Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

The Kid Brother, 1927

Harold Hickory (Harold Lloyd) is the relatively gentle youngest son in a family of tough-guy brothers and a father (Olin Frances) who is the sheriff. Conflict arises when Harold hits it off with a young woman named Mary (Jobyna Ralston), who is attached to a shady medicine show that rolls into town. When a shocking robbery occurs, can Harold prove himself to his father and to Mary?

Grounded in a sweet romance and some enjoyable physical comedy setpieces, this is a fun romp.

Like many silent film protagonists, Harold dreams of bigger and better things. On the whole, he makes for a very endearing main character, and it’s easy to see why Mary falls for him. Now that I have a few of Lloyd’s films under my belt, there’s a certain type of love interest he seems to gravitate toward: a sweet, loyal young woman who above all else believes in her man. This dynamic tends to work, because just the right amount of time is spent establishing chemistry and affection between the characters.

Harold gets flack on all sides, whether from his hometown rival, Hank (Ralph Yearsley) or his own oafish brothers (Leo Willis and Walter James). While he has fun emulating their tough-guy mannerisms, he doesn't operate with their level of stubborn meanness. This guy’s a lover, not a fighter, though he does prove capable when his family is endangered.

I’ve definitely realized that while big stunts are impressive from a logistical point of view, it’s the smaller physical comedy moments that speak to me. This comes out best in two different sequences. The first is when Harold must escape the wrath of his angry brothers, cleverly hiding behind the farm’s mule. Later, Harold and a bad guy have a showdown on a boat, with the boat’s architecture providing creative ways for Harold to avoid being demolished by his larger, stronger opponent.

Overall a sweet story with some enjoyably thrilling elements in the robbery subplot.

The Freshman, 1925

Harold Lamb (Harold Lloyd) is a young man who is eager to make a big splash in his first year at college, specifically with dreams of being a star football player. Having seen what popularity looks like in the movies, he’s created a persona for himself (“Speedy”) that he believes is his ticket to success. Harold meets the sweet Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), but is not so successful in his football endeavors, where he’s drafted onto the team as a joke by the star player (Brooks Benedict).

Endearing and wonderfully absurd, this classic silent comedy is a feel-good time.

There are a lot of fun elements that elevate this film beyond just being a string of set-pieces and stunts, including some good character development and the overall sense of humor about the college setting.

It’s funny how Harold has taken his notions of college from the stereotypes of movies . . . only for him to run into a different set of stereotypes and find himself on the bad side of some of those characters. Harold is convinced that he can simply adopt a persona that he’s created and this will glean him instant popularity. Honestly, I think that the film does a good job of showing how, in similar moments, people heading off to high school/college/a new city/etc think that they can reinvent themselves. You can to an extent, of course, but what Harold tries to be is all on the outside: a style of dress, a jaunty jig, a quippy introduction. His mix of confidence and earnestness is something that ends up in most people laughing at him, not with him. In one scene, he boldly tries to give a speech in front of a room crammed with peers, only to have a stray kitten work its way up into his sweater. Harold struggles to maintain his bold persona while gingerly scooting the kitten to less distracting spots.

The film also benefits from a pretty good romantic subplot between Harold and Peggy, the daughter of his landlord. In comedies, it can be very easy for the love interest to just be a pretty face that the protagonist has to impress and win over. But Peggy is more than just a pretty face. Something I found really endearing about their romance was that they were each given the opportunity to stand up for and support the other. Harold defends Peggy when she’s harassed by some uncouth college students, and Peggy later stands up for Harold when his teammates mock him behind his back. There’s a nice, easy chemistry between Lloyd and Ralston that makes their relationship feel mutual and not as if she’s just the prize at the end of the road.

Finally, there’s the humor itself. I wrote a very similar reflection about the last Lloyd film that I watched, but I’m a much bigger fan of “small scale” comedy setpieces than big stunts. So not only do we have mischievous kittens, but also a suit literally coming apart at the seams during a dance, and some on-field heroics.

My only qualm with this one was very minor. This is the third silent film in recent memory in which I didn’t really approve of some of the animal handling. There’s a part where the kitten is pulled--pretty roughly---out of Harold’s sweater that made me cringe. Not as bad as when he picked a cat up by the tail in another film, but still a sour moment in an otherwise very fun scene.

