METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER (2004) ★

These are the woes: your band sucks (see also: Linda Linda Linda), your old friends are gone, your other old friends are assholes, you're drinking too much, your projects are half-finished, your comforts aren't comforting, the therapy isn't helping. Been there? So, it turns out, has Metallica, and this film, which follows them through a period during which their creativity is stalling out and their relationships are curdling, will frankly be of interest not only to Metallica fans but also to anyone who has found themselves in the thick of a shit year. 

With that said, what makes this movie memorable is not only how it stirs up its woes into Big Relatable Themes but also how it dramatizes them in a endless series of indelible episodes, cruelly focused snapshots of moments spent in hell: Lars Ulrich shyly playing a track-in-progress for his gnarled old dad, who bluntly responds "delete it;" ex-bandmate Dave Mustaine showing up to a therapy session, clearly crippled by wounds dealt to him a decade earlier; lead guitarist Kirk Hammett reduced to begging for his own relevance when Ulrich and Hetfield start idly wondering whether songs with guitar solos are passe. A long document of thorny interpersonal conflict among collaborators, captured candidly over three years—and yet somehow, you come away feeling uplifted? I'm not sure the resultant album, St. Anger, is a creative triumph —the fan response I've seen suggests it is not—but the fact that they fix the vibes as much as they do is a real accomplishment (enthusiastic newcomer Robert Trujillo is the MVP here, far more than ineffectual therapist Phil Towle). Watching their fortunes slowly reverse, albeit through a long and plainly agonizing process, is consistently engrossing: a testament to what the lowly form of the commissioned rock documentary, handled well, can capture.

A ★★★★ review of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

These are the woes: your band sucks (see also: Linda Linda Linda), your old friends are gone, your other old friends are assholes, you’re drinking too much, your projects are half-finished, your comforts aren’t comforting, the therapy isn’t helping. Been there? So, it turns out, has Metallica, and this film, which follows them through a period during which their creativity is stalling out and their relationships are curdling, will frankly be of interest not only to Metallica fans but also to anyone who has found themselves in the thick of a shit year. With that said, what makes this movie memorable

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