Review: In Winehouse doc 'Amy,' celebrity is the villain

First seen as a bright-eyed 14-year-old girl singing a knockout "Happy Birthday," Winehouse gradually recedes from our view as her renown grows, obscured by a blizzard of flashes and a deadening haze of celebrity.

[...] it is, more broadly, a clinical case study of celebrity's crushing onslaught and an indictment of its tabloid apparatus.

[...] most haunting is the film's close-up of a toxic celebrity culture where out-of-control addicts are merely punchlines for late-night hosts.

Both films replace hagiography with evidence (archival video, audio testimony, even old voicemails), but the purity of Kapadia's aesthetics shouldn't be mistaken for perfect objectivity.

Montage of Heck after an admitted seven-year affair by her cab driver father, is cited as a turning point for the worse.

In a mocking video Fiedler-Civil shoots while both are in rehab together, she's less inclined to make a joke out of it: "I don't really mind it here," she says.

[...] Amy" is a clear-eyed, deeply empathetic view of Winehouse, whose huge talent and sudden fame made too many forget she was still just a vulnerable young woman in serious need of help.