Musicians: This is Spinal Tap (Dir Rob Reiner, 1h22m, 1984)
There is something absurd, intentional or otherwise, about the bombastic world of hard rock and heavy metal, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the rockumentary. For every quite affecting - Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008), and Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2007) - tale of bands battling adversity, obscurity, and having to release music during wartime, there are scores of self-indulgent, absurd, or in some cases pictures spectacularly lacking self-awareness, ranging from Bros: After the Screaming Stops (2018) in which the Goss brothers seem detached from reality, and eventually from each other, to Lars Ulrich's confused bellowing at band member Jason Newstead daring to leave Metallica in Some Kind of Monster (2003) to the masterpiece, the epicentre of heavy metal excess, planet-scaled egos, and general hairy nonsence in Penelope Spheeris' gloriously titled The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988)...
