By Kimberly Chun

WHAT IS THIS monster called the music documentary these days? How did the music doc come to headbang its way through doctor-patient confidentiality? How did Metallica's James Hetfield go from posturing with some austere dignity – "Alcohollica" era or no – on arena stages, feet set firmly apart, grimly offering "Enter Sandman" beneath an impressive crimped blond mullet, to the pouting gearhead stomping out of rooms and "processing" with his bandmates? We've peeled back the star-making mechanics of the pop machine in the years between those two images, generally snooping around Behind the Music, and we've become accustomed to rummaging through the Osbournes' garbage, learning the difference between chicken and "chicken of the sea," discovering the mysteries of attraction between "911 Is a Joke" and Red Sonja. And naturally, the medium gets a nice little sexy tumble in return.

But the problem with a lot of these music docs – especially the splashier, sensational fare like Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Dig! – is embedded in their appeal: the couch chatter, the confessionals, the drama. Straightforward concert films like the handsome but inconsistent Lightning in a Bottle and the straight-to-DVD Fade to Black didn't fare as well this year, despite the impressive array of performers and the blessing of blues-doc maestro Martin Scorsese – we're more than a few decades from that filmmaker's stirring, serious, and simultaneously deep and dark 1976 concert film classic, The Last Waltz. These days you almost feel nostalgic for the era when Scorsese refrained from diving into the "frightening" period the Band was going through and instead concentrated on the last strains of the strained-but-still-strong unit before it splintered. Viewers may have gleaned some amusement from Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, watching Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett wallow in the angst of not gracefully falling apart à la the Band, but who cares, ultimately, when audiences are given so little of the stuff that made Metallica worth thrashing to in the first place.

Music is beside the point – rather, call this doc genre Behind the Celebrity. There's nothing equivalent to the Staples Singers throwing in on "The Weight" or Levon Helm pouring his pain into "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." Would The Last Waltz have been as powerful if we knew the back story behind Helm's performance? Probably not. Neglecting the band's music and broader cultural significance, the reductionist Some Kind of Monster succeeds in humanizing the post-Napster Ulrich but boils his band down to tell-all and little else apart from lengths that some of the moneyed will go to to find some peace of mind.

Similarly, on a less commercial scale, Dig! reveled in the messy implosion of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and savored the commercial success (huh?) of the Dandy Warhols. Director Ondi Timoner's efforts in following the bands over seven years and capturing the onstage fisticuffs, fallouts, nudity, drugs, and faux gestures are admirable. But again, you have a sneaking suspicion that the doc was meant less for either band's fans than for the gawkers who secretly loathed them both. Disclosure: I never much liked the Dandys, and I came away with a much more pronounced hatred for showboating Courtney Taylor and his group of alt-nation nitwits, who come off as overly self-assured about their stature in some rock pantheon of their minds. As for BJM's Anton Newcombe, I can believe he was wasted, crazed, and talented, but only because I've actually heard the band – if Dig! gave us more evidence of Newcombe's genius (like, say, a complete song or two), rather than simply relying on Taylor's word, then perhaps the movie would amount to more than squabbling and annoying tambourine-shaking by some colorful figures who just happen to be musicians.

End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones fares better. Sure, interviews with heads like Joe Strummer and Thurston Moore, holding forth on the Ramones' significance, chop up Da Brudders' narrative arc – and oh, is there bickering! – but their take on the music and what it meant to them backs up the material on-screen, as does the empathy of filmmakers Michael Gramaglia (who worked in the band's longtime accounting office) and Jim Fields and their ability to let the fellas show their chilly coolest (Johnny), blinkered (Dee Dee), and sensitive (Joey) sides. Even re-edited to its present form, this one ranks up there with some of the best for its ability to capture the grimy details, the cultural backdrop, and the ground-shaking sounds as well as the sniping. Now my only question is, when is ex-Elektra A&R guy Danny Goldberg – so quick with the wit in End of the Century and MC5: A True Testimonial that he seemed to became the music-doc counterpart to TV's Mo Rocca – going to get a Mayor of the Sunset Strip-style doc of his own?

Scattershot top 10

Brightest outlooks for a dark age

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, USA)

• Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan)

Best use of chalk since childhood sidewalk art

• Dogville (Lars von Tier, Denmark/Sweden/France/Norway/Netherlands/Finland/Germany/Italy/Japan/USA/U.K.)

Best on-screen male bonding by the three kings of '90s indie aesthetics

• Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church in Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA)

• Willem Dafoe and Owen Wilson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, USA)

• David O. Russell and various audience members at a Q&A after I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell, USA)

Best female dread

• A Tale of Two Sisters (Ji-woon Kim, South Korea)

• Mean Girls (Mark S. Waters, USA)

• Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, U.K./USA)

Best film seen way after the fact, thanks to the Roxie Cinema

• Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, USA)