MARK Kermode happily confesses to being a “grumpy old man” at the age of 49.

“There’s no two ways about it,” he admits.

But the nation’s favourite film critic is about the most affable grumpy old man you could hope to speak to as he holds forth on the things that really irk him about modern films.

For starters, there’s the stupidity of most summer blockbusters. Then there’s the 3D craze. And then the fact that many cinemas are making projectionists redundant while they concentrate on the core business of selling sweets.

His new book, The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex, starts with an account of a nightmarish visit to a multiplex not too far from the author’s home in Brockenhurst.

The credit card machine won’t give him his tickets. He gets nowhere from remonstrating about it with an assistant at the confectionery counter, so he has to buy two more tickets. When the film starts, part of the picture is missing, and when seeking out a member of staff and complaining, everyone seems to wonder why it bothers him.

Kermode is too discreet to reveal which cinema he was writing about, but says: “The story I was telling about the trip did, I think, have some kind of universal resonance.

“I thought ‘This is so terrible, people are going to think I’ve been making this up’. Since the book has come out, I’ve had so many emails from people saying ‘That’s nothing. I’ve had so much worse’.

“This problem with multiplexes isn’t down to the individual multiplex, it’s down to a corporate culture that says ‘We don’t care about this stuff’.

“The key to all this is if you have a cinema near you that’s doing a good job, offering a good service, then promote it and celebrate it and make sure people know it’s doing a good job.”

The author says he has around five cinemas within an hour’s drive of his New Forest home and he is full of praise for Southampton’s Harbour Lights.

He is less impressed with most of the blockbusters he reviews on the BBC News channel and the Radio 5 Live show he co-hosts with Simon Mayo. His publisher’s lawyer was worried by his claim in his book that no one in the world enjoyed the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

“The lawyer said ‘This is ridiculous’. They only have to find one person who enjoyed it’,” he remembers. Kermode said he’d challenge them to find that person and put them on the witness stand.

“Just because people pay to see it, it doesn’t mean they enjoyed it,” he says of summer blockbusters.

“People have got used to accepting such a rotten and degenerate level of movie-making that they kind of expect it to be like that.”

While Kermode deeply resents the kind of movie turned out by director Michael Bay – responsible for Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys and the Transformers trilogy – he insists he isn’t against blockbusters. He just thinks that since their success is guaranteed anyway, Hollywood could afford to try making some intelligent ones.

“My favourite movie is The Exorcist, which is demonstrably a blockbuster,” he adds.

Another target of Kermode’s ire is the 3D craze which has inflated ticket prices in recent times and left many people underwhelmed. He points out that 3D “revolutions” have come and gone at least twice in the history of cinema and he is sure the writing is on the wall for this one.

“The hike in prices for 3D caused the illusion that cinema sales were better than they were. Less people were paying more money for less entertainment,” he says.

For all his despair at the state of cinema-going, Kermode is full of enthusiasm for movies. He and his wife, the film academic Linda Ruth Williams, organised the New Forest Film Festival, highlights of which included a screening powered by a bicycle. And unlike most paying cinema-goers, he feels a duty to approach every film with high hopes.

“You go with an open mind and the hope that every movie turns out to be Citizen Kane,” he says. “If you pre-judge something, you should stop doing the job. Who knew Guy Ritchie had a film as good as Sherlock Holmes in him?

“I know that people won’t believe that’s what I do but I promise you I do try and do that – even when those deathly words ‘A film by Michael Bay’ come up.”

• The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex, by Mark Kermode, is published by Random House, £11.99