Customer Reviews

It's Only a Movie

5 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

At least British film critic Mark Kermode thought so when Helen Mirren "handbagged" him at the BAFTA film awards. Kermode had written that The Queen, starring Mirren in the title role, wasn't a real film (he thought it was more like a TV movie). "Oi!" Dame Helen yelled at him, and he suffered the wrath of one of the icons of British theater and film.

Kermode left the awards with all his parts still attached, even if he was still shaking.

Kermode tells his story of becoming a film writer as if it were a movie "playing inside [his] head." He doesn't trust memory, but he realizes he has to use it. So he's not surprised when he discovers it has failed him. He wants Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films) to play him in the movie of his life because they went to school together, and he wants the Queen herself to play Helen Mirren.

This book is very entertaining, and it takes film criticism seriously enough to make you wonder if it's worth much. Kermode tells the story of reels of David Lynch's Lost Highway being mixed up and the movie making more sense that way. But is that story really true? And if it is, does it matter? Or does the fact that the story is told prove it's truth?

My head hurts.

I get the impression Kermode is too young to have been in the generation that saw great British social and political films in the 1980s like Letter to Brezhnev. Instead of My Beautiful Laundrette he writes about My Bloody Valentine 3-D.

Kermode's great cinematic love is for horror film (on the cover of the British paperback he's sitting in a movie theater holding a chainsaw in a phallic pose that I didn't consciously recognize until just now), but his taste isn't limited to meat movies.

He talks about Woody Allen, David Lynch, Mario Van Peebles, Francis Ford Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Haynes, and Lars von Trier. But he admits he acquired his social and political worldview from the Planet of the Apes series (which I can understand--Eric Greene's book Planet of the Apes As American Myth: Race And Politics in the Films And Television Series shows how those movies talked about race and class in America) and Kermode insists that The Exorcist is the greatest film in history.

I've been a fan of Kermode"s snarky film reviews for years. This book is in the same style with great anecdotes from his years of watching great (and terrible) films. If you're a fan of the friday film reviews, you have to read this book. And if you like this book, go get the podcast!

I've listened to Kermode's film reviews on radio 5 for years. They are a must listen and always entertaining. His book is just as good, which is a hell of a push.

Let me start by saying that this is not a true biography. We learn very little about the good doctor from this book: no family revelations, no grasp of whatever theology he subscribes to (he obviously does hold some such grasp as anyone that has read his work on the Exorcist alone would see, no insight into his personal life. No, this is certainly not a biography in the usual sense. What you get here is a life told through the movies that Kermode has viewed, the people he has interviewed, together with the places he has visited in relation to the these and the jobs he has held that also relate to "the movies".

Is this a bad thing? I suppose that is answered by what you expect. Personally, a life as seen by the movies he has viewed is exactly what I was looking for. Do I really care when he lost his virginity, who he has shagged, what his political views are (we learn much of what they were in his youth), what lead him to study his Doctoral thesis, his relationships with his wife and children, why he changed his name to his mothers maiden name after she divorced and even worse his thoughts on Simon Mayo? As you might guess no I don't. Let Kermode stick to what he does best: talking about movies and movie makers - let the gossip rags discuss his personal life, should he ever reach that level of "fame".

This is a good book on movies and movie makers. If you enjoy Kermode's reviews and radio show - and his rather idiosyncratic take on these - you will enjoy this and if you don't? Well, you probably wont be looking at this review in the first place.

By the way, take a look at the audiobook also if you get the chance. It's read by Kermode in his usual style and adds something the written word can't. Buy both, I did.

I assume that you already know who Mark Kermode is otherwise you would not be seeking out his printed works. Mark Kermode is an articulate, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and passionate film critic who could talk under wet concrete and has an opinion on everything. Listening to his film review podcasts is one of the highlights of my week because I know that I am guaranteed entertainment for at least 90 minutes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvdrj).

I have bought both the paperback (through amazon.uk) and the kindle edition of this book and now I am considering buying the audiobook because it is apparently read by Mark himself. I got at least 10 hysterical fits of laughter out of reading this book and quite a few chuckles and giggles (better laugh value than most allegedly humourous books I've read). For some reason the scene where Mark describes his interactions with the waitress while waiting to interview Linda Blair had me chuckling for days.

Some reviewers have complained that regular listeners to the Kermode and Mayo radio program or podcasts have heard many of these stories before - but I don't care, if Mark's telling the story I want to hear it again - so much so that I'm now contemplating purchasing the audiobook so that I can listen to Mark tell these stories again in his own inimitable style.

This one gets one star, not because it isn't appropriately wittertaining (which it is, and more), but because the Editor -- of this Kindle edition at least -- appears to have treated himself to an early exit like Guy Pearce in The Hurt Locker. So error-packed is the text (typos, uncapitalised surnames, malapropisms, joined-up words etc.) that I was reminded of the recent sage remarks of Dr Mark himself, when he advised punters subjected to poorly-projected movies to seek out the manager immediately in order to request a refund...because 'where else would you put up with a faulty product?'. Even if things are so tight at Cornerstone Digital that they can no longer afford proof-readers, the spell checker feature on most word processor applications could have dealt with more than half of these slips.