Mark Kermode's review of 'Entourage' from last week.
Mentioned at the start of this Top 40, and again in 'The Princess Bride', Mark Kermode is a UK-based film reviewer. While he appears in numerous media - newspapers and television included - his most popular outlet has been as the resident movie reviewer on the Simon Mayo show on BBC Radio 5 live. In fact, when Mayo himself was moved to an entirely different network, the BBC smartly decided to keep that particular slot - and even extend it out to two hours - on a Friday afternoon because the listenership was so high.
Listened to - and corresponded with - by numerous UK actors ("Hello to Jason Isaacs!") and winner of several awards, he has a reputation for two things: firstly being unafraid to disagree with other reviewers (for example, he thought the universally-panned 'Basic Instinct 2' was relatively ok because it fulfilled genre expectations), and secondly for having a tendency to go off on a big explosive diatribe ("Kermodian Rant") when there's a major movie that he doesn't like. More to follow as we move on, but to get us started, here's my Top Ten Kermodian Rant Quotes from the BBC radio show, including one from just last week...
10. Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
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| "The death of narrative cinema." |
9. Revolver
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| "I feel bad for Guy Ritchie. I can wake up tomorrow and think 'I didn't make that film'. He has to wake up and think 'I made Revolver'." |
8. Johnny Depp's performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
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| "It's a case of an actor who doesn't know how to act, and a director who doesn't know how to take him to one side and say 'Stop doing that Johnny, it's silly'." |
7. Sex and the City 2
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| "My expectations were low, and I have to say they were met." ... "It is consumerist pornography. It is an orgy of dripping, dripping wealth that made me want to be sick." |
6. Sex and the City 2 - AGAIN - on the plot point of them all going on vacation
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| "This is a plot device known from all movies based on television series that have run out of steam. The example is 'Are You Being Served'... it is essentially THAT film." |
5. Entourage
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| "It's just this pornographic, consumerist, hate-filled piece of propaganda which says this is what you should aspire to. This level of utter vacuity, this foul, soul-sucking, horrible vacuum of vile emptiness is what you should aspire to. And you wait for the bubble to burst, and it doesn't" ... "Compared to this Sex and the City 2 is a call to arms for the dispossessed masses of the world." |
4. Revolver - AGAIN
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| "Watching Guy Ritchie's "Revolver" will make you want to pour petrol on your head and set fire to yourself. It's not that Revolver is just bad - it's that it's so mind-buggeringly,intestine-stranglingly hideous that you actually start to worry about the mental state of its creator. Honestly, if I was a doctor and somebody walked into my surgery and pitched Revolver, I would reach for the medicine cabinet forthwith." |
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
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| "Never was a film more accurately named. If you pay money to go and see Pirates of the Caribbean it's your own fault and you're bringing down the collapse of western civilisation." |
2. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
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| "Episode 2 is better than Episode 1, but then so is slamming your head in a car door." |
1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
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| "In two years time, when the whole thing has gone down, when the ship has sunk, when civilization has been reduced to some crying, weeping, wailing child after rivers - sloughs - of this horrible vulgarization of what was once a children's toy, I want a letter - I WANT A LETTER - saying 'I'm sorry'." |
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