Overall a cute, funny romantic comedy with plenty of strong gags.

I watched a bunch of Lloyd last year for the challenge and I didn’t enjoy his films as much as I did Chaplin and Keaton. Mixed bad really.

This is kind of an intangible, but there's something about his energy/vibe that I just like a bit better. He tends to feel more human and the ratio of story to stunts works out better for me.

Speedy, 1928

Pop Dillon (Bert Woodruff) owns the last horse-drawn trolley in town, and a local big business man wants to buy Pop’s line to seize control of the trolly game. But Pop doesn’t want to sell, and a young man named Speedy (Harold Lloyd) who is in love with Pop’s granddaughter, Jane (Anny Christy), pitches in to help Pop out. But the bad guys are willing to go to further and further extremes to drive Pop out of the trolley business.

Another sweet, low-key comedy romance from Harold Lloyd.

This is an affable film, with some long stretches of comedy in the first and last acts that really come together nicely. In the first part of the film, we get a sequence of Speedy and Jane attending a carnival in which life is made much more complicated by a naughty crab and a persistent stray dog. The crab is the font of many jokes. Reaching out from Speedy’s pocket, it steals a pair of underwear from a woman’s purse, dangling the stolen undergarments from Speedy’s pocket. Later, it pinches multiple revelers on a spinning ride. There are multiple mishaps with balloons. Then there’s the dog, who loyally adopts Speedy and Jane, and follows them through the carnival, finally being adopted by Speedy as he leaves the carnival.

The main thrust of the film then becomes the plotting to take over the trolley line. This leads to high speed chases, sneaking and scheming, and evading the thugs who have been hired to steal Pop’s trolley. In between we get a hair-raising sequence where Speedy ends up giving Babe Ruth (in a cameo as himself) a ride, but as he keeps turning to talk to his famous client, the taxi car experiences multiple near-catastrophes.

On the whole, this is a fun and engaging comedy with great setpieces and a range of winning subplots.

The Hands of Orlac, 1924

Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) is a successful concert pianist, married to his wife,Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina). Tragically, Paul is grievously injured in a horrific train wreck that costs him a head injury and the loss of both hands. When Yvonne begs the doctor to do what he can to save Paul’s hands, the doctor grafts new hands onto Paul’s body--hands that came from a man executed for murder. Troubled when he learns the truth about the new hands, Orlac becomes convinced that they remain possessed by their former owner’s murderous impulses. And sure enough, violence soon follows.

Stunning imagery and a wonderful ambiguity made this a powerful supernatural drama/thriller.

There are plenty of movies where people receive some sort of transplant---blood, eyes, heart, etc--and become either possessed or obsessed or both with the actions of the former owner. This film does a wonderful job of exploring the psychological torment--mainly Paul’s but also Yvonne’s--that comes with such an experience.

And the movie generates some fantastic tension on both the supernatural and the mundane fronts of what Paul and Yvonne go through, often with stunning imagery. In one sequence, Paul is haunted in his sleep by the large, laughing face of the murderer. But in another, just as visually striking sequence, Yvonne is hounded by debt collectors, who multiply behind her and refuse to show her any mercy for her situation.



So is Paul actually possessed by the murderer’s hands, or is he merely projecting his anxieties? The film cleverly see-saws you one way or the other as the story progresses. As I watched, I constantly went back and forth about what I thought was happening. Each possibility is its own kind of tragedy, and Paul’s relationship with Yvonne is on the edge of the knife either way.

In addition to the plot itself, the movie is jam-packed with incredible imagery, like this double-take inducing visual of a young woman in a huge newspaper stand.



This is a movie where a review could simply be a collection of about 10 screenshots and two words: “must-see.”

I also have to shout out the train crash sequence. It begins with Yvonne arriving at the train station to meet Paul, and from there hearing that there’s been a crash. She rushes to the site of the accident, and what she finds there is eerie and haunting. The scale of the scene was really shocking to me, as was just how long we spend looking at the wreckage. In one particularly affecting shot, a man hangs at the corner of the screen--a victim of the accident who is disoriented and can do nothing except take small steps one way or the other.

Thrilling and visually stunning.

This is a great film, and that scene where an incorporeal hand appears above his bed was visually stunning.

