Metallica - Some Kind of Monster (dir. Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky)

Christmas day was  7 hours in the kitchen with a hangover, an hour of scoffing down boring turkey (I'm not going to bother cooking that again), a drunken argument (I just watched) and finally, at about midnight, a DVD of Metallica's documentary Some Kind of Monster. I've been watching a few rockumentaries, not because I'm particularly interested in the bands but to look at types of film making. I'm not into Metal at all but I liked this documentary as it flitted between macho guys trying to out-power each other and the emotional outbursts as the band attend group therapy. It's not really group therapy, the band's manager (a grey-haired hippie) hires in a performance-enhancing coach but the sessions with him slip into a parody of group therapy as the band act-out what they think opening-up is. The therapist becomes more and more like a day-dreaming groupie trying to 'get with' the band. When eventually they try to tell him his services are no longer required, he says there are still Trust Issues they need to work on, desperate to go on tour with them. Anyway, the filming wasn't intrusive, nice long patient shots, no heavy-handed interviewing or crazy editing or After Effects. I think it's pretty sensitive and showed quite a vulnerable side to the components that make up the force of Metallica.