Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Tom Wilkinson is brilliant as always as the barrister who takes on the case, complicated by England's labyrinthine libel laws. But there's too little actual tension in the climactic courtroom drama.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
With chatty urgency, Jackson dramatizes the 2000 trial in which a flinty Brit Holocaust denier sued Penguin Books for libel.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
The jury remains out on this one.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
You wonder if the material would have been more effective as a courtroom procedural adapted for the stage.

Name : Sophie Gilbert / Alias : The Atlantic
Its finest and most moving moments are when Lipstadt and Rampton go to Auschwitz on a research mission, where the camera lingers on the piles of rubble that cover a destroyed gas chamber.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
As an actual procedural narrative, the film is only passably interesting, afflicted with the kind of stop-start rhythms endemic in movies that compress a legal battle spanning years into a two-hour movie.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : TheWrap
The film is talky and well-mannered, which are not usually the highest of compliments. But it works.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
The crucial thing missing is what should be the essence of a courtroom drama: our immersion in how Lipstadt's lawyers stake out their strategy.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Another illuminating performance by Rachel Weisz and a brilliant screenplay by the distinguished British playwright David Hare make Denial one of the most powerful and riveting courtroom dramas ever made.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
This isn't a debate, it's a sledgehammer; it's not inherently compelling drama, but it's immensely satisfying catharsis to watch as it flattens Irving's nonsense into nothingness.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
There are people today who will claim that all opinions are equal; that facts are boring; that there is no such thing as objective truth. "Denial" reminds us of what the verdict should be.

Name : Farran Smith Nehme / Alias : New York Post
The movie sneers at the journalists covering the trial, but for those of us who followed it at the time, the newspaper accounts were a lot more engrossing than this film.

Name : Deborah Young / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A compelling, true courtroom drama touches on the lingering pain of the Holocaust.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Because Hare's script grapples with serious themes and singular events whose ramifications are still being felt, it is effective when it counts.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
"Denial" is carried less by the normal theatrics of courtroom dramas than a staunch sense of duty to protect the truth. It's an argument for the patient, methodical dismantling of fools.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
[An] accomplished, quietly devastating documentary .

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
This lengthy but immersive portrait will hit hard with viewers who regard Winehouse among the great lost voices not just of a generation, but of an entire musical genre.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Amy is alternately thrilling and devastating, throwing you back and forth until the devastation takes over and you spend the last hour watching the most supernaturally gifted vocalist of her generation chase and find oblivion.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"Amy" makes you wonder about a lot of things, one being the oldest cliche in show business - the one about the high price of notoriety, whether you have the money to cover the bill or not.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
One of Mr. Kapadia's most inspired strokes in this valuable documentary is to put her lyrics on screen as she sings them, so we can see for ourselves the essential elements of her songs as they reflected, and intertwined with, her tumultuous life.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Plenty of folks praise Winehouse in "Amy." But no one was there to save her. Perhaps it wasn't possible. But perhaps it was.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
In Kapadia's assured and careful hands, the film becomes less a portrait of a tragic artist, whose downward spiral was exacerbated by opportunistic family members and colleagues, than a discomfiting mirror held up to her audience.

Name : Kerry Lengel / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's hard to watch. And even harder to look away.

Name : Miriam Di Nunzio / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The film is often uncomfortable to watch, prompting that little voice inside each of us to scream out "Somebody help her!"

Name : Walter V. Addiego / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Amy" is a film about the waste of a great talent, and you dread the inevitable ending.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
Kapadia and King provide some worthy insights about the damaging effects of celebrity on psychologically fragile individuals. And the music is fantastic.

Name : Chloe Schama / Alias : The New Republic
[An] unpredictably graceful film (given its sometimes ugly material).

Name : Jim Farber / Alias : New York Daily News
The result may be depressing, but the performance footage balances it with rousing evidence of Winehouse's eternal talent.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Kapadia's illuminating, compassionate and tragic doc goes way up and way, way down with the gone-too-soon Amy Winehouse.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
There are a couple of scenes in Asif Kapadia's new Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy, that make the fame-industrial complex seem rock-bottom awful.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Even if the last third of Amy is painful to watch, Kapadia takes care not to lose sight of the human being behind the mythology.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's Amy's words, her music, her voicemails, her home videos, her friends, her family, her tormentors, and her timeless incandescence. Look, listen and weep.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Amy is an emotionally stirring and technically polished tribute, its sprawling mass of diverse source material elegantly cleaned up, color-corrected and shaped into a satisfying narrative.

Name : Steve Pond / Alias : TheWrap
Heartbreaking and wrenching, if not always satisfying.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The film is remarkable not just for the immense talent there to see in Winehouse's performances, but the fact that there is so much to see.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
One thing is for certain: It will be much harder to hear that handful of powerful, lush, carnal songs on Back to Black without the wallop of melancholy.

Name : Jordan Levin / Alias : Miami Herald
You don't need to be a fan of British singer Amy Winehouse to be moved by the documentary Amy, a devastating examination of the deadly effect that celebrity culture, media and drugs can have on artists.

Name : Kyle Ryan / Alias : AV Club
Winehouse was a complicated artist who deserved a nuanced, honest look at her life. In lesser hands, Amy could be a feature-length E! True Hollywood Story, but Kapadia treats his subject with respect and heart.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A loving but honest portrayal of a doomed talent.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Amy" doesn't depart from the standard behind-the-music template, but it does deepen the format immeasurably, through the intimacy of its archival materials and the focus of its approach.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
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.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
It's clear the smart, passionate singer knew her own mind - and the consequences of what she was doing to her body. But her tragic end, and the highly publicized chaos leading up to it, shows self-awareness wasn't enough.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Anyone with a beating heart will be forgiven for allowing it to break during this unflinching and thoughtful account of the life and death of the soul singer.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Watching Amy is a torturous but endlessly hypnotic experience.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
A mesmerizing yet devastating look at a singular talent.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
"All I'm good for is making tunes," she tells one interviewer. "So leave me alone to do that." Her time ran out far too early, but the luck is all ours - we still have the voice.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
A powerful, and powerfully sad, experience.

Name : Paul de Barros / Alias : Seattle Times
"Amy," Asif Kapadia's documentary about the short, tragic life of British retro soul singer Amy Winehouse, is a heartbreaker.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Kapadia isn't simply revisiting Ms. Winehouse's life and death, but also - by pulling you in close to her, first pleasantly and then unpleasantly - telling the story of contemporary celebrity and, crucially, fandom's cost.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The ugly unraveling of Winehouse's life infuriates and saddens anew, as Kapadia's poignant documentary reminds viewers of what was and what might have been, but was ultimately, tragically never to be.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Like all theories, the doc's "truth vs. phoniness" narrative has a few blind spots.