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The Arts Intel Report

Reclaiming Amy

The good thing about the level of fame Amy Winehouse achieved in just 27 years of life is that the archival footage is never-ending. Reclaiming Amy, filmed from the perspective of the musician’s friends and family, is chock full of it: Winehouse aged three and five; Winehouse in a school production of Grease, playing (who else?) Rizzo; Winehouse on the path to winning five Grammys. The bad thing is that the fame, and the strings attached to it, were also the source of her undoing, a subject the film, timed to the 10th anniversary of Winehouse’s death, cannot skirt. A sort of answer to Amy, the 2015 documentary by Asif Kapadia, Reclaiming Amy allows the people close to Winehouse to address criticisms that Kapadia leveled at them. But where the new film really shines is in videos of the Camden-accented, beehive-coiffed Winehouse herself, doing what fans loved her for: telling it like it is. —J.V.