'Screamers'

The poster says you will see System of a Down in this movie, and so you will: Screamerskicks off with a hard-rocking performance from the band's April 2005 concert at L.A.'s Gibson Amphitheatre. If you couldn't be there in person, watching it on the big screen is the next best thing. Still, there's a lot more to Screamers than just rockumentary. By the time director Carla Garapedian is done, you'll have witnessed corpses from every major recent global genocide, and will likely be convinced, if you weren't already, that there is value in having celebrities take up political causes. System of a Down are certainly no Dixie Chicks—it's hard to imagine anyone trying to tell lead singer Serj Tankian to shut up and sing. The band has taken to speaking out against mass murder, and in particular to reminding us of the Armenian genocide of 1915, which many of the band members' grandparents lived through. (That so many of those grandparents are still alive today may be the best advertisement ever for pomegranate juice—a staple of the Armenian diet.) With so many bleeding-heart, socially conscious docs about genocide and other world ills, it's easy to get jaded. But Garapedian overcomes the fatigue by combining serious subject matter with tour footage from the most innovative metal band in the world. It's some genius headbanging.