Jimi: All Is by My Side

Jimi: All Is by My Side (2013) is a music biopic you can watch online on iFILM. Mid-1960s New York: a nameless backing guitarist works the clubs until Linda Keith, Keith Richards' girlfriend, spots what nobody else has.

She pulls him to London, opens the right doors, and within a single year an unknown sideman becomes Jimi Hendrix. The film covers exactly that stretch — before Monterey, before the fame, right at the point of transformation. André Benjamin of OutKast plays Jimi against type: soft-spoken, shy, hard to pin down, nothing like the man on stage. Hayley Atwell and Imogen Poots play the two women shaping him.

Writer-director John Ridley would soon take home an Oscar for the 12 Years a Slave screenplay. The Hendrix estate refused the rights to his songs, so not a single hit appears on the soundtrack — an odd limit that somehow keeps the focus on the person instead of the legend. It's a niche watch: slow, fragmented, with none of the usual biopic gloss. Stream Jimi: All Is by My Side (2013) online on iFILM.