Patti Smith’s Rat Mecca; Radcliffe Howls; Madness: Movies

Grounded by a deadpan performance from Alan Rickman as bar owner Hilly Kristal, “CBGB” takes a breezy, comic-book approach to New York’s shabby drop-dead era and the cacophony it raised.

Kristal’s Lower East Side bar opened in 1973, and while the initials stood for “Country Blue Grass Blues,” the notoriously filthy, rat-ridden club became the incubator for underground rockers like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Television.