Amy

The image that I always had of singer Amy Winehouse was that of a drunk girl with a beehive stumbling around London. But Asif Kapida's astonishing and terrifying documentary smashes that perception completely.

The film begins with a fourteen year old Amy singing happy birthday to her best friend Lauren Gilbert in 1998. The film then flashes forward three years to the beginning of Amy's career as a jazz singer. From here, we see her creative beginnings with the release of her first album Frank, through to the beginning of her troubles when meeting future husband Blake Fielder, the sudden rise to fame with her next album Back to Black, on which her most famous single "Rehab" was a part and then her downfall when she started to do heroin and crack cocaine.

This documentary is so sad because despite starting off with a cheery hopeful girl who just wants to make music, you ultimately know how the story ends. But even in those early years, we find that not everything was as happy as the footage we see presents itself. She suffered from bulimia, and although she said she was okay with the fact that her father left her family when she was young, you can really see how much an impact it had on her, especially in the interactions she had with her father later in her life.

Mitch Winehouse (her father) has come out and condemned this film for the portrayal of Amy and his family, but it seems as though he is only covering himself. I don't think he was portrayed in any way other than how he appears in footage that is presented, as someone who only came back into Amy's life once she started to make a lot of money. Also her husband Blake Fielder impacted negatively on Amy's life, although he came across hugely regretful of what he did to her in introducing heroin to her life. The other group that comes across negatively in this film is that of the media, especially the paparazzi. Toward the end of the film there are entire sequences of footage that I found unable to watch because of the amount of camera flashes. This level of fame began to weigh on Amy, as all she wanted to do was make music.

What I thought was really powerful is that this film is made up entirely of archive footage taken by Amy, her friends like Nick Shymanksy and her bodyguard Andrew Morris (who considered her family), as well as television interviews and concert footage. All the interviews are audio over these images and we don't see a single person as they appear today. This really lends weight to the fact that this documentary is all about the talented life of Amy Winehouse.

Ultimately, it is a sad and reverential film that will leave you stunned after you watch it for a while. If only she had have lived longer to complete her dream of created a supergroup made up of Yasiin Bey (formally known as Mos Def), Questlove of the Roots, Raphael Saadiq and herself. If you don't know who any of those people are, let me tell you, it would have been the best band ever.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

"Scientology is a journey into the mind of L Ron Hubbard. The more you get into it, the more like L Ron Hubbard you become."

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is the latest documentary by Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God) and offers an insight into the secretive nature of the Church of Scientology.

Obviously a documentary that takes aim at a religious institution is going to be potentially controversial, and Gibney has a track record of unfaltering, sincere pieces. This is no different. Gibney interviews ex-members of the organisation, ranging from actors, to high level executives, all of whom provide a great deal of information about the indoctrinations of the church and many incredibly disturbing details about what goes on behind the scenes. 

Going Clear is an unflinching critique of The Church of Scientology, its basis as essentially a tax dodge, and the ways in which it manipulates its members, sometimes even to the extent of psychological disorders. The first half of the documentary details the life of L Ron and the development of the church during his lifetime. He is purported to have said early on that the only way to make money is to become a religion, hence he wrote Dianetics, which became the basis of the theology behind Scientology. Several years into the creation of the church and after being personally pursued by the IRS and others, L Ron created the Sea Organisation, allowing him to move around on the open seas, tax exempt and with his followers as essentially his slaves. More intriguing is the fact that, in his later years, not only did L Ron believe in the scriptures of his own creation, but he supposedly became increasingly paranoid about a powerful thetan (what's known as a 'spirit' under Scientology) inhabiting his body. L Ron Hubbard is characterised in Going Clear as inherently insane, and this is highly effective in painting the church in a negative light.

The second part focuses on Scientology under the leadership of David Miscavige and the 'war' he waged with the IRS; which is put into context by Mike Rinder and Mark Rathbun, the two former executives of the church interviewed for the documentary. We see the massive Scientologist gatherings - complete with dancers and fireworks - that are compared to Nazi propaganda pieces, where Miscavige celebrates the church's re-status as tax exempt and shouting "the war is over!". The imagery is incredibly disturbing. Tom Cruise and the church's influence on him, his status as an "asset" to Scientology, details an arrogance in the famous actor that is seemingly played-on by Miscavige. Other areas touched upon include the practically free labour that the Church gains from its Sea Org, the psychological troubles, imprisonment of members, physical abuses by Miscavige and the ridiculous estates that the church constructs from the tax-free donations of its members. 

Gibney's brutally honest Going Clear has a very strong message:"All Scientologists are full of shit", and furthermore there are horrific abuses conducted by the church that deserve to come to life. The interviewees are insightful and perfectly supported by the visual montages throughout. It's difficult to view Scientology as anything other than an abusive, manipulative cash cow after watching this documentary.

Citizenfour

Whistleblowers occupy a strange part in minds of people. Even if what they are revealing to the public is important and affects every single one of us, they tend to be demonised by political forces who have had the whistle blown on them. With the exception of maybe Julian Assange, Edward Snowden is probably one of the most important whistleblowers of the 21st Century.

Citizenfour is a documentary made by filmmaker Laura Poitras, who had previously made films about the War in Iraq and the aftermath of 9/11. Poitras originally set out to make a film about the intelligence community of the United States, but is contacted by an anonymous person who calls himself Citizenfour through encrypted emails. He says that he will be in Hong Kong for eight days and he has something that he wants to tell her and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald (who he had tried to contact unsuccessfully). When they get to Hong Kong, they discover that Citizenfour is an NSA (National Security Agency) contractor named Edward Snowden, who is about to blow the whistle on the US government basically spying on the rest of the world.

The style of this documentary is really engaging. The film doesn't have a clear structure from the beginning, usually you know where a documentary is going because the filmmaker lays it out for you, almost as though the story is told retroactively, but you find out things as Poitras discovers them too. The film also has no narration, which can be a little disconcerting, but we are given information through the emails shared by Poitras and Snowden.

The main crux of the film is the eight days spent in Hong Kong with Snowden and it's here that you learn so much about the man, despite him saying that he doesn't want to share any of his private life in order to protect his loved ones. He stays composed throughout, but you can tell he is nervous about the consequences of his actions. This does extend to both Poitras and Greenwald, who don't return to the US after the story is released.

There are no proper interviews that you would find in a regular doco. Poitras points the camera at both Snowden and his interviewer, either Greenwald or fellow Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill. This places you in the shoes of Poitras and makes you feel as though as you are in the room as these meetings take place. When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange features in the film, you'd expect a long interview with him about how great Snowden is, instead we get a minute of him arranging a private jet for Snowden to take him from Moscow Airport (where he was residing at the time) to Ecuador or Venezuela (who will give him refugee status).

Citizenfour is a remarkable documentary that really shows how we are being monitored, but also how we are being lied to by the governments who are supposed to be protecting us. I wish I could see the unedited footage of Snowden during the time he was in Hong Kong and all the information that didn't make it to the film.