CBGB

CBGB (2013) is a music drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Randall Miller. In 1973, an eccentric music obsessive named Hilly Kristal opened a cramped venue on New York's Lower East Side — the sign said country, bluegrass and blues, but what ended up on that stage was something else entirely. Blondie, Television, the Ramones, Talking Heads: the club that launched them all had one notoriously disgusting bathroom and a landlord constantly threatening to close it down.

Alan Rickman plays Hilly as a man perpetually broke, perpetually arguing, and perpetually right about which band to book next. Rupert Grint appears as Cheetah Chrome, Malin Akerman takes on Debbie Harry, and the film moves through the mid-seventies New York scene with the energy of a setlist rather than a straight narrative.

Miller is less interested in documenting the music than in capturing the specific chaos of a place that mattered because nobody planned for it to matter. Stream CBGB (2013) online on iFILM.