I also really love that all of the

Intrusion, 2021

Meera (Freida Pinto) and her husband Henry (Logan Marshall-Green) have just moved into a new home in a small town when things go amazingly off the rails. The couple are the victim of a break-in, and then later experience a frightening home invasion that ends in the death of one of the invaders. Plagued by strange sounds in the house, Meera tries to understand the reason behind the intrusions and what is happening in her new home.

A game cast can’t do much with a predictable script and weak character development.

You might not already know how this movie ends from reading the plot summary, but if you actually watch it for about 10 minutes, you will know. Boy, will you know.

This movie doesn’t just telegraph its ending-- it hires a skywriter to plaster it across every minute of every frame. There was actually a point, maybe halfway through, where I started to think that maybe I was experiencing some sort of sly double-bluff. Surely such obvious foreshadowing must be in service of subverting expectations, right? Nope.

Let’s be real though: I knew that this movie was going to be a certain kind of predictable and a certain kind of guilty pleasure. But the only bright spot is the performances, and even those are hamstrung by the writing. Pinto is a sympathetic lead, and even though I thought that the “twists” were super obvious, I was never mad at her the way that protagonists can sometimes be maddeningly stupid. I’ve really enjoyed Marshall-Green in several films, but here he’s limited to being vaguely charismatic and distant in order to maintain narrative ambiguity (HA!).

One part of me is like: how mad can I be at this movie for being kind of what I expected it to be? But at the same time, there are plenty of movies that live in tropes and stereotypes and manage to be entertaining and pull out a surprise or two.

Are you cleaning the house and you need a movie where it doesn’t matter if you run the vacuum for 5 minutes and miss a bunch of dialogue? This is the film for you.

The Manitou, 1978

Harry (Tony Curtis) works as a psychic in San Francisco, and is old friends with Karen (Susan Strasberg). Karen becomes nervous when she has a strange growth on her neck, and perplexing medical examinations seem to indicate that the growth is a fetus. But the rate of growth of the lump is very fast, and soon some very strange supernatural events take place, including Karen speaking odd phrases in an unknown language. As Harry does more research, he comes to believe that Karen is in the grip of a strong, evil power.

Years of being obsessed with this film’s IMDb summary (MILD SPOILERS!! “A psychic's girlfriend finds out that a lump on her back is a growing reincarnation of a 400-year-old demonic Native American spirit”), I was nervous that the actual movie would not live up to that insane, jam-packed sentence. Fortunately, the film is very enjoyably weird and also just the right dose of sincere.

The film moves in what feels like several very distinct acts. The first part is sort of medical horror. Karen is in the hospital, all the tests and x-rays are coming out irregular, etc. Honestly, a fast-growing growth would be a nightmare for anyone, and we are fully with Karen emotionally as she tries to navigate this uncharted territory.

Then there’s the segment of the film where the supernatural stuff begins to pick up. Harry has a disturbing and inexplicable encounter with an elderly client that is connected with what is happening with Karen. It’s an old trope that a fake psychic suddenly discovers real powers. It’s not entirely clear if that’s the case, or if the entity in Karen is merely choosing to express itself to Harry to wield power over him.

Where the movie gets really interesting, for me, is in the second half. First, the growth in Karen’s neck begins to defend itself. When surgeons approach with a scalpel, the man holding the instrument instead cuts into himself. There are several of these scenes and they are all spooky and effective. The people and the instruments in the room are taken over by the unseen power, and the hospital professionals grow increasingly unsure of how to help Karen.

On Harry’s side of things, after holding a seance with some acquaintances, he gets a lead on the origins of the being inhabiting Karen’s body and mind. He finds an indigenous man named John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara) who has some understanding of the religious history of the being and what might be done to mitigate its aggression. Curtis and Ansara have great chemistry, and Ansara is a really charismatic second-half addition to the film. John knows that getting involved will put him on the being’s radar, possibly with fatal effect. The way that he and Harry work together is very engaging to watch, as they scramble to adapt to the creature’s use of modern technology to further its abilities.

The imagery in this film is really creative and eerie. I’d seen some of the more famous images from it, but I really loved the way that the film built to those sequences. It’s not just weird for the sake of weird. The imagery and special effects escalate as the conflict escalates. What begins as a pulsing lump on Karen’s neck eventually leads to an unreal, sudden blizzard inside of the hospital. There’s a lot here that could veer into being laughable, but Curtis and Ansara manage to keep it grounded, and Karen is a likable character who we want to see survive this ordeal.

