in all the book is nuanced, the book is specialist, but it is also extremely interesting in places and a lotta fun throughout, as Mark can be a pretty witty fellow indeed!
I say, 'for the most part' because it was inevitable that The Good Doctor was always gonna, at some point, focus on movie genres that just aren't to my taste or liking. A prime example being when he talks in the book about Bollywood. For me, that particular genre of movies and music has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever, so when Dr. Kermode is discussing the finer points of how the Bollywood scores came about, it meant absolutely nothing to me. But thankfully the part on the Indian 'subgenre' is relatively short, and I'm not pointing this out as a criticism of the book per se, just that the author covers as wide a base as possible, so obviously, the broader the scope, the more chance of him hitting a bum note with someone!
So, in contrast to Bollywood's bum note, I really enjoyed the author's relatively detailed history of the birth of film scores and their historical context. I found it amazing to learn, that because early film scores were played live in venues over usually short films, that generally, no two screenings were ever the same! Just as across the century or so of film scoring, no two composers or musicians go about composing a score the same way. Some start from scratch, while others work off the script, or the visuals, while some work alone and others prefer to collaborate and indeed, a myriad different paths are taken to produce the movie scores that we all know and love. Where some even turn into soundtracks to our own lives.
I was also particularly fascinated learning more about the politics of it all too, like,
'Michael Micheux's 1925 film 'Body and Soul'. The film which features the motion-picture debut of Paul Robeson, was part of the so called 'race film' genre: American films produced by Black filmmakers specifically for Black audiences, featuring African American casts who were often excluded from more widely celebrated US studio pictures. When Micheux applied to the Motion Picture Commission of the state of New York for an exhibition licence for the picture, he was flatly denied. According to the Commission, 'Body and Soul' was an 'immoral' and 'sacrilegious' work that would 'tend to incite crime', a verdict that forced the director to make significant edits and alterations before the film was deemed fit for public consumption.'
Although shocking, not entirely unexpected, given the age the film was made. Unfortunately though, the same shenanigans has happened and is still happening all through the years from those days to this. As the author points out in the book, the furore in Britain in the 1980's over 'video nasties', and in 1989 we had Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing' causing untold controversy across conservative America. And of course, we also had William Friedkin’s 1973 masterpiece of horror and cinema in general, ‘The Exorcist’. Unbelievably banned in British theaters till 1999 (every cloud has a silver lining I suppose though, because this is when my fiancée at the time and I took the opportunity to go see the movie for the first time, in a CINEMA! And it was amazing!). And for my own tuppence worth, the spirit of 'Body and Soul' still echoes out through the likes of the Kneecap and Bob Vylan controversies. With that set of talented artists evoking a similarly egregious response from the establishment as the movie did back in its day. Sadly, nothing changes, and unfortunately we’re condemned to repeat the same establishment bullsh*t again and again!
Nevertheless, and in keeping with that spirit, the first film officially credited as being the original ’rock ‘n roll’ movie, is Richard Brooks’s ‘Blackboard Jungle’ (1955). Which features Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’, albeit in nothing more than the opening credits. But here, Mark Kermode traces ’rock ‘n roll/blues’ in film scores way back, much, much further. Blues and Jazz would feature in many of the early movies made for Black audiences, like Dudley Murphy's sixteen minute 'St Louis Blues' (1929), Mamie Smith voiced 'Jailhouse Blues' (1929) and King Vidor's all-Black musical 'Hallelujah' (1929), which according to film historian and blues musician Dr. Mike Hammond,
"It would seem with the coming of film sound, there was a genuine move to record blues or blues/jazz through this new format. This tied in with the Harlem renaissance, and the increasing influence of African American idioms on Tin Pan Alley writing."
Which all seems to bring me nicely full circle on other books I've read recently, that cover the Harlem renaissance (see my reviews of 'Amiable With Big Teeth' by Claude McKay and 'Left of Karl Marx' by Carole Boyce Davies). It’s always a delight and indeed, a consummate pleasure when I see the dots connecting, on any given subject (in this case the Harlem renaissance) from different books I’ve read and it does make one feel like somewhat of an insider, haha.
