Whitney

"The devil may have got her in the end, but we’ll always have that voice as consolation. “God gave me something really good,” says Whitney, without conceit. “And he didn’t give it to everybody.” Amen to that."

"Somehow makes the tale of Houston’s rise and fall new again."

"(A) sobering, haunting but completely fresh look at Whitney's life and death..."

"Sharp-edged, revelatory and seriously emotional..."

"Exhaustively assembled..."

"There is a strange sense of dancing around the awful truth but never quite getting right to it."

"Ultimately... (Whitney) overreaches to make Houston's life and death about something bigger..."

"A deeply sensitive portrait..."

"In its grim, guilt-inducing way, the film works, even on the occasions when it's working against itself."

"Macdonald dwells overwhelmingly on the maelstrom of Houston’s painful, fraught relationships..."

"Macdonald's film... does go deeper and more nuanced on things we mostly already know."

"A disturbing picture of the isolation of celebrity."

"Well-done but all-too-woeful..."

"Electrifying and empathetic..."

"Tough-minded, unsparing and far superior to the biopic and the nonfiction film that preceded it."

"Macdonald makes artful use of jarring, subversive cuts to highlight the contradictions in Houston's career."

"Whitney is the second recent documentary to chart the irresistible rise and irreversible demise of American singing legend Whitney Houston. It is also clearly the better one."

"Slickly presented, cohesive and moving."

"As well as offering plenty of insight and revelation... Macdonald's movie also feels slightly superior because of his visual and audio choices."

"Two biographical documentaries in, and it still feels like we're in need of a Houston film that digs into her music first, and the hows and whys of its enduring power."

"Entrancingly well-done."

"It's an often sad but always absorbing two hours, and [director Kevin] Macdonald balances the heartbreaking troughs with dazzling peaks."

"Macdonald interviews with a keen eye and ear, probing for answers, but all of those who surrounded Whitney are implicated to some extent in her downfall."

"A potent assessment of one of the most tragic stories in pop history - one that, sadly, could have been different had Whitney had the room to be Whitney."

"All told it's another solidly constructed doc profile whose very nature leads it to milk the inherent tragedy of a celebrity who checked out ahead of time."

"A haunting, richly contextualized documentary portrait."

"...well-made and ingeniously edited documentary."