The Minutemen were the most musically sophisticated band of the 80s hardcore punk explosion, incorporating funk, jazz, and folk in an avalanche of hypershort, lyrically direct songs. This smart and rocking video documentary by Tim Irwin follows the trio from its origins in suburban San Pedro, California, in 1979 to the death of singer-guitarist D. Boon in a 1985 car crash, which ended his deep and creatively fruitful friendship with bassist Mike Watt. His demise is one of rock’s most tragic—there’s no telling where the band might have gone had he lived—but Irwin doesn’t dwell on it. Instead he lets more than four dozen musicians, artists, and writers explain what made the band so exciting, punctuating their remarks with good-to-excellent performance footage. 90 min.