POSITIVES:
1) The performances are all very good. I thought it was a very sensible decision to get a virtually unknown actress to play Amy because it meant that she was able to completely disappear into the role and you feel like you're really seeing Amy. Also the fact she did all of her own singing is very impressive 2) The best moments in the film for me are the musical moments, watching Amy record / perform her most famous songs. These scenes were filmed very well and it was impressive how real they made things like the Glastonbury performance and the Grammy performance look 3) Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville both bring a much needed touch of class to the film. I thought Mitch and Cynthia were pretty much the only two likeable characters in the film actually 4) I thought the way in which Amy's mental decline and deterioration was portrayed through her appearance was quite clever. We see her transform from a beautiful and natural looking girl at the start, into a girl covered in ugly tattoos and over the top hair by the end. I felt like the film was making a point of showing us every time Amy got a new tattoo or a new hairstyle, to signify to us that in each of these moments she is moving further away from the relatively angelic figure that she was at the start of the film
NEGATIVES:
1) I say in my last point that Mitch and Cynthia were the only likeable characters for me; and that is an issue. I found Amy and Blake to both be insufferable and I didn't connect with either of them at all. This is an issue because they are the two characters with the most screen time and when emotional things were happening to them I was struggling to care because I didn't like them 2) I struggled with a sense of timing throughout the film. It feels like it was really speeding through Amy's life, which meant that many moments struggled to feel impactful. I also feel like unless you're a die hard Amy Winehouse fan you wouldn't be able to really tell when months or years were passing by in the film's chronology 3) I felt like the film bottled it a little bit with its ending. It fairly abruptly cuts to black and just tells us that Amy had passed away, whereas I feel like a gutsier film would've actually shown that happen.
1) The performances are all very good. I thought it was a very sensible decision to get a virtually unknown actress to play Amy because it meant that she was able to completely disappear into the role and you feel like you're really seeing Amy. Also the fact she did all of her own singing is very impressive 2) The best moments in the film for me are the musical moments, watching Amy record / perform her most famous songs. These scenes were filmed very well and it was impressive how real they made things like the Glastonbury performance and the Grammy performance look 3) Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville both bring a much needed touch of class to the film. I thought Mitch and Cynthia were pretty much the only two likeable characters in the film actually 4) I thought the way in which Amy's mental decline and deterioration was portrayed through her appearance was quite clever. We see her transform from a beautiful and natural looking girl at the start, into a girl covered in ugly tattoos and over the top hair by the end. I felt like the film was making a point of showing us every time Amy got a new tattoo or a new hairstyle, to signify to us that in each of these moments she is moving further away from the relatively angelic figure that she was at the start of the film
NEGATIVES:
1) I say in my last point that Mitch and Cynthia were the only likeable characters for me; and that is an issue. I found Amy and Blake to both be insufferable and I didn't connect with either of them at all. This is an issue because they are the two characters with the most screen time and when emotional things were happening to them I was struggling to care because I didn't like them 2) I struggled with a sense of timing throughout the film. It feels like it was really speeding through Amy's life, which meant that many moments struggled to feel impactful. I also feel like unless you're a die hard Amy Winehouse fan you wouldn't be able to really tell when months or years were passing by in the film's chronology 3) I felt like the film bottled it a little bit with its ending. It fairly abruptly cuts to black and just tells us that Amy had passed away, whereas I feel like a gutsier film would've actually shown that happen.