Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 29
Fresh: 26 | Rotten: 3
Made by a metalhead, this documentary of the musical genre both informs and entertains with its range of interviewees.
Average Rating: 6.6/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 1
Made by a metalhead, this documentary of the musical genre both informs and entertains with its range of interviewees.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 9,086
Heavy metal might be regarded as the High School Shop Class of rock & roll -- there's a lot going on there, but most folks don't credit the participants with being either very smart or terribly ambitious. Not everyone feels that way, though, and filmmaker, anthropologist, and heavy metal enthusiast Sam Dunn offers an insider's look at the music and subculture of metal with this documentary, created in collaboration with filmmakers Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy Wise. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
Jan 1, 2005 Wide
May 23, 2006
Séville Pictures
All Critics (34) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (26) | Rotten (3) | DVD (6)
The metal scene emerges throughout the documentary as the recruitment center of an army of misfits, where the outcasts of the world can seek each other out based on their love of the angsty, eardrum-destroying tunes their parents warned them about.
This documentary about one of the most loathed, lampooned and beloved music genres isn't the kind of film to rock your world, though it may well inspire laughter.
It'll make you want to dig out your Whitesnake T-shirt. It might even convince Tipper Gore that heavy metal thunder is all in good fun.
A lightweight fanboy valentine for ostensibly heavyweight music.
Full of splendid social and psychological insights.
Interviews with metal practitioners such as Tony Iommi, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie and Dee Snider, journalists and academic types paint a compelling portrait of a vibrant society of outsiders.
Brings on a variety of eloquent voices from both the fanbase and the gods of metal themselves.
The success of Dunn's film in support of heavy metal music might be the result of not offering the audience too much music
Enjoyable whether you're a fan of the music or not.
A documentary that preaches to the converted if ever there was one, but Dunn's enthusiasm for the subject and the range of pretension and humour of his interviewees makes for fun viewing.
A film that manages to be intelligent without being boring, making it one of the better music documentaries in recent memory.
The movie is woefully short on concert footage, which could have shown us the power of metal instead of just telling us.
It's a measure of Dunn's success that even a total nonfan like myself could find his journey interesting.
You might not go out and buy the latest Slipknot album after seeing it, but you will understand why some disenfranchised kid would.
Acts not as the window for the outsider into the spectacle of heavy metal music, as the filmmakers proclaim it to be, but an unprovoked fan's defense for liking what he likes
As a diehard metalhead, I was astounded at how much care that Sam Dunn has given to the genre. He truly gives the respect the genre deserves. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey takes a closer look to the metal genre. In the documentary, Sam Dunn tries to answer one question, "Why is metal so controversial, yet so loved?"
September 23, 2010
Super Reviewer
This is one of my favorite documentaries, not only because I'm a metalhead myself, but because it gives true insight into a large global cultural movement. That this movie was helmed by an anthropologist metalhead increased this full perspective of its subjects. Sam Dunn asks intelligent questions of the "heroes and
February 2, 2008Super Reviewer
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Journey 2 Not Worth the Trip
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