Overall this was a solid horror film with a very engaging premise and a pretty perfect blend of outlandishness and solid scares.

The Accountant, 2016

Christian (Ben Affleck) is a brilliant accountant who uses his small accounting firm as a front for laundering money for criminal clients. Christian is on the autism spectrum, and also has a strange background of being trained in various martial arts and other violent techniques by his father. Christian is hired to investigate accounting irregularities at a large company, assisted by a young in-house accountant named Dana (Anna Kendrick) who first noticed something amiss. But it soon becomes apparent that there’s more than just garden-variety embezzlement at play. Christian will have to call on all of his skills to contend with a ruthless killer (Jon Bernthal) in the mix.

I hadn’t read much about this film before putting it on one weekend night, and so the plot element of Christian being a person with autism was a surprise to me. Ehhhhhhhhh. As a person who works with students with autism, I always have such mixed feelings about this type of portrayal: “the savant.” Fern Brady has a great bit about her own autism, and says, “I love it when they say autism is a super power. Oh, really? Is it a super power when I corner you and talk to you about my thoughts on Sylvia Plath for an hour, completely failing to pick up on your lack of interest?”

I think that generally the intentions were good. The biggest piece of praise I can give is to a lot of Affleck’s physicality in the role. There was a neck roll that he did at one point when someone was annoying him that was so identical to the movement of one of my own students (yes, when I annoy him) that I actually gasped out loud while watching. This role makes good use of Affleck’s flatter affect.

The thriller aspect on its own is decent enough, but boy is the movie overstuffed. We get a lot of flashbacks, which honestly don’t add enough characterization to be worth it. The whole backstory of Christian’s childhood is very strange and didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, especially the relationship that Christian and his brother have with their mother. Dana is the character who is used to get Christian emotionally invested in what’s happening, but her character is also seriously underdeveloped. In any other thriller, Dana would be the love interest, but the movie seems almost unsure of how to handle this aspect. As a result, it feels like Kendrick’s energy and talent is wasted.

The action sequences are all fine. Obviously the design of each scene is Christian mechanically dispatching various bad guys. Unfortunately, most of these scenes are Christian fighting generic henchmen characters, saving the big confrontation between him and the killer for the very end.

As with most action films that try to get too complex with their plot twists and turns, I felt myself losing interest hardcore in the last act. Just a lot of “who cares” energy. This is definitely the kind of movie I like to put on late at night on a weekend, but the run time is like 30 minutes more than it should have been.

As far as action thrillers go, this is a passable entry that could have use some serious trimming in the editing room.

The Goat, 1921

A young man (Buster Keaton) is accidentally photographed in place of killer Dead Shot Dan (Malcolm St. Clair), leading to many misunderstandings as he can’t seem to understand why citizens on the street are so spooked by him and the local police are taking an active interest. Along the way, he is pursued by the police chief (Joe Roberts) and strikes up a relationship with a nice young woman (Virginia Fox).

A short run time and a rapid rate of sight gags and stunts makes this an easy, breezy watch.

A lot of comedy films, especially those that rely on physical stunts, can sometimes feel like they are treading water between set-pieces. A real benefit of a shorter runtime is allowing short bits of story development between gags, without feeling like things are being padded out to feature length.

In addition to great pacing, I really appreciated the range of comedy in this one. Simple visual jokes like the events that lead to the young man being captured by the photographer’s camera, silly sight gags like one in which the young man decides to disguise a large wanted poster, and impressive stuntwork including a double-take inducing leap through a small window.

Is there a lot of character work here? Nope. Does anyone even have a name--aside from the murderous Dead Shot Dan? Absolutely not. But with such a simple premise and short run time, that’s not an issue at all.

The only downside, for me, is the way that the film ends. I wasn’t expecting some sort of profound conclusion, but events wrap up in a way that is not only abrupt but also leaves things hanging in a way that actually had me rewinding the film to make sure I hadn’t somehow missed a crucial line of dialogue.

Broken Blossoms, 1919

Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) moves to England to spread the word of Buddhism, though he quickly becomes disillusioned and ends up managing a small store in a rough neighborhood. Across the road, young Lucy (Lillian Gish) lives a violent, oppressive life under the thumb of her boxer father, Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp). Burrows drinks heavily and takes out any disappointments on Lucy. When chance brings Cheng and Lucy together, their cruel circumstances threaten their newfound happiness.

