When I was on the jury for Sound Unseen Duluth last year, I had visions of us immediately agreeing on the winner — which, I argued unpersuasively, was the most tough-minded, dogged and dramatically engaging movie at the festival: “Last Days Here.”
Turned out the other jurors thought it was too much of a bummer and weren’t into the frustrating, frankly sad subject matter. I tried to convince ‘em “Last Days Here” was the best movie but we ended up with a compromise choice, a fine movie that was nowhere near the best of the music-related films we saw. That’s the bad news.
The good news is — finally! — Twin Cities moviegoers can judge the documentary for themselves. “Last Days Here,” which chronicles the massively dysfunctional life of Bobby Liebling, lead singer of metal band Pentagram, will be at Trylon Microcinema July 9-11. Evidencing an uncommon degree of intimacy between filmmakers and subject (they frequently fret about what they need to do to, basically, save Liebling’s life), the film is a jaw-dropper that shows him trying to live with his (enabling) parents, using drugs, trying and failing to make relationships work and striving to recapture what we’re told was the magic of Pentagram’s heyday. Heck, I don’t even like metal music but I found this tense and brilliant film equal parts fascinating and horrifying — and it makes “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” look like an ode to Enya. For more deets, go to take-up.org.