Back to Black

Marisa Abela's portrayal of Amy Winehouse is a standout in an otherwise messy film. Her performance is a solid 10/10 and deserves a standing ovation.

But the film itself falls short, tangled in a disjointed script that leaves the audience emotionally adrift. There's a big disconnect between the characters and the viewers, making it hard to really connect with the story. In contrast, Asif Kapadia's documentary "Amy" broke our hearts by offering an intimate look into the life of a woman many of us never met but felt we knew by the end.

For those who don't know Winehouse's tumultuous journey, this film doesn't offer much clarity. It meanders through her life, failing to paint a clear picture of the real Amy. Despite the stellar cast, their great performances can't save the film's fragmented storytelling.

The movie glosses over crucial aspects of Amy's life, simplifying her complex struggles into a narrative that lacks the emotional depth and authenticity that her story deserves.

Like a lot of recent biopics Back to Black does a perfectly fine job but fails to really provide great depth or insight into its subject.

Considering her short career and life, this biopic took the not unreasonable approach of trying to cover all of Amy's career, but I think is where is perhaps becomes a bit unstuck. It covers all of these events well but at times it is simply replaying the events rather than exploring the people behind them.

That is where this film failed to really capture me. I felt like it explored Amy's career and her impact on the music scene on a bit of a surface level. It explored her relationship with Blake on too much of a surface level. Likewise some of her family relationships and addiction issues were a bit too surface level. I think this film needed to really find a focus and provide more of an insight into Amy. I left the film not really knowing more or understanding Amy on a deeper level than I already did.

That being said, there is still plenty to enjoy about this film. The performances are all really good, particularly Marisa Abela as Amy. Her singing is also incredible. It isn't of course as good as Amy's but is never a distraction. Then there is Jack O'Connell as Blake who again is really strong. The chemistry between them is spot on.

So overall it is a pretty strong biopic, but it perhaps keeps a little too much distance from Amy without diving in as deep as it could have done. The strong performance from Abela, the great music, and the decent command of the events of Amy's life make it a well worth watch though.

The film captures the self destructive and addictive demons that surrounded Amy Winehouse and I think doesn't truly depict the character portrayal of her husband and father as they are shown as better characters than they were.

Strong performances but I thought disappointing ending .

The singing of Marisa Abela is excellent and acting all around very strong . Just not enough depth and oomph in the overall result.

The addictive 'love' story if that's what it was is captured well and illustrates that period in London quite well for anyone who is a younger viewer.

I'm always amazed that showing drug use and alcohol addiction with the strong language is still rated at 15 but maybe I'm just getting old.

Make your own mind up Slight mistake in the film when she leaves prison and an electric LEVC TXE taxi is in the shot which wasn't actually made at that point.

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.

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.