Despite some painfully dated elements, this highly empathetic story makes for compelling viewing.

The strongest element of this tale of forbidden love is the portrayal of Lucy’s miserable existence with her father, a man who looks for any excuse to abuse her physically and verbally. Lucy, as we meet her, is truly someone who has been trampled down, and no one in her life cares one little bit. The scenes between Gish and Crisp are terrifying, and borderline out of a horror movie. There’s a scene where Lucy hides in a closet, only to quickly realize that a single door is the difference between “hiding” and “trapped,” and that door doesn’t stand a chance against her father. As he berates and belittles her, Lucy’s father demands that she smile, and she has to physically force a smile onto her face in order to avoid angering him more.

The romance itself gains potency from how clearly fragile and ephemeral it is. When Cheng finds Lucy passed out---a result of her father’s abuse--he brings her into the upstairs of his shop. Once there, she’s laid out on a magnificent bed, in fancy clothing. But this little slice of peace and affection can’t endure under the cynical, greedy weight of their environment.

There’s also a powerful, bleak character arc that comes out through the eventual confrontation between Lucy, Cheng, and Lucy’s father. While certain characters manage to surprise in their actions, every moment of triumph is countered by horrible consequences.

Unfortunately, some of the dated aspects of the film are hard to overlook because they transcend “sign of the times.” It’s not at all surprising that a white actor plays the role of Cheng. An early sequence where Barthelmess is surrounded by actual Chinese actors only highlights the absurdity. But the problem extends beyond the problematic element of the yellowface. As part of his method of looking more Chinese, Barthelmess seems to perpetually be squinting, something that is visible in the tension of his face. As a result, every moment he is on screen, you’re forced to be aware of the physical action, and it makes Cheng a character, being played by an actor, instead of a person.

It’s kind of amazing to think that the person who made this film had just a few years earlier created the racist-to-its-bones Birth of a Nation. In this film, there’s nothing but contempt in an intertitles description of Lucy’s father’s hatred of immigrants, a recognition of the violence and unjustified bias of such a stance. Interesting, to say the least.

These two aspects were the ones that stuck out the most for me. Maybe it's because I already approached it with some trepidation because of The Birth of a Nation, but my reaction to the racist stereotypes of the film were a bit harsher than yours.

But then again, I also acknowledge what you say about Gish. I thought she was fantastic, especially in the second half. She really succeeded in transmitting the terror an impotence of her character against the abuse of her father.

__________________

So glad that you enjoyed this. I saw it a while ago and was so pleasantly surprised by it.

I think it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that the main character is a good person who has good intentions. The villain is her father, who is racist and xenophobic. It's a different dynamic, and one not quite so poisonous, as what you get in Birth of a Nation.

Yes, it was very sweet.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil, 2008

This documentary profiles the members of a late 70s/80s rock group called Anvil who were innovative and influential, yet never really broke big. The documentary fills in the band’s history and follows as they attempt a tour and a comeback.

This is a complex, funny-but-tragic look at the tribulations of trying to make it as an artist.

Everything is complicated in this movie, where at times the enemy is the world, at times the enemy is the record company, and many times the enemy is the conflict within the band itself. The wildest section of the film is the middle act, in which band members “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner embark on a months long tour of Europe coordinated by a well-meaning woman who is in way, way over her head. As the missed trains and sparsely-attended gigs add up, tempers flare. In the midst of it all, though, the band puts on energetic, heartfelt shows.

Thanks to Kudlow’s particular brand of optimism, the band exists in this strange limbo between having “never made it” and the chance that they might still get their moment in the sun. Kudlow is an interesting character--a man who stubbornly resists the gravitational pull of the “real world.” He smiles as he does his job delivering meals for a local school system, but in his heart he knows that he belongs on a stage, performing. The problem, of course, is that making a living as a performing artist is incredibly challenging. As you watch, from the outside, you feel torn between wanting to hop on the optimism train with Kudlow and anticipating the pain of what will happen when they don’t succeed.

Kudlow is an interesting character. The man exists on a permanent rollercoaster of emotions, and oscillates wildly between a golden retriever-like charisma and wild outbursts that are incredibly alienating. Reiner is a lot more low-key, and the bust-ups that happen between them feel like watching an old married couple fight. While I was rooting for the men to be happy and successful, at times the emotions at play were so volatile that it was profoundly uncomfortable to watch.

