WHAM!

WHAM! (2023) is a music documentary from Chris Smith that you can watch online on iFILM. The story of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley is told with almost no present-day talking heads — just archive reels, old interviews, and the scrapbooks Andrew's mother kept, year after year, pasting in every clipping.

Two schoolfriends from the London suburbs go from broke teenagers to the biggest pop act of the mid-1980s in just a few short years. "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," "Careless Whisper," "Last Christmas," the first Western concert in China — and the slow build of tension between the one who craved the fame and the one already sensing he wanted something else.

Director Chris Smith (Fyre, Tiger King) lets the participants narrate themselves, which makes the film unexpectedly intimate — especially around the things George wasn't yet saying out loud. A great pick if you grew up on these songs or want to see how a decade's pop sound was assembled. Stream WHAM! (2023) online on iFILM.