Mark Kermode
Select another critic »For 204 reviews, this critic has graded:
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53% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.9 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Mark Kermode's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 78 | |
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Highest review score: | The Night of the Hunter | |
Lowest review score: | Babylon |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 148 out of 204
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Mixed: 56 out of 204
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Negative: 0 out of 204
204
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Mark Kermode
It’s functionally good-natured rehash fare, bogged down by some watery CG and a few uncomfortable dips into “uncanny valley”, yet buoyed up by Bailey’s winning titular performance.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 27, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 21, 2023
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 20, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
The real revelations, however, lie in the depiction of Fox’s family life, most notably his marriage to actor Tracy Pollan, who first won his heart by calling him “a complete fucking asshole”, and whose unswerving love leaves him all but speechless when he’s asked what she means to him, save for one word: “Clarity”.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 15, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
Park’s portrayal of Freddie never misses a beat – an astonishing transformative feat for a first-time actor who seems to arrive on screen as a fully formed, multifaceted performer, inhabiting the film’s kaleidoscopic central character.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted May 8, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
Hansen-Løve hits a career high note, delivering a quietly thoughtful and ultimately life-affirming portrait of the strange interaction between loss and rebirth. It’s a miraculous balancing act that pretty much took my breath away.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 16, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
There’s a strong element of myth and magic at work here too, most notably in the recitation of an eerie dream about mating eels and mass infidelity, and in the sight of the body of a horse rotting over a period of years and returning to the earth. It all adds to the film’s haunting appeal.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Apr 15, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
The result will leave you with a smile on your face, a spring in your step and (hopefully) a renewed confidence in next-wave British film-making.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 19, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
The Champions ensemble takes this to the next level, showcasing a host of rising talent, with particular plaudits to Tevlin and Iannucci, both of whom have scene-stealing charisma and note-perfect comic timing to spare.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 12, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
Astonishingly natural and engaging performances from young newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele lend heartfelt authenticity to a film that builds upon the promise of 2018’s Girl, confirming Dhont as a deft and empathetic chronicler of the tumultuous anguish and ecstasy of adolescence.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Mar 7, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
What Enys Men “means” will differ for each viewer. For me, it is (like Bait) a richly authentic portrait of Cornwall, far removed from any tourist-friendly vision. . . I’ve seen the film three times so far, and I can’t wait to dive into it and be swept away again. Bravo!- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 27, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
Sporadically goofy fun, a scrappy carnival of ripped limbs, severed heads and spilled intestines, all softened by an only partly parodic family-centred Spielbergian sensibility.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 26, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
While subjects as dark as separation and death may be faced head-on (a reading from Philip Larkin’s The Trees had me in tears), there’s a comedic quality that reminded me of Aardman’s sublime Creature Comforts animations – a joyous juxtaposition of quotidian, vérité-style dialogue and fancifully inventive visuals that hits a tragicomic sweet spot.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 19, 2023
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 17, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
An atmosphere of empathy, reason and wit pervades Polley’s film, underwritten by an emancipatory urgency (“that day we learned to vote”) that drives the narrative even in its darkest moments.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Feb 12, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
If you’re looking for a film that explains where the Spielbergian tropes you know and love came from, then The Fabelmans is for you.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 30, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
For all its nudge-wink movie-history nods and self-conscious carnivals of bodily fluids and glamorous excess, Babylon is exhaustingly unexciting fare – hysterical rather than historical, derivative rather than inventive.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 22, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
An awards-worthy performance from Danielle Deadwyler (who stole the show in 2021’s The Harder They Fall) lends a passionate heart to this solidly engrossing and still contemporary historical drama set in 1955 and dedicated “to the life and legacy of Mamie Till-Mobley”.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 10, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jan 1, 2023
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- Mark Kermode
A lumbering, humourless, tech-driven damp squib of a movie, this long-awaited (or dreaded?) sequel to one of the highest grossing films of all time builds upon the mighty flaws of its predecessor, delivering a patience-testing fantasy dirge that is longer, uglier and (amazingly) even more clumsily scripted than its predecessor, blending trite characterisation with sub-Roger Dean 70s album-cover designs and thunderously underwhelming action sequences. In water.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Dec 19, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
Ultimately, it’s the film’s sheer strangeness – that peculiarly magical, lapsed-Catholic sensibility that runs throughout all of Del Toro’s most personal works – that makes this sing and fly.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 29, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
A brilliantly assured and stylistically adventurous work, this beautifully understated yet emotionally riveting coming-of-age drama picks apart themes of love and loss in a manner so dextrous as to seem almost accidental. Don’t be fooled; Wells knows exactly what she’s doing, and her storytelling is as precise as it is piercing.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 21, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
This deceptively gentle 50s-set film addresses weighty matters of life and death with a winning simplicity that is hard to resist.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Nov 8, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
Few will remain unmoved by this intriguingly adventurous and thought-provoking drama.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 30, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
It’s an end-of-friendship breakup movie that swings between the hilarious, the horrifying and the heartbreaking in magnificent fashion.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 24, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
O’Connor clearly isn’t afraid of rattling cages when approaching sacred texts. There’s something refreshingly untethered about the gusto with which she reimagines Emily, tossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 17, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
Flux Gourmet makes us laugh because, on some bizarre level, we do actually believe in and care about these utterly preposterous characters and situations.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Oct 2, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
At its heart this is a gothic melodrama, a fever dream of childhood trauma haunting adult life, replete with skin-crawlingly cruel visions of inquisitorial torture, brutal ordeals and hellish infernos – more Nightmare on Elm Street than My Week With Marilyn.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 26, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
What Moonage Daydream does manage to do is to share some of the adventurous spirit of its subject – a chameleon who wasn’t afraid of falling flat on his face while reaching for the stars. If Bowie’s career teaches us anything, it’s that no one can laugh at you if you’ve already laughed at yourself. Certainly his capacity for balancing seriousness with self-deprecation (“No shit, Sherlock!”) remained one of Bowie’s most endearing traits.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 20, 2022
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- Mark Kermode
Mortensen and Seydoux play it deliciously straight, jumping through the well-rehearsed philosophical and physical hoops with elegant ease, conjuring a sense of yearning humanity that saves the production from descending into silliness… just about.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 11, 2022
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