For the most part, though, the film really finds the sweet spot of comedy and tragedy. A sequence where Kudlow takes a job working in a direct sales sunglasses call center threatens to annihilate the line between documentary and mockumentary. It’s like a parody of Glengarry Glen Ross, only with sweaty bros selling sunglasses instead of real estate.

As with all great documentaries, interest in the subject matter--in this case heavy metal--is absolutely not necessary. Outlandish and full of heart, this one is definitely a must-see.

The Seven Five, 2014

This documentary follows the immoral and very illegal activities of a New York City police officer named Mike Dowd and his partner, Ken Eurell. Working their way up from petty theft to outright collaboration with big time drug dealer Adam Diaz, the two officers tell their own version of events.

Remarkable for the extremity of the officers’ actions and their total lack of remorse, this film is equal parts compelling and depressing.

While not as stomach-churning as another documentary I recently viewed in this regard, I do struggle with films that interview subjects who have committed serious crimes or harm to others. On one hand, yes, I appreciate the incredible value of having these stories come straight from the source. On the other hand, there’s a smugness to the interview subjects--especially Dowd and Diaz--that is so off-putting. These guys are sociopaths. They caused harm and pain and death, and yet you can tell that they are on some level still pretty pleased with themselves over their own cleverness.

The story of how Dowd and Eurell went from stealing handfuls of bills from crime scenes to actively helping protect drug dealer and killer Diaz from police investigation, but it also exists in an interesting context: at the time of their actions, many other New York officers had been found to be participating in illicit and illegal activities. Dowd and Eurell are certainly standouts in terms of the scope of their corruption, but they are nowhere near being exceptions to the rule. This is also evident in the testimony of some of their fellow officers, and collectively they give off more of a vibe of a gang than of people who would ever be interested in protecting and serving anyone but themselves. (The timing of watching this film was interesting, as several news stories broke last year about the prevalence of police gangs, including those that require violence against citizens for entry).

There are some moral counterpoints in the form of the men who were investigating first the drug dealers and then the officers themselves. I appreciated having someone in the film ready to scoff when Dowd and the others act all shook up about their indirect role in the murder of a young transit police officer. The harm they did to others for years never moves the needle for them, and they carry on as normal after the death of the officer.

The filmmakers did a great job of assembling a range of interview subjects, in addition to archival news footage and old police surveillance tapes. As reprehensible as most of the interview subjects are, I think it does serve to show why people who are given a lot of power also need a lot of oversight. No one seemed to be curious as to how these police officers were suddenly able to afford expensive cars.

One area where I wish the film had given a bit more information is in the toll that the drug trade was taking on people in New York at the time. Yes, the film does discuss the shootings and the wars between the different drug dealing gangs. But the bigger picture is that the actions of the police officers made it easier for drugs to be dispersed in the city, and their informing activity potentially endangered the lives of numerous other officers. I’m not saying that in the absence of the actions of these men that all drug activity in New York would have miraculously dried up, but they certainly pushed the needle in the direction of harm and violence.

Infuriating but compelling viewing.

I love this movie. Partially because I think it is really well done, but also because I think I related to Kudlow pretty strongly. He's like a middle aged version of the volatility of my younger years.. All that naive enthusiasm, but with all that darkness and anger swirling just beneath. Not to mention the long suffering friend, who just keeps trudging along side him in frustrated solidarity.



And, even though I like lots of metal bands, I particularly dislike the music Anvil make. But that's irrelevant to the enjoyment of the film. It's basically a movie about a friendship and the tragedy of unfulfilled ambition.

He's a compelling figure, for sure. I mean, there's something about a person who still holds onto their dreams of youth that's very interesting. He lives at this intersection where I both admire his tenacity and also think "You okay?!".

I don't think I'd want to know him, because the kind of emotional volatility on display was pretty intense.

Interesting. Metal is one of those genres I never totally clicked with. I don't dislike it/hate it, per se, but it's never really spoken to me.

But I totally agree that the music itself is not relevant to the film. (Okay, it's maybe a bit relevant that other people in the field think it should be marketable). But, yeah, it is about relationships and living a life on the razor's edge between dreams and reality.