Back to Black

Amy Whinehouse was a rather personal celebrity for me since my teen years. I was never much of music fan, or celebrity follower but as everyone there were a couple famous people who had a huge impact on me. I cried when I heard about her death as if she was someone I was close to. Her You know I am no Good to this day makes my blood crawl. I was at her concert in Serbia (I am from Bulgaria so we often went there for such events). It was one of the worst experiences in my life. The crowd was angry and booing at her as if they were robbed or sth, as if some right of theirs have been taken. I don't know when the public decided that singers, actors, athletes owe them sth. I was also angry but at the organizers. I could never forgive them for letting her on stage when she should have been receiving help, I could never forgive them for abusing a human being in such way. I had nightmares for weeks of the image of her in this utterly destructed and vulnerable state. When I read the news about her death I even felt the irrational guilt that I was at fault for her tragedy, I and other fans who were only taking from her.

And I think this is the hugest flaw os the movie, it pulls the break on really going into the depth of a human tragedy. It fails to show why this young woman became so important and loved by so many who listened to her music, what made her stand out.

Instead it shifts focus from music to personal, back and forth, sometimes making the narrative a bit disjointed. Her music was really something. For years she would have just the same repertoire and still it felt more than enough. There was never the need for her to release album after album to stay relevant or influencial in the music industry. Still if the movie used a bit less of the music parts, and developed the others better, the movie would have had a better storytelling.

The actress is doing a great job portraying the rawness and authencity of Whinehouse even if her looks are more polished, her acting isn't. If she had a more developed screenplay it would have been a performance of the ranks of many memorable biopics.

Overall it is a good but maybe forgettable film about someone who in the eyes of many is forever unforgettable.

Truth, if it were needed, that Lesley Manville can turn her hand to anything, but otherwise this is a rather unremarkable biopic of a woman whose character, I must confess, I didn't actually like very much. She is the nan of Amy (Marisa Abela) and the two have a special bond. Amy lives with her mum who is divorced from her dad Mitch (Eddie Marsan). He fancies himself as a bit of a crooner and she is steeped in jazz, determined to write her own songs and make a success of herself - on her own terms. Enter Nick (Sam Buchanan) who works for music mogul Simon Fuller and she is, after an initial bit of hostility, signed up and on her way. The remainder of the chronology is all pretty straightforward as Sam Taylor-Johnson decides to focus on an entirely speculative look at how her personal life developed. Amy's increasingly strained relationship with her friends and her father, her grandmother's terminal illness and her "toxic co-dependent" relationship with the charismatic Blake (Jack O'Connell). There's no doubting that many of her songs are great - even if the role of Mark Ronson in any of that is largely ignored, and hats off to Abela for putting her own slant on them. She does her own singing and though she does rather over-egg it, she does imbue a sense of the sheer force of personality this woman had. O'Connell, too, does well enough - especially with his Shangri-La dance in the pub when they meet, but somehow the whole narrative is just too bitty and episodic. The presentation of her character is way too shallow and frankly she is portrayed as a bit of an obnoxious brat. Her increasing exposure to the hounding paparazzi is well illustrated and that growing sense of exasperation obvious, but again we jump around too much as we seem to be rushing to a conclusion we know all about. At two hours it is too long in many ways and too short in others. The dialogue offers us little insight into just who she was and by the end, I felt sad for her but can't say I really cared about any of them. The aggression of the photographers seems to receive a disproportionate share of the blame for her predicament whilst rather discounting her own series of bad choices fuelled by her own immaturity and by the public's obsessions with watching what it builds up come crashing down. They couldn't sell their photos if we didn't want to buy them. A memorable musical legacy left behind by one who, along with so many other ground-breaking but flawed musical geniuses, might just have been better left for our ears.

Amy Winehouse had a tumultuous life, full of success and drama, but this film does no make justice to her legacy.

The story is narrated on a chaotic way, like if parts of the movie was left on the cutting room. One minute she was living with her mum in a flat and the next she was living in a house in Camden with a flatmate that disappeared inexplicably.

One minute she was a young 18 year old and the next she was a successful singer that quit her label. Is like her career and achievements were not interested for the screenplay, if you didn't know Winehouse story and this is the first time you see it, you would think that the girl was just a bit stupid. The only interesting thing that happened to her was Blake, and for those that followed her career we know that Blake was not good for her, and she had more interesting things in her life than being obsessed with that man.

She sang with Tony Bennet! And was like the peak of her career! No mention of that; she lived in the Caribbean trying to get better, and also no mention of it.

Is sad that Hollywood just simplifies someone's life for a movie and then that's it... very very sad to see what her legacy has been turned to.

The performance by Marisa Abela is brilliant, she is Amy Winehouse. However, if you know anything about Amy Winehouse you know that she had an incredibly unique voice, suffered with addictions & was hounded by the press. None of this is shown to its true potential in the film, which to be honest is disappointing. I expected to hear more of her singing and performing. The picture paints her Dad Mitch & husband as 'not bad blokes'. Neither of them were good blokes. Her Dad, should have & could have been far more supportive & intervened at her most desperate. Blake was an out & out addict, the film does not portray the impact that either of them had on Amy. Rocket Man, Bohemian Rhapsody & Elvis nailed their stories, sadly Back to Black doesn't.

The key credit to this film was Marisa Abela's portrayal of Amy.

Jack O'Connell is one of my firm faves and can bring charisma to any character he plays.

The film uses Amy's songs to fit in with the narrative, rather than the accurate timeline in which they were released.

It was an entertaining watch but offered a simplified view of Amy's life and turned it into nothing more than a toxic love story. The relationship with her parents wasn't really covered and the timeline of events didn't show how a mix of fame and drugs can take their toll over time.

I watched the 2015 documentary 'Amy' shortly after and would recommend this if you're wanting an insight into the life of Amy Winehouse.

This film would be good as a fictional film about made up people, but average as a biopic about a real person's life.