Sid and Nancy

Sid and Nancy (1986) is Alex Cox's punk-rock drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Gary Oldman, in one of his earliest leading roles, plays Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious; Chloe Webb is his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen.

London, the tail end of the seventies, the band at the height of its notoriety. Sid falls for Nancy, a New York scenester who introduces him to heroin, and from there everything slides. The group falls apart, his solo run goes nowhere, and the couple ends up holed up in the grimy Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan as addiction swallows them both. Cox refuses the glossy biopic, framing it instead as the story of two kids who clung to each other and to the needle far too hard.

You already know how it ends — Nancy was found dead in that Chelsea Hotel room, and Sid outlived her by only a few months. The power here isn't the facts but the way Oldman makes a doomed punk feel almost tender. A young Courtney Love turns up in a small part. It's raw, unpolished viewing for anyone curious about the underside of the punk scene rather than a postcard of it. Stream Sid and Nancy (1986) online on iFILM.