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100One of the most revelatory rock portraits ever made.
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The miracle of Some Kind of Monster is Berlinger and Sinofsky's ability to make us root for these self-absorbed man-children.
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100The band's implosion and reassembly makes for one of the most marvelous rock documentaries of all time.
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90It's a measure of the film's brilliance that it strips away the trappings of superstardom and allows audiences to see these men as flawed human beings first, musicians second, and rock gods a distant third.
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90That he (Hetfield), and his band, still lives is astonishing enough; that you get to see how and why in a movie so painfully intimate is nothing short of extraordinary.
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90You realize you are witnessing a psychodrama of novelistic intricacy and epic scope.
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88A counterintuitive, riveting documentary so honest that it will either become a rock movie classic or a severe embarrassment for the heavy metal band.
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88If you've seen the Beatles documentary "Let It Be," you know what four men who are heartily sick of one another look like, and in 2001, Metallica had been recording twice as long as the Fab Four.
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These are rich, aging men in a young man's game, and the discrepancy between image and reality, captured by the filmmakers, makes for engrossing material.
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80The result will stand as one of the most intense, in-depth, warts-and-all rockumentaries ever made.
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80An excruciating watch at times, the unflinching bluntness is captivating and somehow, despite their flaws, the group’s rock godhood is maintained.
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80What's most captivating about Monster is that the camera never looks away and Metallica never hides.
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80Pic itself is a long haul, at nearly 2½ hours; yet one needn't be a fan of Metallica or heavy metal to be engrossed throughout.
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80Absorbing, funny, exhilaratingly entertaining ride through two years in the life of the most successful heavy metal band in history.
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78Monster is, at its best, simply a chronicle of people trying to get along, which makes it compelling viewing indeed.
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75Don't let anyone spoil the surprises of this thrashing, thrilling chunk of cinematic gold. It's one for the time capsule.
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75Doesn't require you to know anything about the band Metallica or heavy metal music, but it supplies a lot of information about various kinds of monsters.
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75Metallica brought back the rights and funded the project, and it's their honesty and willingness to front the cameras, warts and all, that makes this well-edited, often very funny, documentary so compelling.
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Isn't about rock music or even the people who make it; it's about people, period, and the myriad ways they mangle themselves and each other.
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75A revelation: funny, fascinating and insightful.
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You don't have to be a Metallica junkie to get this film.
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Berlinger and Sinofsky, with their knack for penetrating the diabolical pretensions of weak and disaffected human beings, have brought Metallica to its knees.
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70Veers unpredictably between wrenching psychodrama and "Spinal Tap"-style mockumentary.
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70Uncomfortable fun.
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70By turns exasperating, appalling and surprisingly empathetic -- sometimes all in the same moment -- the three members of Metallica quickly emerge as the main attractions in Some Kind of Monster, but not for the reasons you might expect.
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70Documentary about rock history's biggest heavy metal band is -- variously -- serious, funny, frustrating and touching.
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63I'm no psychologist, but it took about half this film's overlong running time to figure out that Metallica's problem is that Ulrich is a major pain in the butt.
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60No matter how you spin Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's chronicle of headbangers on the couch, it sounds like a pitch-perfect parody in "Beyond Spinal Tap" mode. If anything, knowing it's no joke makes it harder not to giggle.
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60Snippets of the band's brutally percussive music punctuate the endless encounter sessions, which expose the musicians' boundless self-absorption (the 9-11 attacks come and go without so much as a mention) and cowed obedience to their psychological guru.
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50The quartet appears to be mightily lacking in the brains and judgment departments, but at least it tries to do something about its failings, employing a traveling psychotherapist whose interventions and ruminations provide some of the film's most unwittingly amusing moments.
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Much of Monster is just a two-and-a-half-hour puff piece about how "important" Metallica are and, worse, how much "integrity" they have.
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20Simply put this is a TWO HOUR AND 20 MINUTE long documentary that consists of nothing more than millionaire rock stars bitching, whining and complaining about their problems.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 22 out of 27
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Mixed: 1 out of 27
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Negative: 4 out of 27
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