Undeniably the highest profile film critic in the UK, Mark Kermode has managed the tricky feat of being both an insightful, erudite reviewer and a media personality with a colourfully engaging persona. He has also managed to become a respectable selling author in the era of collapsing print sales. In his latest book Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics (www. picador.com), Kermode addresses the hot-button issue of the decline of film criticism, and the role of the internet and social networking in this perceived decline and in contemporary film marketing.

In his relaxed and witty conversational style, Kermode attempts to get to grips with the impact on his profession of the rise of the amateur film reviewer, whether they’re writers for blogs such as the one you are reading, cinema going tweeters, or Amazon reviewers. He is understandably somewhat dewy-eyed about the pre-internet era in which he first plied his trade,...