The other music-themed movie that was quite unlike Grace Unplugged was Metallica: Through the Never… a LOUD Metallica concert movie with a random subplot involving urban riots and one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

As a concert movie, it’s pretty amazing… if you like Metallica an awful lot. Me? I’m fine with them but I didn’t recognize half the songs to know if they were early days, sell-out phase, or post-relevance Metallica.

I kind of went to see it since I thought it’d be more of the story of the roadie who confronts madness in the city to the tunes and themes of the songs with the concert playing second banana. But the concert was 90% of the movie when I was expecting maybe a 50/50 split. Which is to say, the (to me) cool interesting stuff was unfulfilling, short, random, and ultimately meaningless while the concert was amazing to look at (as far as four middle aged guys without much of a stage act goes) and the sound was thundering and made my insides roil… but since I”m not that big a fan, it wasn’t terribly exciting. A hard core Metallica fan (who doesn’t hate them for “selling out”) will adore it (even if Lars is getting a little bald around the edges and they love shooting him and his drum kit from above).

Score: 75