Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” is being released on Friday in the UK. The U.S. release date is May 10, 2024 via Focus Features. Here’s the trailer.
The first reviews are in, almost all coming in from UK outlets, and “Back to Black” so far has a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and 55 on Metacritic.
Hamish Macbain at the Evening Standard: “on the most basic of levels, a poor, poor piece of filmmaking,” the review begins. “The schtick being rolled out is that it is an impressionistic, abstract take on the life of Amy Winehouse based on her lyrics.”
Elsewhere, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw had a much more favorable take on the film, giving it four stars, calling “Back to Black” “easily” Taylor-Johnson’s best work, praising it as an “urgent, warm, heartfelt dramatisation.”
For The Telegraph’s Tim Robey, “Back to Black” has a “cautious gloss” that leads to the star’s story being “perhaps less enlightening or truly tragic than it might have been”.
“Back to Black” completed production in April of 2023. “Industry” actress Marisa Abela is playing Winehouse. This has been a passion project of Taylor-Johnson’s for almost a decade — she was one of Winehouse’s closest friends.
The screenplay for “Back to Black” is being penned by Matt Greenhalgh, who previously collaborated with Taylor-Johnson on “Nowhere Boy” and also wrote “Control,” the acclaimed biopic about late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.
Let’s just forget that Taylor-Johnson also directed 2015’s critically-maligned “Fifty Shades of Grey.” She has more or less disowned that film, citing the creative difficulties she had working with the novel’s author E. L. James.