Obviously the book is crammed full of The Good Doctor's favourite scores from obscure art house productions and suchlike, that most normal film buffs have probably never heard of, let alone seen! And although many are probably far too avant-garde for my tastes, there were however a few of the lesser known movies mentioned by The Good Doctor that I've now added to my ’to do list’, like Perry Henzell's Jamaican drama from 1972, 'The Harder They Come', with a heavy reggae soundtrack, long before Bob Marley came to prominence. Which also influenced future films like, Theodoros Bafaloukos's 'Rockers' (1978), Franco Rosso's 'Babylon' (1980 a film which I've actually got on DVD, seen and enjoyed, haha!), Perry Henzell's 'Countryman' 1982 and some years later, Don Lett's 'Dancing Queen' (1997). Ed Bailie, music supervisor on Steve McQueen's 'Small Axe' acknowledges the on going debt that that show has to 'The Harder They Come'. So it's definitely crept into my future viewing, because although I don’t really listen to reggae on a regular basis, I do appreciate its beauty and its somewhat rebellious nature, with great influence on other genres which I do listen to, quite a bit actually, such as punk, ska, hip hop and contemporary Irish rebel music. Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ being a particular highlight. ’Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery….. etc’, absolutely love it!
Finally to finish up, I have to disagree with The Good Doctor on one particular point that he makes in the book however, namely when he labels Jordan Peele's 'Us' as a 'masterpiece'!? Whaaaaaat?!!! I personally thought that that film was awful! Indeed, it came across to me as a complete mess, and although I kinda just about saw what the director/writer was trying to say, where the ’Us’ in the title was representing the ’U.S.’ and was in fact ’mirroring’. The confusing, hard watch of a movie, just seemed muddled and pretty bizarre, and where 'F*ck the Police' by N.W.A. was the ONLY redeeming feature the movie had! And unlike The Good Doctor, I thought there was absolutely nothing enjoyable about the rest of the movie’s soundtrack, bland, generic pop music that’s designed to suck the spirit out of any listener, the polar opposite of what the creators would have been aiming for, I’d have presumed haha! However, my opinion may change, as is often the case (two prime examples being, I didn’t get on with either ‘American Psycho’ or ’Master & Commander’ on the first watch, for various reasons, but I now love both movies, and in the case of the former, it’s thankfully became one of my favourite films!), if I ever deem to give the film a rewatch in the future.
For me personally, the film scores and soundtracks that I love and always fall back on are, Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Django Unchained’, Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s, ‘The Pick of Destiny’, Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, John Landis’s ‘American Werewolf in London’ and Monty Python’s Eric Idle scored ’The Meaning of Life’. My favourite film composer would have to be Ennio Morricone, but I also love Hans Zimmer’s opening score on ‘Gladiator’, to which the accompanying battle scene, is for me, the best battle scene in cinematic history, with Hans Zimmer’s score bringing home the violence, energy and cinematography! While Ennio Marricone’s, ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ brings home cinema’s best ever piece of cinematography in ’The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. Where Tuco runs blindly (ecstatically) round Boot Hill cemetery at the thought of getting his hands on all the gold, and then Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie climatically face off in the center circle at the bottom of said graveyard, fantastic, no equal cinematography and score to match!
All in all the book is nuanced, the book is specialist, but it is also extremely interesting in places and a lotta fun throughout, as Mark can be a pretty witty fellow indeed!
November 9, 2025
I really enjoyed this, and it’s a book I would like to return to regularly. There are so many film and music references here, my soundtrack collection doubled in size while I was listening to this book.
Full of treats and I feel it augments my whole film-viewing experience.
Full of treats and I feel it augments my whole film-viewing experience.
December 18, 2025
You expect a superb analysis of the use of Tubular Bells in The Exorcist from a film music book co-written by Mark Kermode...but this is so much more, celebrating a diverse range of composers and the kind of eclectic, brilliant scores (notably Crash and Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me) that were undervalued for too long.
October 11, 2025
Did you know that Mark Kermode loves The Exorcist? I'm shocked.
November 16, 2025
Mark Kermode, for anyone with a more-than-passing interest in film (or indeed, anybody who knows me) will need no introduction. I've been listening to his reviews, watching his documentaries and reading his work across various platforms and outlets for the better part of fifteen years, often arguing with mates about his takes and the films themselves in the process. My mum often talks about the legendary former BBC Radio 2 presenter Terry Wogan being the 'vocal accompaniment to her life'; for me, it's probably Mark Kermode.
