Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

VidSteh I used to be a big fan of Metallica, but today I don't like their music anymore, but I still wanted to see this move. Some kind of monster is a music documentary, which clearly shows that Metallica is not a group, that it used to be. Instead of four angry, aggressive and energetic musicians, who created a classics like Muster of Puppets, Kill'em all, ... and Justice for all, Ride The Lightening etc. you meet four tired, egotistic and self absorbed "Ritchie Rich lookalikes", who are trying to make something, but they don't know how or even what. Oh, yeah... this movie shows the inside of recording Metallica's "new" album St. Anger. Yeah, this album sucks. But this movie doesn't suck. Yeah, this movie shows why St. Anger sucks. It even shows why was Metallica so boring in last years. Lars Ulrich, the drummer, is shown here as one of the most annoying guys in the music industry. He is trying to do something, but he's just talking empty words most of the time. James Hetfield, a vocalist and guitarist, is in the first part of the movie on a rehab from addiction to alcohol and when he's back in the second part of the movie, he doesn't know what to do. Kirk Hammet is the only man who is trying to make some sense from whole situation, but Ulrich and Hetfield don't let him do a lot. Most of the time the band is just talking words with no sense, trying to find an excuse for being so lame, and then we also have some kind of a psychiatrist in the group, for who I don't know what is he doing there in the first place. Like former bass player Jason Newstead said on the question about visiting a therapist to solve the band's problems. ("This is so lame and weak"). He had the point there. This movie shows why Metallica sucks. Not because they're bad musicians, but because they are just full of themselves and they think, they're the masters of universe. This documentary clearly shows that.

peter billionaire This film has far too much group therapy and not nearly enough music. The issues expressed in the therapy sessions are banal; important to the participants, but not interesting to an outsider. You get no sense of why Metallica was so important to so many people. It is hard to believe that they would allow a film crew to record them in such an unfavorable light. The thing that leaped out about Metallica's music was always the furious, dark, angry energy. Hearing Lars complain about James being late to practice is not that exciting.And visually, they don't look so good up close anymore. Pushing 40, gaining weight, losing hair, with wives and children -- they even say it themselves: it's not rock'n'roll.Part of the fun of idolizing a band is that you think that the people are somehow different or special. That is a fantasy, of course, but it is an important part of being a fan. The film reduces the musicians back to just normal whiny folks.The therapist is obviously eager for the spotlight. It was unethical of him to agree to the filming of the group therapy, even though the participants agreed. When a camera crew is present, people speak and act differently than if no camera crew was there.There is some talk of money that you don't normally hear. Lars offered Rob Trujillo $1,000,000 as an advance when he joined the band. There is a discussion of voting rights based on percentages based on length of service. The therapist got $40,000 per month.

