Amy

This documentary is presented in an unusual way: using only footage of Amy's home videos, photos, interviews, live performances and voice-overs only for interviews from Amy and the people who knew her best. It certainly makes a nice change from the numerous camera interviews, mixed with footage of the documentary's subject. It's intimate, raw, sympathetic and heartbreaking. With so much footage of her, in the end, you feel like you really knew her. And it's absolutely gut-wrenching when she dies.

Amy's father Mitch was very critical of the movie, saying it put him in a bad light. But in truth, he already did that himself. Although the film shows him as a loving father that wants what's best for Amy, it does show him as someone who could have done more for her. Other times, he takes a misstep in trying to get his daughter off drugs, such as insisting she doesn't go to rehab the first time, then the second time allowing both her and her drug addicted husband Blake (I curse the day she ever met him) to go clean in the same clinic, which results in them going on a horrific binge later. And another, such as bringing in a horde of cameras on holiday, when the entire purpose was for Amy to get away from all of the cameras and publicity.

Like Kurt Cobain, she was a fragile human being who couldn't handle the fame. If one doesn't have it in their blood to withstand the pressure, they won't survive. Tragically, neither Kurt nor Amy could handle it.

This brilliant bio-doc paints an entirely different picture of Amy Winehouse, other than the nasty tabloids story that hampered her over the years. The tense moments when the paparazzi assaults Amy whenever she goes out got me really annoyed. This picture is one of a loving, talented, rebellious, music loving young Jewish girl - caught up in the dangerous parts of the music industry and ultimately crippled by addiction.

10 out of 10

A haunting, heartbreaking and stunningly brilliant film from Senna director Asif Kapadia, which takes us into the confidence of Amy Winehouse, as the bolshy, big-voiced, jazzy Jewish girl from North London becomes a megastar, while her personal demons, her relationship with a drug addict, and a ravenous, amoral press proceed to rip her to shreds.

Thanks to an abundance of revelatory home video footage, soundtracked by incisive interviews, we see her not only as the beehived, cat- eyed chanteuse or the alarmingly ribbed tabloid quarry, tumbling out of a club at 3am, but as a shy, spotty teen with a seductive offhand confidence in her vocal gift.

I'm not an enormous fan of Winehouse's music, I think because her deeply personal writing and distinctive, expressive voice tended to be masked by such contrived, Americanised pastiche – trading first on '30s jazz and then '60s girl groups – but the portrait that emerges here is uncompromising, thrilling and frequently devastating: of an unhappy girl equipped with a massive talent, but none of the stability or serenity to deal with the perpetual media storm that her success brought upon her.

We see stand-ups and TV presenters laughing at her bulimia and drug abuse, her management pushing her out of rehab and onto foreign stages, and – in the second half – a rapacious, vulturous paparazzi incessantly stalking her, an essential decency chillingly absent. If that was my job, I think I would struggle to watch this film and think: "Yes, what I am doing with my life is essentially fine."

By contrast, Kapadia's film is quite beautifully lacking in sensationalism. Though it essentially doubles an indictment of a society almost entirely lacking in basic compassion and empathy, it's a work that possesses both virtues in apparently limitless amounts, surely compressing and simplifying an impossibly complex narrative, but attaining something that seems awfully like the truth – and apparently is, according to her closest friends.

Amy is a tough watch, but it feels essential, not just for its vivid picture of a fascinating, deeply troubled young woman, but also for its wider significance: as a plea for people to stop being so horribly selfish, to stop seeing excess and illness as 'rock and roll' and drug abuse as a joke, and for the media to realise that if it wants to paint itself as a crusading Fifth Estate, then some basic humanity wouldn't go amiss.

This is one of the best documentaries that I have seen because its not meant to be flashy and "entertaining". It is a very honest and emotional movie with personal clips that show her rise to fame and her feelings about it. One of the biggest reasons why I loved it was because all the different sides of her life were presented in the movie. I loved how all the opposing sides agreed to come together and make this amazing movie. Her parents, managers, ex husband were all included, even though they probably hate one another in real life. I also liked how they included full songs in the documentary. I was a big fan of Amy Winehouse before but this movie made me appreciate her personality and clever poetry. Highly recommended. trust.

As the public we only see the picture that is given us, but Asif Kapadia's new movie, Amy, shows us the behind-the-scenes of extremely talented star Amy Winehouse. We catch glimpses of young teen Amy, smiling to the camera. We watch Amy enjoy making her music. We replay her breakthrough. And we see the horrific reality of the consequences of her fame, and the influence of the press. This masterpiece is an eye-opener and shows the truth behind the glamour of the red carpet.

Even though most people know the story of Amy, it has never been retold in this setting. Archive footage which makes the movie real, raw and honest. Commentary of people who have participated in Amy's life, and they tell the story as how they knew her, and not how the press thought they knew her. We get to know the fragile girl who "just wanted to be loved" and see her path towards her inevitable end, with participation of her destructive relationships as her absent father, her bad-influence husband and her addiction.

While we see the changes in Amy we see the changes in her music. Her music started off as a product of her personality, her smoky jazz, "I only write a song if it really means something to me" - Amy. But in the end her level of personality in songs has sunken just as much as her participation in shows. She couldn't handle the load up of all her personal problems and became only a mere shadow of the emotionally powerful chanteuse she once was. Her journey is an emotional roller-coaster of the bright Amy as we see her in the beginning of the movie and the addicted woman who just couldn't let go of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine and alcohol. They tried to make her go to rehab, but all she said was "No, no, no".

Although the emotional load up of this documentary is great, I do feel that it does show a selective side of the story. After I had seen the movie, I had the idea that everything that had come over Amy Winehouse was the result of her husband, parents, and the press. It is being presented as if Amy is a doomed angel because she is surrounded by the devil. This might be a peaceful thought for her close friends but I don't think it fully represents the truth.

But I am still amazed and overwhelmed by Amy's story and shocked how she went from the passionate and bright teenager she was, into a story about brilliance, depression, exploitation and addiction.

This movie is just as much as a worthy remembrance to Amy Winehouse as a representation of many celebrities who suffered from the pressure, the press and the fame-industry.

Mare P.

I saw this at the NXNE festival in Toronto last night. The movie was quite long, I must admit I was exhausted when I left. Not in a negative way, but overwhelmed at everything I had seen. The director had a lot of material to give us and he didn't hold back. The scene that I found the most powerful was the one in the recording studio with Tony Bennett, it was pure magic. I can't say that I followed Amy Winehouse, or was very familiar with her work, other than the song 'Rehab'. I did love her hairdo, it reminded me of the Ronettes. I am always fascinated by artists and how they develop.

We get a close up of Amy's artistic process. Her power was in her ability to constantly come up with song material that resonated with her at the deepest level and put those words to music. Combine this with a unaffected personality and an amazing ability to connect with an audience and you have a true force of nature. On the negative side, she had to deal with her personal daemons from her childhood. The tragedy was her use of drugs and alcohol. One gets the feeling from the movie of an almost inevitability of her path, but I guess that is always debatable.