Back to Black

Back to Black

The extraordinary story of Amy Winehouse’s early rise to fame from her early days in Camden through the making of her groundbreaking album, Back to Black that catapulted Winehouse to global fame. Told through Amy’s eyes and inspired by her deeply personal lyrics, the film explores and embraces the many layers of the iconic artist and the tumultuous love story at the center of one of the most legendary albums of all time.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 122 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, Music
  • Stars: Marisa Abela, Lesley Manville, Eddie Marsan, Jack O'Connell, Juliet Cowan, Bronson Webb, Ansu Kabia, Harley Bird, Michael S. Siegel, Matilda Thorpe, Jeff Tunke, Ryan O'Doherty, Izaak Cainer, Tracey Lushington, Sam Buchanan
  • Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
 Comments
  • BoBo_Goal32 - 25 June 2024
    Back to Amy's fragments of life
    Well, it seems that everyone hated this movie, because it wasn't deep enough. I will allow myself to disagree, because even when I think about the biggest and most successful film about a life and career of a famous singer, none of them was a real masterpiece or accurate in a small level.

    The main purpose, except money making, is to give a stage to the deceased artists, one more time, after his death and hope to revive his or hers success and even for a small period of time. This is a thin and very simple way of looking on this kind of project - for the large audience, who doesn't want to dig into each and every small detail.

    For the devoted fans, who knows each and every detail about Winehouse's life, it probably can be remembered as a big disappointment, but we are not all devoted fans, so might as well enjoy the movie, don't get into all of the small details and go to read about them after the movie is finished.

    We will learn later on, that Amy's dad wasn't such a thoughtful guy as he seems in the movie and also small and larger details about Amy's largest love ever, which made her write such amazing songs, but the main issue is probably that all of the black and dark details seems, once again at this type of movies, as much brighter, then they actually did in real life.

    As in those type of films - Marisa Abela crushes it with a great performance and fantastic voice. She is not alone - Jack O'Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville are co-staring with her and doing great job also to a movie that will be a great delight, that is starting to fill like an action genre movie. Shut your brain down and just enjoy the acting and music.
  • jadedmermaid007 - 7 June 2024
    Inaccurate and not entertaining
    Not only is most of the information in the film inaccurate, but the acting is horrible. Even if you ignore the terrible singing and rudimentary acting....even if you forget "justice for Amy".....even if you forget Amy Winehouse herself and imagine it's a story about someone made up..... it's not an entertaining movie or understandable storyline. Complete opposite of Amy Winehouse's actual life or Back To Black album. How are you going to say you know how the world was from her eyes? When you didn't interview or run anything by her family and friends for this movie?? And didn't even put things in chronological order?

    P.s. The shoes in the wedding scene are heinous. She needed a spray tan and you guys need help with the lighting in every scene

    & Marisa should have really wiped the smirk off her face in some scenes that weren't supposed to be sneaky or flirty or cheeky (ex. In the recording studio with her pants unbuttoned at 'Salaam's house'...which was a disgrace btw. Mark Ronson and Salaam are not the same producer and she acted differently around both of them and had stated that in interviews before)
  • Avwillfan89 - 2 June 2024
    Amy who?
    I honestly do believe that if you have a documentary about a famous, beloved singer that tells you so much about the subject, with intimate footage and how they practice their craft and the eventual downfall of of the celebrity, while reminding us that they are human, a fun biopic is not what is needed.

    In the same vein as the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, this is not only extraordinarily sanitized, having the family stamp of approval (something the Asif Kapadia film did not have) but portraying them as blameless saints when in actuality they were far from perfect. The same as the Whitney film, when you have powerful people still working in the industry who want to protect their image, they will tell lies to in order to make themselves look great.

    The fact is, both Houston and Winehouse were taken advantage of by the music industry, and by the men around them. And while it wasn't entirely on those two factors that the singers ended up where they did, it certainly contributed to it. Addicts don't just become addicts. There is always a inciting incident that starts it.

    Any Winehouse was very clear in her words about music and the fame. She wanted people to feel the raw vulnerability in her songwriting. She didn't want packed stadiums as she was an old school jazz musician. And what flipped her over the edge was being forced to do things she didn't want to do when she was in a vulnerable state.

    The movie does the complete opposite of what Amy really felt like, what happened to her and what she said. The lead actress Marisa Abela was really great as Amy, but this jumbled up so many things that made Amy the complex, yet once in a lifetime phenomenal talent that she was, it is not worth watching.

    Want to find out about the real Amy? Watch the 2015 documentary or just sit back and listen to her music.