mentalcritic In 1991, after a career spanning four albums and the death of one of history's most talented bassists, Metallica released an album that sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and made them household names. And over the next couple of years, the cult of Metallica became so feverish it was literally impossible to escape mention or playback of the band. And that was when the first cracks in the band's image as a band of the people, only out there to provide alternatives, appeared. After saturating the market with live albums, videos, and merchandise, Metallica reached the point I am sure the members liked to kid themselves they would not. In other words, they began to repel audiences through mere mention. And with their material becoming progressively more poppy, more formulaic, not to mention more predictable, one sees the point at which they should have given up the ghost was now at least thirteen years in the past. Former fans used to urge them to retire while they had a shred of dignity left. It is now too late for that.An aspect of the anti-MP3 tirades from Lars that fans or former fans do not often mention is that Lars is scared out of his mind of the Internet and MP3. Not because of the possibility of theft of his music (this, from a band that gained much of its initial notoriety through tape-trading). Rather, it is because MP3 to a large extent levels the playing field in terms of exposure. It is now just as easy for bands signed to labels that do not have million-dollar warchests to saturate the listener with to reach a new audience. And as anyone familiar with the black or doom metal undergrounds can tell you, those bands utterly destroy any claim to uniqueness the band has. Speedy, blinding drum patterns with integrated guitar progression? Morbid Angel or Kataklysm do it far better. And the more I emphasise that Therion have had choirs and orchestras as an integral component of their material since before Metallica's post-black-album crisis of how to revive suddenly ailing record sales, the better.So when one sits down to view Some Kind Of Monster with those facts in mind, it only further exposes what a bunch of ignorant, spoiled children Metallica really are. Some say that everything the band had in terms of potential or soul died with Cliff Burton, and while it took a while for this to become apparent, I can only agree. If Burton were alive today, he would be shaking his head in disbelief at what burgeois babies his former bandmates have turned into. Fortunately, Burton's successor, a man I had thought of as a poseur going by the name of Jason Newsted, wins back audience respect by showing enough disbelief for both himself and Burton. Whilst I would be the first to protest that there are many problems a hundred million dollars cannot cure, the willingness of the band to rub their possession of such money in the face of their audience says a lot about the true nature of their problems. Not only that, but the fact that their problems are entirely voluntary while people with problems of an involuntary nature who barely have enough to eat, leave alone make a film about the matter...Well, to put it bluntly, this is not just a slap in the face to fans, former or otherwise. This same bunch of children is sitting here and giving an entire world the finger. Their propensity to blame everyone but themselves for their misfortunes, regardless of their merit, only highlights the problem. Were I able, I would strap James and Lars into seats and force them to watch people comment on this documentary. Perhaps then they might understand that their declining sales have nothing to do with piracy, MP3 trading, or even bootlegging. The party with the most responsibility for the fact that the party is now over stares them in the face every day when they look in a mirror. What makes it even more sad is that even admitting this to themselves and changing the manner in which they conduct themselves accordingly will not fix things anymore. They have literally soiled their nest so badly that they could go to another planet and they would still be that talentless band who were given everything and chose to rub it in everyone's faces.Does this mean the documentary is entirely worthless? Well, no, there are moments in which outside observers quietly spin the affair into something real, which is where most of the comedy is derived from. As James, Lars, and to a lesser extent Kirk all make themselves look like bigger and bigger idiots, it is people like Dave Mustaine or Torben Ulrich who come off looking the best. The former because he shows us that just because you have a number one single and multi-platinum album does not mean you are more successful. The latter because he speaks the mind of every truly musical person on the planet when Lars plays him the track the band is thinking of opening the new album with, by telling Lars quite plainly that he would throw it in the trash, never to be heard again. The problem with the latter scene being that it has come about fourteen years too late. For reasons like this, one could view Some Kind Of Monster as a kind of black comedy. It is funny to laugh at a pack of yuppie idiots who have no idea what is going on. But it is also sad to think of what they could have been.Some Kind Of Monster is a one out of ten film. The band doubtless intended it to be brilliant, but I doubt they meant to accomplish that by being this stupid.

jpelleg1 Some Kind of Monster is a brutal and honest documentary, which exposes the 2003 version of Metallica as 3 guys who have COMPLETELY lost touch with the scene they helped create. Jason Newstead perfectly sums up the current state of Metallica with a quote from an interview in 2003, "On all previous albums, Metallica sounded like leaders. On this one, they sound like followers."The film follows Metallica during the creation of what was billed to be the return-to-form, classic Metallica album, St. Anger. Instead, the world was delivered a misguided and un-administered(thanks Bob Rock) attempt at sounding like modern mainstream metal bands. Note the scene in which Lars tells Kirk that there should be no guitar solos on the album because he feels they've been "outdated." Lars requested this because it was the trend at the time amongst modern "metal" bands. Kirk even calls him out on this.During the mid to late 90's, the general public seemed to have a rather low opinion of Metallica due to the Napster lawsuit, high ticket prices, and poor album output. This film provides some explanation as to what (and more importantly, WHO) were the internal causes of Metallica's fan backlash. The answers of which should come as no surprise to most Metallica fans, but the degree of ignorance amongst the decision makers in Metallica's "Inner Circle", still comes off as a shock with every viewing.As a further testament to the film, you almost feel like you are not watching a documentary at all. Rather, you feel like you are watching a tragic drama, full of anti-heros who are so pre-occupied battling their own demons that they cannot come together as normal human beings to solve the simplest of problems. It is hard to feel sorry for any of these "characters", considering the massive levels of both professional and personal success the have all had. Instead, I found myself being mad at them for almost forgetting their roots. Their communication internally is so forced and fake... yet at the same time, THIS IS REAL. These interactions REALLY happened. There was no script. This really was a documentary.Some Kind of Monster gives all of us all a behind the scenes look at the internal decision process of a struggling multi-platinum metal band. It is a privileged sight that most people never get to see regarding their favorite band... but for most Metallica fans, this intense look is sure to be upsetting.