Amy (15A, Documentary, Dir: Asif Kapadia, Cast: Amy Winehouse, Length: 128 mins)

Amy, the tragic story of Amy Winehouse, the London-born jazz singer who died in 2011 of alcoholic poisoning at the age of 27, is a supple, cleared-eyed documentary with all the narrative invention and dramatic power of a major feature film. 

The movie is, in two ways, the product of our media age – for the way its young subject was constantly hunted and harassed by the sensation-hungry British press and for the amount of film and video of all kinds that were left behind to recount Winehouse’s life.

She left behind endless footage of varying quality from mobile phone clips to home movies, film of awards presentations, concerts and record sessions, to cover the highs and lows of her tragic life. 

The film shows Amy as she was before she became a tabloid caricature; mouthy and challenging and endowed with a vast, natural talent. Deeply troubled, she is revealed to have suffered from depression and bulimia throughout her short life. And she was possessed of a prodigious appetite for hard drugs, booze and the wrong kind of man.

But the film also does a considerable job of showing the funny, human, vulnerable young woman behind the almost gothic-looking public figure. There are wonderful bursts of personality all through – such as her facial response when she realises that she is to be presented with a Grammy by jazz idol Tony Bennett. 

We first meet her at the age of fourteen sucking lollypops with two friends on stairs of her London home. Then a smoky, throaty version of Moon River emerges from the background and you think Judy Garland or Sarah Vaughan. But this was Amy and the scene is used by director Asif Kapadia to show how – like Garland – she had flowered as a mature talent from early on.

Winehouse claims that she is not a song writer – but she writes poetry, she says – and the movie flashes lines from her songs up on the screen throughout its running time, using them as a powerful, intimate commentary on who she is and what she is becoming. Amy is a cautionary tale – she was the Janis Joplin of our age and since it is the media age we get a close up view of the full price of fame for this fragile young woman.

Magic Mike XXL (16, Comedy/Drama, Dir: Gregory Jacobs, Cast: Channing Tatum, Elizabeth Banks, Amber Heard, Length: 115 mins)

Matthew McConnaughey didn’t return for the sequel to the 2012 male-stripper comedy/drama Magic Mike. I wonder why? Maybe be saw the script. Then again, there isn’t much evidence in the movie which opens here this weekend that there ever was much of a script.

The title of Magic Mike XXL may suggest that it has larger ambitions than its predecessor but they are not on display here. As well as everything else “XXL” is unbearably coy.

Channing Tatum is back for the follow-up as the uncertain leader of the Kings Of Tampa who are on their way from Florida to a convention in Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. They have all fallen on hard times and the convention offers the opportunity to pick up “a tsunami of dollars” from the hysterical stripper fans.

The journey has very little to offer – the Kings take two detours to build in extra dance numbers and the routines alternate with a series of stolid dialogue scenes providing practically nothing in the way of depth, wit or genuine character examination.

Joe Manganiello, as Big Dick Riche, who returns from the first film, provides what might be the movie’s single memorable scene when he puts on an impromptu performance to make a surly overweight convenience store clerk smile.

I saw this last Monday morning and I have to say I can’t remember the last press show where some many critics walked out.  

Terminator: Genisys (12A, Action/Sci-Fi, Dir: Alan Taylor, Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Length: 125 mins)

Terminator: Genisys is the fifth film in the Terminator series and it has already been hammered for the way it copies James Cameron’s first and second movies. In this one rebel Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) is sent back in time by John Connor (Jason Clarke) to protect his mother, Sarah Connor (Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke), from the Terminator. 

Reese arrives in 1984 as per the original film, but somehow the timeline has altered and in this reality it’s Sarah – who is now an accomplished soldier – who is looking out for Kyle rather than the other way around. And they’re aided by a version of the Terminator (re-christened the Guardian and played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) who’s been watching out for Sarah since an attack on her family by the machines left her orphaned as a child.

She calls him “Pops”, while he finds her affection baffling.

The last Terminator film, Salvation, was criticised for the way it abandoned crucial, well-liked elements of the franchise – and here they seem to have gone to the other extreme by throwing in as much of the original movies as possible but leaving you with the distinct feeling that you have seen it all before.

Also out this weekend is The Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work Of Orson Welles. A child prodigy who went on to make extraordinary, often game-changing contributions to whatever medium he chose to be involved in – radio, theatre, film, and television – Welles quickly came to be regarded as a ‘genius’, a double-edged acclamation, with its hints of profligacy and arrogance.

The truth was more complex, as shown by the clips in this film from works both familiar and unreleased; testimonies from family, friends and fans, collaborators and critics (from Simon Callow to Steven Spielberg, Charlton Heston to Peter Bogdanovich) and, best of all, anecdotes, admissions and insights galore from the great man himself.