![]() ![]() Formed by Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney in early-'70s Detroit, the three Black teens were making thrashing, angsty, guitar-driven music years before the Sex Pistols and The Clash popularized the genre. The doc's tagline says it all: Before there was punk, there was a band called Death. It's a touching portrait of a wunderkind gone too soon. Directed by Sebastian Jones (who has edited many of Malick's films, including A Hidden Life) and Ramez Silyan, the film is gentle in its approach, diving into the quiet, sensitive guy Gus was in private and the heavily tattooed, bombastic presence Peep was onstage, commanding raucous sold-out arena shows in major cities across the world. His shocking death led fans searching for closure-which is what Everybody's Everything, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Åhr's mother, set out to do. Achieving the true definition of cult status, a pioneer of the SoundCloud emo-rap scene and member of the Goth Boi Clique, Peep left behind a career on the verge of mainstream stardom. Lil Peep, née Gustav Elijah Åhr, was a huge deal among certain music circles, yet unknown almost entirely to others until after his death via an accidental overdose of Xanax laced with fentanyl on his tour bus in 2017, not long after his 21st birthday. Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Simonofky, who worked on Brother's Keeper and the Paradise Lost trilogy together, Some Kind of Monster is many things at once: semi-intentionally hilarious, sad, introspective, and euphoric, all of it humanizing one of the biggest bands still working and offering keen insight into the dynamics of a group with huge personalities. Anger, which famously inspired divided opinions. ![]() During that time, they were also auditioning new bass players, resulting in Robert Trujillo joining the band, and spending two years recording their 2003 album St. In the early 2000s, Metallica took the unusual step of hiring a psychotherapist-good for them!-to help them work through the many, many intrapersonal issues its remaining members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett built up after spending more than a decade together. What happens when a metal band past its prime undergoes group therapy sessions as its members try to record a new album? Some Kind of Monster. And to streamline what would otherwise be an unruly ranking, we're only considering profiles of individual artists and bands, as opposed to movies about a particular scene, era, or event, à la The Decline of Western Civilization, Sound City, or last year's Oscar-winning Summer of Soul. Qualifying films must be proper documentaries, which means concert films like Beyoncé's Homecoming, Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace, and Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense don't count. Thrillist has ranked 25 worthwhile rock docs, with a few caveats. Whatever it is, they managed to transcend the internet's illusion of transparency and the music business' heavily corporatized gatekeepers. Maybe they got access to a superstar at a key moment, or maybe they were able to deconstruct the mythology surrounding that person's fame in a novel way. Some capitalized on the vérité stylings introduced in 1962's Lonely Boy (about former teen heartthrob Paul Anka), 1964's What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A., and 1967's Dont Look Back (about Bob Dylan), while others lucked into a saga so juicy it must be seen. But over the years, a handful of directors have found inspired approaches. Many of the films in this genre are glorified press releases that reveal little about their subjects, taking a paint-by-numbers technique better suited to Behind the Music than a proper feature film. This year alone, we’ll see documentaries about George Michael, Leonard Cohen, Lizzo, Sinead O'Connor, David Bowie, Menudo, Ronnie James Dio, Tanya Tucker, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Lil Baby, in addition to already released projects about Jennifer Lopez ( Halftime, newly available on Netflix), Olivia Rodrigo, Sheryl Crow, Kanye West, Janet Jackson, and the late rapper XXXTentacion. The medium became de rigueur in the 2010s, with current and retired musicians alike revisiting the highs and lows of life in the blinding spotlight. Today, every pop act under the sun has a documentary.
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