Get On Up

Get On Up (2014) is the James Brown biopic you can watch online on iFILM, with Chadwick Boseman channeling the Godfather of Soul down to the last splits and shimmy. The funk don't quit.

Rather than march from cradle to fame in a straight line, the film jumps across decades, splicing moments together like cuts on a greatest-hits record. A barefoot boy in a dirt-poor Georgia shack. A stint in reform school. The first band, the blazing stage shows, and the darker flip side: the temper, the iron grip on his musicians, the loneliness at the top. Viola Davis plays the mother who walked out, with Octavia Spencer, Dan Aykroyd as his manager, and Nelsan Ellis as loyal friend Bobby Byrd.

Director Tate Taylor lets Brown break the fourth wall and talk straight into the lens, while Boseman does the dancing himself. It is an honest portrait of a man impossible to live with and impossible to look away from on stage. Music-movie fans and funk lovers, this one's for you. Stream Get On Up online on iFILM.