It'll come as a surprise to nobody, either, that a book by Kermode about movie soundtracks is painfully, painfully up my street. Working in collaboration with long-time producer and radio accomplice Jenny Nelson, 'Surround Sound' sees him explore the art of scoring across multiple genres, eras and countries, always seeking to find the magic nugget that makes a film soundtrack truly stand out beyond the pictures.
Swooping betwixt so many com posers, selections and nuances, Kermode tallies everything together with grace and aplomb. At times, he's dissecting the procedural nuance of scoring, interviewing composers about technicalities and logistics. At others, he's examining the Bollywood market, or exploring legendary director-composer partnerships. There's a roll call of the usual suspects here; John Williams, Bernard Hermann, Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore all get their flowers.
But where he really excels is in excavating now much-loved but still overlooked masterpieces and stories of Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie, The Zone of Interest), Hildur Gudnadottir (Chernobyl, Joker, Tar) and Anna Meredith (Eighth Grade, The Favourite). His emphasis on female and non-binary composers is vital, even if he doesn't cover them quite as extensively as his introduction sets out.
I found my self resonating with some chapters more than others. Sometimes, they were the chapters that *should* appeal to me; 'Switched on Electronica', for instance. But I also found more appeal where I thought I wouldn't. 'Pop Goes to the Movies' starts as a fairly conventional exploration of the way Elvis Presley's work revolutionised soundtracks in the 1950s, but ends on an extended discussion of Michael Abels's utterly incredible score for Jordan Peele's equally as brilliant Us.
Surprisingly, I got much more from 'Play Through the Action' than I did from the horror-soundtrack-centric 'A Frightful Noise'; the latter, rather disappointingly for me, focuses mostly on the endlessly covered story surrounding The Exorcist, instead of honing in on more modern game-changers. I'd have loved him to feature Mark Korven's score for The Witch, or Bobby Krlic's obscenely fantastic score for Midsommer.
This book won't appeal if you're not interested in how music is used in movies, or in the art of how it reshapes, reframes and forms our perceptions. But I now have a hugely long list of films I need to watch and rewatch, each time focusing on the music with more nuance and passion.
It'll come as a surprise to nobody, either, that a book by Kermode about movie soundtracks is painfully, painfully up my street. Working in collaboration with long-time producer and radio accomplice Jenny Nelson, 'Surround Sound' sees him explore the art of scoring across multiple genres, eras and countries, always seeking to find the magic nugget that makes a film soundtrack truly stand out beyond the pictures.
Swooping betwixt so many com posers, selections and nuances, Kermode tallies everything together with grace and aplomb. At times, he's dissecting the procedural nuance of scoring, interviewing composers about technicalities and logistics. At others, he's examining the Bollywood market, or exploring legendary director-composer partnerships. There's a roll call of the usual suspects here; John Williams, Bernard Hermann, Hans Zimmer and Howard Shore all get their flowers.
But where he really excels is in excavating now much-loved but still overlooked masterpieces and stories of Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie, The Zone of Interest), Hildur Gudnadottir (Chernobyl, Joker, Tar) and Anna Meredith (Eighth Grade, The Favourite). His emphasis on female and non-binary composers is vital, even if he doesn't cover them quite as extensively as his introduction sets out.
I found my self resonating with some chapters more than others. Sometimes, they were the chapters that *should* appeal to me; 'Switched on Electronica', for instance. But I also found more appeal where I thought I wouldn't. 'Pop Goes to the Movies' starts as a fairly conventional exploration of the way Elvis Presley's work revolutionised soundtracks in the 1950s, but ends on an extended discussion of Michael Abels's utterly incredible score for Jordan Peele's equally as brilliant Us.
Surprisingly, I got much more from 'Play Through the Action' than I did from the horror-soundtrack-centric 'A Frightful Noise'; the latter, rather disappointingly for me, focuses mostly on the endlessly covered story surrounding The Exorcist, instead of honing in on more modern game-changers. I'd have loved him to feature Mark Korven's score for The Witch, or Bobby Krlic's obscenely fantastic score for Midsommer.
This book won't appeal if you're not interested in how music is used in movies, or in the art of how it reshapes, reframes and forms our perceptions. But I now have a hugely long list of films I need to watch and rewatch, each time focusing on the music with more nuance and passion.
