Plot isn't what saves this film. It's that one face: smart, soulful, and defiant. One look and you're hooked. (R) TIM APPELO
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Opens Fri., July 30, at Uptown and Varsity
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Informed metalheads may scoff at the notion of their macho Marshall-stack gods baring their souls in therapy, but this behind-the-music documentary will be most rewarding precisely for those without Kill 'Em All in their record collection, without any visible tattoos, without any shameful history of '80s mullets or flashing their tits at Metallica in the Tacoma Dome. The less you know about metal, the better. What makes Monster so interesting and enjoyable—if a bit talky—is how it takes the familiar midlife crisis and restages that psychodrama far from the standard suburban/office setting. The members of the gazillion-selling metal band Metallica are totally unlike us, and yet they're just like us. Paid great sums—and rewarded with great temptations—for expressing rage, lust, and frustration in arena-rock spectacles of smoke and feedback, these tight-trousered titans shrink to human proportions on the couch.
The first and most misleading joke about the movie is to imagine it as a real- life Spi¨nal Tap. The catch is that everyone in the movie, except perhaps the therapist, has seen that same film one thousand times and gets all the jokes about turning it up to 11. As lead guitarist Kirk Hammett told me about Monster during the band's March concert visit to Seattle, "Spi¨nal Tap is one of my favorite movies, and if it turned out like Spi¨nal Tap, that would be a great thing!" He wasn't kidding. He was laughing. Because, as the axiom goes, laughter springs from pain. And he, like drummer Lars Ulrich and singer/guitarist James Hetfield, knew the cameras were running during their tissue sessions: "There was a tremendous amount of risk being taken. This could've become a big fucking farce."
Lending to this air of self-awareness, the band originally hired two experienced documentarians, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, to chronicle the making of its Grammy-winning 2003 album, St. Anger, as a kind of infomercial. (The filmmakers had originally drawn the group's notice with their prior excellent docs Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost.) Promotion turned to drama, however, with the addition of a therapist, Dr. Phil Towle, to coax the band back together following the departure of bassist Jason Newsted. Then, after laying a few tracks and baring a few resentments, Hetfield abruptly departs for 11 months of rehab, leaving the cameras running back home. (The entire duration of filming was almost two years.)
Monster isn't all hugs and tears and "I love you, man" moments of bonding. Therapy—perhaps like creating music—is revealed as a fitful, imperfect process. Also occasionally tedious: The film does drag a little in the minutiae of recording and recovery. Hetfield initially rolls his eyes at Dr. Towle's honey-voiced platitudes; Hammett seems eager to embrace the healing rhetoric; while Ulrich serves as the in-house wag and cynic—tapping his foot impatiently like the drummer he is. Each is essentially a family member in a family that isn't functioning too well, and viewers will likely identify with one of the three. (A replacement bassist is finally hired, but he doesn't register too strongly.) Away from private jets, stadium concerts, and eager groupies, the three betray the same professional resentments and personal insecurities that might attend, say, a dentists' or an accountants' office.
"It is sort of strange being, like, a famous guy," admits the normally taciturn Hetfield. By the end of Monster, the band has effectively de-famed itself, shed its protective mantle of myth and invulnerability. If its members occasionally seem a little Tap-ish, so be it. The music continues, and the guys finally seem happier having been, in a sense, unplugged. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
Thunderbirds
Opens Fri., July 30, at Pacific Place and others
This adaptation of the obscure British '60s sci-fi show has lots of blinking lights, exploding oil rigs, strange-looking vehicles (not quite spaceships, not quite ships, not quite sure), and mad scientists, which means that children will probably adore it. It also has all the usual components of a typical kid-saves-the-day movie, but unless you're somehow frightened by a bad guy who wears smeary eyeliner (Ben Kingsley, of all people) or entertained by the blossoming crush between two awkward 15-year-olds, it's going to be torture for adults to sit through. Juvenile lead Brady Corbet may possibly be dreamy enough to lure female tweeners; he spends the movie trying to prove he's brave enough to join his family superhero group. Widowed patriarch Bill Paxton says discouraging things like, "No school, no rockets," but the kid never wises up enough to, say, swipe the keys to the family rocket for a joyride around the galaxy.
The underdog plot somehow concerns young Corbet rescuing his family from Kingsley's evil clutches. Then come more blinking lights, more strange vehicles, more mad scientists. Trivia types will recall that the original television series (1964–66) starred puppets, not people, and the live-action casting here hardly represents an improvement. Before, the stars were marionettes; now it's the audience that feels jerked around. (PG) HEATHER LOGUE
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