Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the recording of Aretha Franklin's best-selling album finally sees the light of day more than four decades after the original footage was shot.
Amazing Grace is essentially a concert documentary capturing Aretha Franklin recording her landmark 1972 gospel album live at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church. The 'plot' is minimal by design — it's a fly-on-the-wall document of a recording session, so narrative structure scores low. But Franklin's vocal performances are staggering, genuinely among the most powerful ever captured on film — Acting/Performance earns a strong 4. The cinematography is competent but limited by the constraints of the original 1972 shoot and Sydney Pollack's chaotic production (mismatched audio-visual sync plagued it for decades). Novelty is moderately high — the decades-long delay and the circumstances of its resurrection give it a singular aura, and there's nothing quite like watching this specific transcendent moment finally reach audiences. The ending, like the film overall, is emotionally resonant but structurally modest — it simply concludes with the sessions wrapping up, powerful but not dramatically shaped.