{"id":171,"date":"2024-06-15T21:26:55","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T21:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=171"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:08:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:08:47","slug":"back-to-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/06\/15\/back-to-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Black"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

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Back to Black<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 122 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (drug use, language throughout, sexual content, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matt Greenhalgh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Polly Morgan\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: May 17, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O\u2019Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan, Lesley Manville, Sam Buchanan, Harley Bird, Ansu Kabia, Ryan O\u2019Doherty, Spike Fearn, Francesca Henry, Liv Longbourne, Bronson Webb, Therica Wilson-Read, Thelma Ruby, Matilda Thorpe, Pete Lee-Wilson, Miltos Yerolemou.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0In my review of 2015\u2019s Amy about the late jazz singer Amy Winehouse (1983-2011), I stated that no conventional Hollywood biopic could tell her story as well as the brilliant and moving documentary. Back to Black<\/strong> proves me right. The reviews for Sam Taylor-Johnson\u2019s (Fifty Shades of Grey) film haven\u2019t been great or even good. In fact, they\u2019ve been mostly negative. I disagree to a point. While far from being one of the greatest musical biopics ever made, it isn\u2019t the worst either. It could have been better, much better, had it gotten past its fascination with Amy\u2019s public image as a train wreck. I realize her personal issues- i.e. alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, bulimia- are a significant part of her story, but what about the music? Back to Black<\/strong> is ostensibly about the making of the same-named Grammy-winning album, but it plays more like a dramatized tabloid article than a movie.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0Marisa Abela (\u201cTeen Talk Barbie\u201d from last year\u2019s smash hit Barbie) plays Amy, a young Jewish girl from North London with a powerful singing voice and an attitude to match. From the start, she makes it clear she \u201cain\u2019t no f***ing Spice Girl\u201d. She becomes an instant success after the release of her first album Frank, but as we all know, fame comes at the cost of privacy. She\u2019s constantly hounded by the press who always seem to lurking around just waiting to capture her erratic behavior on film.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0Back to Black<\/strong> also looks at her relationships with her father Mitch (Marsan, Sherlock Holmes) and boyfriend\/husband Blake Fielder-Civil (O\u2019Connell, Unbroken). This is where the whitewashing begins. If you go by the film\u2019s version of events, Mitch was a supportive dad who cared only about his daughter\u2019s well-being. NOPE! In reality, Mitch left the family when Amy was nine and only resurfaced when her career started to take off. When it was suggested Amy should go to rehab, he said she didn\u2019t need it and pushed her into performing even though it was obvious she was exhausted and needed help. NONE of this is depicted in Back to Black<\/strong>. On the upside, Johnson does show that Amy\u2019s relationship with Blake was a case of co-dependency.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0The biggest problem with Back to Black<\/strong> is that it\u2019s incredibly superficial. It doesn\u2019t deal with any part of Amy\u2019s story in a meaningful way. It gives us the salient points without actually exploring the characters or events in depth. It fails to show what made Amy an icon. As for the musical performances (Abela does all her own singing), they\u2019re there but only to serve as a reminder that Amy was a singer in addition to a tabloid freak show. We don\u2019t even get to see the making of the titular album. It just happens. Like I said, the film is more interested in the sordid details of Amy\u2019s short life. Even then, Johnson doesn\u2019t go beneath the surface.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0The acting is okay. Abela makes a valiant effort, but doesn\u2019t quite nail what made Amy Winehouse Amy Winehouse. At times, it\u2019s like she\u2019s a teen girl at a costume party as Amy. O\u2019Connell is okay as Blake; it\u2019s the script that sells him short. The movie tries to portray him as a victim of Amy\u2019s tempestuous personality, but that is far from the truth. People familiar with Amy\u2019s story knows he was a user who saw her as a meal ticket. He wasn\u2019t all that different from her dad. None of that comes through in Back to Black<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0Although deeply flawed and inaccurate, Back to Black<\/strong> is a nonetheless fascinating movie. It\u2019s as interesting as it is frustrating. In the right hands, an Amy Winehouse could be a musical biopic masterpiece on par with Sid and Nancy, the ultimate self-destructive love story. Back to Black<\/strong> is far from a masterpiece. I recommend watching the documentary Amy instead. It tells her story without sensationalizing it.<\/p>\r\n

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Back to Black (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 122 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (drug use, language throughout, sexual content, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matt Greenhalgh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Nick Cave and Warren Ellis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Polly Morgan\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: May 17, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O\u2019Connell, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Cowan, Lesley Manville, Sam Buchanan, Harley Bird, Ansu Kabia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Back-to-Black-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}