Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode's books explore film criticism, spectatorship, disagreement, music, and the personal histories that gather around cultural obsessions. Hatchet Job examines the friction between critics, publicity, audiences, and online reaction. It's Only a Movie turns encounters with cinema into comic memoir, showing how professional judgment is shaped by travel, mishap, enthusiasm, and memory.

The Shawshank Redemption and The Exorcist concentrate on individual films, placing close attention beside questions of reputation and lasting response. Surround Sound follows stories carried by movie music, while How Does It Feel? shifts toward musical experience and performance. Kermode treats criticism as an argument sustained by curiosity: strong opinions matter most when they remain answerable to detail and experience.