MOVIES

Documentaries salute a cult classic, small-town life and metal madness

'Best Worst Movie'

"Troll 2" — it's as bad as it sounds. The 1989 straight-to-VHS creature feature is a blundering fiesta of rubber masks and arthritic acting, the "Citizen Lame" of no-budget goblin pictures.

Yet, in the dubious post-modern practice of enshrining fetid pop culture with a wink and a poke, "Troll 2" has been rescued from oblivion by geeky fans who revel in its howling ineptitude. They throw watching parties, recite lines, act out scenes, peddle T-shirts.

Michael Paul Stephenson, one of "T-2's" stars, directed this fitting and good-natured tribute to what many delight in calling the worst movie ever made. Stephenson rounds up other cast members, including wild-eyed George Hardy, now a popular Alabama dentist, and documents sold-out screenings across the country. The Alamo Drafthouse, Austin's sanctuary for cinematic detritus, of course plays a pivotal role in the revival, taking the movie on the road. Fans scream, get autographs, dress up as third-rate trolls.

The only one excluded from the joke is its Italian director, who flinches when audiences laugh at the wrong parts. He's unaware that he almost outdid Ed Wood in the degree of sincerity (and delusion) he invested in an enterprise wholly unencumbered by talent.

"Best Worst Movie" offers a rich experience. As fun as it is, it resonates with cultural and psychological complexities you wouldn't expect.

4 p.m. Monday, Paramount; 9:30 p.m. March 20, Austin Convention Center.

— Chris Garcia

'45365'

More stylishly put together than your average slice of small-town-life documentary, '45365' (yep, that's a ZIP — for Sidney, Ohio) dips in and out of situations without seeming to make its presence felt on those being photographed. (They obviously see the camera but behave as if they don't; filmmaking brothers Bill and Turner Ross grew up here, which surely accounts for their comfortable access.)

We see action and inaction on football fields, at fair grounds, and in cars with the radio on; we eavesdrop on anecdotes from ex-cons, rowdy football-player parties and girls breaking up with their boyfriends.

But while the first thing viewers note might be the pig races or the cop willing to call a guy's cable company rather than keep hassling with his shifty complaint, over the course of the film enough intriguing characters bob repeatedly back into view that we get some sense of the town's ordinary life beyond its heartland oddity quotient.

2:30 p.m. Sunday, Alamo South; 2 p.m. Wednesday, Alamo South.

— John DeFore

'Anvil! The Story of Anvil'

Back in the hair-lashing, riff-crunching heyday of '80s heavy metal, Anvil was a rising force of anthemic noise and comically lewd antics. The group's snaggle-toothed frontman called himself Lips and played his V-shaped guitar like a perverse love object.

From its Toronto base, Anvil had plans for world domination and almost pulled it off. But, after pioneering the thrash-metal movement and influencing upcoming rock giants Metallica and Slayer, Anvil vanished into obscurity.

"Everybody ripped them off and left them for dead," says former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash in this oddly touching and enormously entertaining documentary about Anvil's current comeback attempt. Directed by Sacha Gervasi, an old friend of the bandmates (and now an accomplished Hollywood screenwriter), "The Story of Anvil" catches up with Lips and original drummer Robb Reiner, who formed Anvil as teenagers in 1973.

Almost 40 years later, now well into their jowly 50s, their hunger for hard-rock glory remains unquenched. Instead of sports stadiums, though, Anvil plays sports bars. Lips and Reiner's impossible dream to reclaim the metal-god mantle is the drama throbbing through the film.

Passion, perseverance, rejection, humiliation, frustration — these are the age-old themes of the struggling artist, and the movie explores them with unflinching honesty. It shows how exhaustingly difficult it is to get noticed in a youth-oriented music industry whose entire business model has changed. And it shares the squabbles sparked when egos clash in a creative fever, recalling the fiery band in-fighting seen in the 2004 Metallica documentary "Some Kind of Monster."

While this invites our empathy, the movie is also extremely funny, filled with inadvertent "Spinal Tap" moments that make you laugh and love the characters even more. Lips and Reiner endear because they operate in a bubble in which time and good sense have stopped. Their optimism veers on boyish naivete, and they almost infect us with their quixotic hopes. Says Lips: "It can only get better."

10 p.m. Sunday, Alamo South; 9 p.m. Wednesday, Alamo Ritz.

— Chris Garcia