A life lived so vibrantly spotlighted as that of Amy Winehouse’s was ripe for the biographical pickings from the moment of her death, all too soon back in 2011. It’s an indictment of the day and age we live in. Nothing to be proud of. Back to Black is the first dramatisation out of the blocks. It follows, and skulks in the shadow of, Asif Kapadia’s superior 2015 documentary, Amy. Where that film dived deep, upsetting her family in the process, this one’s but a paddle in the shallow end. A superficial and underwhelming entry to the current vogue for jukebox biopics. It’s worse than that though. Back to Black hasn’t the self-awareness to recognise itself as being no better than the then paparazzi it vindicates.
There’s always been something pleasingly unfussy about the Kung-Fu Panda franchise. It’s a three-word premise. A panda…does Kung-Fu. Eight years on from the last film – and fifteen since the first – nothing has changed. It’s still about a panda, he still does Kung-Fu. Fine. Funny, too. The premise, that is. There is a niggle, though. Eight years ago, Kung-Fu Panda 3 closed off a well-liked trilogy rather too well for its own good. Four films in and the mileage limitations of a three-word premise are beginning to show. It’s never a great sign when a franchise resorts to raking up past foes to emulate past victories.
There’s a parallel universe out there in which audiences didn’t sleep on Paul Feig’s gender-switched Ghostbusters reboot. Misogyny does not exist on this spectral plane. Inevitably, the female ‘busters would have united with the original gang by now, in some nostalgia porn sequel, but 2021’s Afterlife would never have happened. To think what might have been. Instead, here is Frozen Empire, a fair but largely phoned-in fifth entry in a franchise struggling to proving itself more than the sum of its theme tune. Apologies, fourth entry. In this universe, the powers that be remain keen to pretend 2016 never happened (aren’t we all?). A return to New York here puts the nail in Feig’s coffin.
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