Amy

I'd expected the movie 'Amy' to be some sort of bio-pic, and was surprised to see it was well-cut raw footage of Amy Winehouse. It describes the progressive toxicity of fame and its effect on the singer. There's plenty of happy camcorder extracts in the first section but as the quality of the footage improves she becomes more famous but more troubled.

There's telling early cutaway scenes of her talking to camcorder saying she's not sure she can handle fame and wants to just make music. It's obviously un-scripted, unlike many of today's pop stars who have had the media training to spout on about their latest single and tour dates.

Later a pernicious introduction of drugs into Amy's world and the sadly familiar story of 'they want piece of me' as she is loaded into tours and record contracts. The documentary leaves the viewer to draw conclusions about some of those close to her and their motivations.

Throughout there's plenty of opportunity to examine Amy's twisty lyrics and their frequently autobiographical nature.

Included are some great live performance extracts both in the studio and on tour which later shows things start to go wrong spiralling towards the sad ending.

I'll prefer her rainy performances of Glastonbury of 2007, when she actually performed twice (Pyramid and Jazz) compared to her notoriety in 2008 where we stood at the back of a huge crowd many of whom were there expecting a sideshow as well as the performance.