October 7, 2025
Interesting and engaging.
Some of the chapters are more tonally ‘factual’ - discussions of music’s role in silent cinema, for example, or discussing the collaborative relationship of the composer with the director - while others inevitably are infused with Kermode’s own personal interests, just like his old show on Scala Radio was. So while we get nods of respect to universally-acknowledged influential giants of the genre such as Williams, Goldsmith, Herrmann and Morricone, as much attention is lavished on figures who may have only written a handful of scores, and for obscure films, but who he happens particularly to be smitten with.
Some sentences are so long as to be unwieldy - for example:
....aaaaand breathe.
Some of the chapters are more tonally ‘factual’ - discussions of music’s role in silent cinema, for example, or discussing the collaborative relationship of the composer with the director - while others inevitably are infused with Kermode’s own personal interests, just like his old show on Scala Radio was. So while we get nods of respect to universally-acknowledged influential giants of the genre such as Williams, Goldsmith, Herrmann and Morricone, as much attention is lavished on figures who may have only written a handful of scores, and for obscure films, but who he happens particularly to be smitten with.
Some sentences are so long as to be unwieldy - for example:
Seven years after Coppola used ‘The End’ to open Apocalypse Now, Oliver Stone’s 1986 war drama Platoon (which makes heavy use of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings – a piece that had been played on radio and TV when JFK’s assassination was announced, and was performed at Roosevelt’s funeral) was being trailered using images of bloody and explosive jungle combat overlaid upon the jarringly sweet and tender strains of Smokey Robinson’s ‘Tracks of My Tears’.
....aaaaand breathe.
October 21, 2025
Pretty much entirely anecdotal, but simultaneously tries to readdress the balance of how we talk about woman who create music for films which is tres good. Inevitably there are some buttock clenching anti-musicological statements in there, but they are few, and you can get through them without crying and bemoaning why people who just love music, but don’t know how it works get to write a whole book… but i quite fancy Mark Kermode, so i’ll forgive him. Again.
October 22, 2025
Audiobook: Genuinely excellent and very intelligent analysis of movie music. The cover credit goes to Kermode but it’s a co-write and a very good one. Covers most of the bases without being a chronological slog. The focus on action, or horror, electronic scores, attention to women in film, silent movies. A satisfying and enlightening approach and the mini chapters given over to specific soundtracks are especially enjoyable and passionate.
October 12, 2025
I have been listening to Mark Kermode talk about movies for years now, mostly through Kermode & Mayo's Takes. And I have been more and more interested in film scores recently. I have been especially obsessed with the work of Jonny Greenwood lately.
So Mark writing a book about film music is interesting to me! And I found it very interesting and engaging to listen to. Very enjoyable
So Mark writing a book about film music is interesting to me! And I found it very interesting and engaging to listen to. Very enjoyable
December 29, 2025
Interesting look at film soundtracks from Kermode and radio producer Jenny Nelson. This mixes a history of movie music with personal anecdotes and chapters that pull focus on some of Kermode's favourites. This combination never quite settles, making it a disjointed read, but it does contain some engaging facts and revelations.
November 4, 2025
Solid four stars.
If you have an interest in the history of music in film, this book is an essential read.
Starting with the Silent Movies and going well into the 2020s, all the cinema music big hitters you would expect are here as well as many more that have rightly been brought into the spotlight by the Good Doctor.
The book is split into genre specific chapters as well as interludes covering the music of films that have a particular place in the heart of the Good Doctor such as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and ‘Blade Runner’.
Filled with countless nuggets of movie trivia, the audiobook version also has a very good podcast discussion between Mark Kermode and co author Jenny Nelson on how the book came to life.
Very entertaining despite lacking any reference to Jason Isaacs.
If you have an interest in the history of music in film, this book is an essential read.
Starting with the Silent Movies and going well into the 2020s, all the cinema music big hitters you would expect are here as well as many more that have rightly been brought into the spotlight by the Good Doctor.
The book is split into genre specific chapters as well as interludes covering the music of films that have a particular place in the heart of the Good Doctor such as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and ‘Blade Runner’.
Filled with countless nuggets of movie trivia, the audiobook version also has a very good podcast discussion between Mark Kermode and co author Jenny Nelson on how the book came to life.
Very entertaining despite lacking any reference to Jason Isaacs.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews