Movie review by Greg Carlson

The feature directorial debut of established internet phenomenon and entertainment hyphenate Hayley Kiyoko – known unironically to her fans as “Lesbian Jesus” – carries with it a curious backstory becoming more and more common in the era of DIY media makers who came of age producing content for online platforms. The movie version of “Girls Like Girls” is based on the bestselling 2023 novel of the same title, itself an adaptation of Kiyoko’s 2015 single and music video. The lightspeed transformations of pop culture in our protean digital age partially imbue Kiyoko’s work with an almost quaint sense of queer teen romance as it might have been (re)presented years ago. Perhaps it is no coincidence the events of the movie are set in 2006.

Some viewers will surely take comfort in Kiyoko’s girl-meets-girl tale of Coley (Maya da Costa), a teenager reeling from the death of her mother as she seeks a sense of equilibrium with long-estranged father Curtis (Zach Braff). Relocating to the magic hours of a sun-dappled Oregon, “new girl” Coley falls hard for the mercurial Sonya (Myra Molloy), whose own nascent lesbian awakening remains carefully hidden from her boyfriend Trenton (Levon Hawke) and their group of pals. For older watchers already grown when the iconic AOL Instant Messenger chat ruled online communication, the presence of period details may not seem too far away or foreign.

Kiyoko’s infusion of post-Y2K nostalgia may cast a glow over the familiar terrain of a romance complicated by the “forbidden” nature of the submerged/hidden/unspoken, but a number of contemporary queer critics and audience members have questioned the extent to which “Girls Like Girls” successfully operates within the framework of LGBTQ+ screen stories more typical of the 1980s and 1990s. In other words, while mileage always varies for the individual consumer, there is a legitimate argument that Kiyoko fails to locate the necessary edges regardless of the chosen period. In any case, this is Coley’s narrative and she is the undisputed protagonist; Sonya, in a supporting spot, is the person coming out.

Given the director’s earnest tone, it is impossible to say whether “Girls Like Girls” will eventually be enshrined as essential cult lesbian cinema. Kiyoko’s built-in fandom will have some impact on that question. The movie frequently struggles to communicate the depth of characterization necessary to elevate both Coley and Sonya to a level allowing close viewer identification. As the obscure object of Coley’s desire, Sonya is surely meant to frustrate the course of true love via some degree of internal conflict in the antiquated “But-what-will-people-say?” movie tradition that equates homosexuality with wrongness.

Despite the R-rating, “Girls Like Girls” sticks to a modest sensuality that emphasizes Coley’s erotic longing for Sonya, who is always framed and shot and gazed-upon in a way that underlines her physical desirability to Coley and the rest of Sonya’s peers. The choice aligns the viewer with Coley’s intense emotions, which run from giddy, pulse-quickening excitement to frustration and heartbreak. The saving grace of “Girls Like Girls” emanates from Kiyoko’s conviction and personal connection to this world and material. Even viewers with little or no knowledge of the decade-long journey from song to movie will instantly clock the filmmaker’s authenticity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Steven Spielberg, who will turn 80 this December, returns to the subject of aliens among us in “Disclosure Day,” his first feature since “The Fabelmans” in 2022. Now closer to the end than the beginning of one of the greatest and most storied Hollywood filmmaking careers, the master director continues to inspire new generations of wannabe moguls, even though a strong argument can be made that the run from theatrical debut “The Sugarland Express” in 1974 to “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998 is significantly more impactful and assuredly more seismic than the respectable set of 17 movies completed since the turn of the century.

Fans hoping for something on par with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” should temper expectations. “Disclosure Day” lands somewhere closer to “War of the Worlds” than the territory of undisputed masterpiece status. Spielberg entrusted the screenwriting duties for his original story to longtime collaborator David Koepp, who reportedly toiled through an arduous gauntlet of 42 drafts. The result juggles an ensemble of top-level talents playing characters who plan to expose the long-guarded and classified secret of intelligent life visiting the planet versus the boss of a shadow-ops NGO who stands in their way.

Spielberg and Koepp employ a structure that principally cross-cuts among and between a quadrilateral. At the four vertices are Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), cybersecurity genius turned whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), truth advocate Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), and initially antagonistic WARDEX head honcho Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). The mechanics of the story link each person to the next in a series of increasingly tense escalations leading up to the inevitable revelation promised by the title.

Outside the primary quartet, Eve Hewson makes an impression – until she doesn’t. As an ex-nun returned to secular life, Hewson’s Jane Blankenship accompanies boyfriend Kellner and addresses matters divine, injecting the movie with some very basic theological and metaphysical contemplation of whether the confirmation of life beyond the reaches of our solar system affirms or collapses the possibility of God’s existence. Weirdly, following the set-up of a clever hand-off masterminded by Daniel, Jane essentially vanishes from the story until the plot necessitates her convenient return.

As a top-tier manipulator, Spielberg’s gift for staging both action and dialogue-free pure cinema links him as much as ever to Alfred Hitchcock. “Disclosure Day” pays homage to the Master of Suspense in several recognizable tributes. Cinephiles will recognize a small nod to “Psycho” and a much bigger one to “North by Northwest,” and Spielberg can’t resist the magnetic pull of the MacGuffin, manifesting in both Kellner’s pilfered data drives and, more dramatically, the unstable alien “diving” device tech that serves otherworldly Swiss Army knife functions ranging from invisibility cloaking to body control and telepathic communication.

Given the spectrum of critical reactions, the jury is certainly out when it comes to the question of the movie’s ultimate satisfaction. To my own eye, “Disclosure Day” verges on taking itself a little too seriously, as if Spielberg fights strenuously against the full-on popcorn allure of Big Dumb Fun when he should be leaning into the spirit of the ridiculous. So many scenes unfold in cars one has to fight off carbon dioxide headaches. But thanks to the team of stalwart, longtime allies (glorious John Williams and Janusz Kamiński at the top of the list), “Disclosure Day” indicates that after more than half a century, Steven Spielberg still embraces optimism when more of it is sorely needed.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The cinematic precocity of director Kane Parsons is quickly emerging as one of the year’s big moviemaking stories. The 20-year-old filmmaker’s “Backrooms,” an unsettling journey through the looking glass, has frequently been cited in tandem with Curry Barker’s recently released “Obsession.” Barker is Parson’s senior by six years, and according to several web-based outlets including “The Hollywood Reporter,” the two filmmakers hold the record as the youngest directors to top the domestic box office. Even more remarkable: their YouTube backgrounds as largely self-taught, DIY storytellers allowed for relatively low-risk micro-budget investments that are already returning massive profits.

“Backrooms” earned back its estimated 10 million dollar production budget in previews and swiftly became A24’s biggest opening to date. The movie follows the grim descent of a failed architect who comes apart at the seams when he discovers an endless labyrinth of M. C. Escher-like impossibilities in the basement of the furniture store he manages. The style is inseparable from the substance. Developed from Barker’s multipart found footage series inspired by a 2019 4chan thread, “Backrooms” features a pair of Oscar-nominees in the central roles: Chiwetel Ejiofor as the alcoholic Clark and Renate Reinsve as Clark’s therapist Mary Kline.

Ejiofor and Reinsve commit to their characters with the typical gravitas they bring to so many of the inspired choices on their equally promising filmographies. Screenwriter Will Soodik is credited with the final iteration of the screenplay, but “Backrooms” clearly soars thanks to the participation of Ejiofor and Reinsve. Certainly, not every viewer will appreciate the biggest narrative risk, a leap taken fairly deep into the story, but Parsons smartly pins enough emotional weight to each of his two leads. Our investment in Mary, encouraged by flashbacks to childhood memories eerily linked to the furniture showroom location, accelerates when she goes looking for Clark in the disquieting catacombs.

Using the word liminal or liminality to describe the disorientation that accompanies both physical and emotional disequilibrium corresponding to sites of the “in-between” has morphed well past Arnold van Gennep’s original coinage (concerned initially with rites of passage) to its current application. With multiple subreddits, websites, and channels devoted to the rabbit-hole intrigue of interior and exterior thresholds, the popularity of the liminal space will surely get a boost from “Backrooms.” Whether intentional or not, Parsons owes a huge debt to all-time masters like Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, who frequently dined on the potential found at the borders of no man’s land.

Some cinephiles will surely quibble with the audacious notion of elevating neophyte Parsons too hastily to the ranks of master filmmakers. To my own eyes, the director’s slow-cinema patience inside the maze underneath Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire is, at the very least, a triumph of production design enhanced by shrewd camera placement that puts the movie’s complex of mostly empty rooms and passageways in conversation with the Overlook Hotel and the Black Lodge. “Backrooms” gets by on vibes for much of its duration and that is perhaps as it should be. The gradual increase in explanations tilts toward a decrease in the mysterious and the uncanny.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan gives longtime pal Martin Short the celebrity documentary treatment in new Netflix movie “Marty, Life Is Short.” With a half century of show business experience under his belt, Short continues to perform at the age of 76 on stage and in the successful Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building.” Along with a number of his instantly recognizable SCTV peers, Short has collected enough noteworthy material to fill several feature-length retrospectives. And like last year’s Colin Hanks documentary on Short’s late colleague John Candy, “Marty, Life Is Short” knows that laughter and tears are often in close proximity.

The death of Nancy Dolman, who first met Short during the 1972 Toronto production of “Godspell” and married him eight years later, is handled toward the film’s end with the same kind of grace Short displays while addressing the unexpected loss of his oldest brother David (killed in a car accident in 1962 when Martin was just twelve) and the subsequent deaths of his mother and father. Kasdan and Short establish a sober reverence for life’s inevitable sorrows, a key element made all the more poignant by our knowledge that close friend Catherine O’Hara died in January and Short’s daughter Katherine died in February.

It is the presence of death and acknowledgement of mortality that balances the comic impulses in Short’s onscreen and offscreen personality (though we, like Short, are always aware of the camera’s recording eye). The man’s energetic gift for physical movement is matched by quick wit and lightning-fast responses honed by years of improvisation. At one point, Eugene Levy bestows high praise: “In this business, in the world of comedy, there’s nobody faster, there’s nobody smarter, there’s nobody funnier.” Along with that accolade, as well as John Mulaney’s note that Short is “good at life,” Kasdan and Tom Hanks reiterate the importance of joy as a guiding directive in how our subject approaches each and every day.

Most Short fans won’t mind the absence of more clips connecting the dots between the performer’s highs and lows. One of the movie’s most satisfying motifs is the notion that professional failure is, even for the most gifted, as frequent and inevitable as the massive hit. Short’s satirical Jiminy Glick, whose affinity for insulting the famous faces who walk into his talk show send-up buzzsaw, serves as an ideal reminder of Short’s lament that in our mediated existence there are too many instances in which one is stuck sitting across from (as Short puts it) “a moron with power.”

Comedy fans will frequently want to pause and rewind the utterly ridiculous collection of home video clips shot at convivial gatherings of family and friends during the holidays or at the kid-filled parties held seemingly nonstop at the idyllic Lake Rosseau cabin retreat in Ontario. Through it all, Kasdan makes a clear case that Martin Short has been one of the industry’s most well-connected talents for decades by gathering on-camera interviews with O’Hara, Levy, Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Andrea Martin, Steve Martin, and many other close friends with whom Short has maintained loyal relationships stretching back a lifetime.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The perpetually busy documentarian Morgan Neville profiles the perpetually busy producer Lorne Michaels in another of the moviemaker’s sturdy celebrity profiles. Following closely on the heels of nostalgia snapshot “Breakdown: 1975” and the Paul McCartney and Wings time capsule “Man on the Run,” “Lorne” attempts a career retrospective of the “Saturday Night Live” creator. Now 81 years old, Michaels continues to guide the influential sketch comedy series, which debuted October 11, 1975 under original title “NBC’s Saturday Night.” Given that SNL’s essential formula has remained in place for more than half a century, it comes as no surprise that Michaels is framed as a creature of habit and routine.

For casual viewers seeking a basic introduction to the workings of SNL as well as a trip down memory lane, “Lorne” takes care of business. Hardcore fans, who track and trace every installment of the series year in and year out, might even appreciate some of the behind-the-scenes glimpses already well-documented in print (such as the Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller oral history “Live From New York”), YouTube breakdowns, and previous television specials (including the recent “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night”). But the most voracious appetites who come looking for some revelatory critique of the notoriously private Michaels won’t be satisfied, despite Neville’s “unprecedented” access.

It is impossible to say what kinds of concessions Neville agreed to make in that exchange, but Michaels’ performative annoyance regarding the presence of the cameras hints at the tight ship in Studio 8H. Michaels guards his professional reputation as fiercely as he withholds access to his family. And while I certainly respect the subject’s decision to control the narrative outside the workplace, surely there is a better and more satisfying version of this story when it comes to the consideration of longstanding criticisms, like the show’s track record on diversity and representation in the cast (to name just one thing), that could have/should have been addressed.

Neville makes mention of Lorne’s early professional connection with Lily Tomlin but a 13-year marriage to writer Rosie Shuster is maddeningly glossed over. Shuster appears in the doc with the insulting title “Lorne’s Ex-Wife.” Longtime Michaels pal and neighbor Paul Simon fares better in the telling of a road trip tale that humanizes the man in a manner largely absent from the roundtable featuring Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg and John Mulaney. Those four comedians feed the mythology of Lorne as a powerful father figure everyone desperately aims to please.

The snowball effect of Lorne Michaels impressions and tributes, embedded in everything from Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil to Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy to Mark McKinney’s Don Roritor, attests to his Olympian status among performers and picks up even more speed with the addition of some new animated “TV Funhouse” segments led by Robert Smigel. Those bits, which concoct outrageous “re-creations” of impossible aspects of Michaels’ deep show business connections and expansive privilege, add some zest simply by their novelty – since we know that the film will otherwise lean heavily on dozens and dozens of familiar clips from classic SNL bits.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Issues of gender reside at the heart of Rory Kennedy’s entertaining documentary “Queen of Chess,” available on Netflix following a January world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In the feature, Kennedy explores the remarkable career and achievements of the phenomenal Judit Polgár. The Hungarian’s staggering stat line should pique the interest of any viewer. As the greatest female chess player of record, Polgár remains the only woman to be ranked on the worldwide list of top-ten players, the only woman to attain an Elo International Chess Federation rating over 2700, and the only woman to reach the final stage of the World Chess Championship.

Kennedy’s movie, which features extensive interviews with Polgár and the members of her close family, intensifies the heavyweight-champ drama by devoting significant time to the longstanding rivalry between Polgár and superstar Garry Kasparov, culminating in the triumphant 2002 duel marking the only time a woman has defeated the reigning number-one player in the world. Kasparov’s presence suggests an almost mythic clash of titans akin to Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier. Arguably the highlight of the entire movie is the dramatic recounting of the 1994 face-off in which Kasparov broke the touch-move rule by releasing a knight and then quickly changing his mind.

That entire sequence, as constructed by Kennedy and her ace editors Azin Samari and Jesse Overman, unfolds as a suspenseful cat-and-mouse conflict worthy of Hitchcock. Drilling down on the hypotheticals (a formula repeated in other parts of the film), Kennedy knows exactly how to tighten the screws – even when the historical outcome is fixed and known. The “revelation” that unattended cameras brought by a Spanish TV crew were left running quickens the pulse. It is equally satisfying, then, when Kennedy returns later to the unlikely friendship between the adversaries. Footage of Polgár and Kasparov banana boating and enjoying some beach time offers up an unexpected contrast to the sedentary posture of a cerebral chess confrontation.

The veteran documentary filmmaker previously interacted with the world of chess as one of the producers of the fantastic Liz Garbus feature “Bobby Fischer Against the World” back in 2011. In the new movie, a brief clip of Fischer’s sexist claims about the prospects of women in chess is perfectly timed to make the controversial and enigmatic legend look foolish. The unmistakably sweet flavor of victory is served as Polgár breaks Fischer’s 33-year-old record as the youngest player to become a grandmaster, which she accomplished at the age of 15 years and 4 months. Along with Fischer’s dismissive comments, Kennedy includes other concrete examples of men struggling mightily to cope with the “threat” of successful women.

Despite Kennedy’s access to Polgár, the decorated prizewinner and precedent-smasher remains somewhat enigmatic. Polgár’s father László, who “experimented” on his three daughters by rigorously training and teaching them to become competitive in the chess world, hints at the potential costs exacted by the relentless pursuit of excellence. And Judit’s sisters Zsófia (Sofia) and Zsuzsanna (Susan) might have revealed more of their own feelings about sibling dynamics while living under such incredible pressure. Even so, “Queen of Chess” takes a position alongside “Queen to Play,” “Queen of Katwe,” and “The Queen’s Gambit” to inspire the game’s next generation.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Leagues more entertaining than its logline and/or trailer might initially suggest, Renny Harlin’s “Deep Water” smartly avoids taking itself too seriously by fully embracing its delightfully trashy pedigree as a genre-bending mashup of classic disaster movie and shark attack chiller. Coming together under the big umbrella of the survival formula, the result of the cross-pollination is a pleasing diversion for moviegoers looking to shut off their brains for the respectably efficient 107-minute running time. The industrious Harlin, whose strong desire to continue churning out features connects forgettable stuff like “Refuge” and “Skiptrace” to the Hollywood peaks of “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger,” has already directed two theatrically-released 2026 features with two more in post-production.

Re-teaming with Aaron Eckhart, who starred in Harlin’s “The Bricklayer” in 2023, the prolific filmmaker reaches all the way back to his 1999 sci-fi sharkstravaganza “Deep Blue Sea” to come up with several complications between humans and the shortfin makos who want to chomp them. The earlier movie, indebted to “Jurassic Park,” has become a cult item for wild onscreen deaths. While “Deep Water” doesn’t quite match its predecessor’s tongue-in-cheek self-parody, Harlin’s workmanlike cross-cutting and commitment to his stock-in-trade action beats check all the boxes for a good time at the multiplex.

The sizable squad of writers who worked on the movie did their homework before polishing a screenplay that brings together the white-knuckle fears of commercial airplane crashes and hungry maneaters like the delicious combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Eckhart’s Northeastern Airlines first officer Ben, struggling to deal with his young son’s cancer treatment, joins the cockpit of a Los Angeles to Shanghai flight captained by Ben Kingsley’s retirement-age Rich. The movie’s first major segments trace a malfunctioning phone charging cable that ignites a luggage container in the cargo hold. From there, Harlin pumps the adrenaline in a bravura sequence visualizing the chain reaction that starts with a spark and ends with a splash.

For my money, the screaming spectacle of the plane peril tops the subsequent shark encounters. Your mileage may vary. Just as in life, bad things happen to apparently good people, although movie rules insist from the first moment we lay eyes on him that obnoxious, self-centered heel Dan (Angus Sampson) – the unwitting culprit of the whole airborne catastrophe – will be a casualty of either the jetliner’s nosedive or the jaws of the waiting ocean predators. As for the rest of the souls on the passenger manifest, fickle fate will spare some while removing others from the board.

No disrespect to Australian veteran Kate Fitzpatrick, whose self-aware eye rolling as a flinty grandma occasions a winking Shelley Winters quip indicating some reverence for “The Poseidon Adventure,” but Harlin could have used several more Academy Award winners beyond Kingsley. Like the 1972 Ronald Neame/Irwin Allen classic and so many other disaster flicks, “Deep Water” employs the template in which small groups of key characters must solve predicaments that will claim lives en route to the eventual resolution. “Poseidon” boasted five Oscar-winning performers in its ensemble and Allen would return to the practice for “The Towering Inferno” in 1974. Imagine the fun if Harlin’s cast could have included Julianne Moore, Helen Mirren, Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman!

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Kristen Stewart’s critically well-received directorial debut should do better in its second life on digital streaming platforms and VOD than it did during the very limited theatrical release it received stateside at the tail of end of 2025. For physical media collectors overseas (as well as those in the United States with region-free players), the British Film Institute’s Blu-ray will be available on April 27, 2026. Shot on glorious 16mm by Corey C. Waters, “The Chronology of Water” approaches Lidia Yuknavitch’s raw 2011 memoir with the cinematic intensity of a veteran filmmaker at the helm.

For admirers who have watched Stewart make a series of strong choices following the peak of her young fame as Bella Swan in the “Twilight” franchise, the sharp visual sensibilities at play in “The Chronology of Water” will come as no surprise. Like her frequent co-star Robert Pattinson, Stewart shrewdly alternates between high-profile studio films and much smaller arthouse fare made by visionary talents. Stewart’s directors, including Kelly Reichardt, Olivier Assayas, David Cronenberg, Pablo Larrain, and Rose Glass, have obviously been excellent instructors. Stewart proves as comfortable behind the cameras as she is in front of it, turning “The Chronology of Water” into a compelling piece of biographical fiction and a showcase for lead Imogen Poots.

Poots plays Yuknavitch over the span of quite a few years, beginning in high school as the competitive swimmer whose desire to escape her controlling and sexually abusive father (a frequently chilling Michael Epp) would take her from Olympic aspirations to drug and alcohol-fueled self-destructiveness. The performer’s work here, arguably her career-best, is all the more remarkable given director Stewart’s commitment to the deliberately fragmentary approach that embraces frequent time-jumps and vignettes. Poots and Stewart collaborate to resist any temptation they might have had to represent Yuknavitch with any one of the reductive traits that might otherwise drive an adaptation.

In other words, the Lidia we encounter onscreen is, like the complex personality of the page, simply not reducible. Her bad choices do not translate into the common movie cliches that would result from catastrophic losses. Certainly, the audience sees Lidia pushed to the limits of endurance in circumstances that could cause anyone to “act out.” But Stewart treats atonement and reconciliation with the same matter-of-factness that accompanies everything from Lidia’s fluid sexuality and BDSM experimentation to the court-mandated community service she is required to perform.

In one of the movie’s longest sustained sections, Yuknavitch finds her way to the University of Oregon and a group collaboration with legendary writer and counterculture figure Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi) that would result in the 1989 novel “Caverns.” True to the style she has established, Stewart filters the experience through the perception of Lidia, who simultaneously seems grateful for Kesey’s companionship/mentorship and wary of what could be construed as nearly inappropriate attention. Certainly, the flinty encounter between Kesey and Lidia’s dad underlines the fragile father-daughter dynamics that haunt her, but for the most part, Stewart shows as much restraint here as she does throughout the film’s many short but effective passages.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Veteran documentary filmmaker Marina Zenovich has chronicled a number of powerful men in entertainment, politics and popular culture, including Roman Polanski (twice), Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Lance Armstrong, and Jerry Brown, so neither her most recent subject nor her methodological approach should surprise any viewers who have enjoyed her consistently watchable work. In “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” Zenovich continues her pattern of grappling with a complicated and divisive personality. Now in his early 80s, Cornelius Crane Chase has seen as many peaks and valleys as any seasoned mountaineer.

Coinciding with the film’s New Year’s Day premiere on CNN and eventual streaming home on HBO Max, a clip of Chase insulting Zenovich made the rounds. When the filmmaker remarks, “I’m just trying to figure you out,” Chase responds, “No shit. It’s not gonna be easy for you.” Zenovich replies, “Why not? Why is it not gonna be easy?” and Chase retorts, “You’re not bright enough. How’s that?” The moment sets a tone for the entire movie: Chase’s legendary cruelty and meanness is matched by his fearlessness and self-confidence, even if the former seems to mask some amount of deeply submerged pain or even self-loathing.

From the earliest days of Chase’s national profile as one of the original “Saturday Night Live” Not Ready for Prime Time Players, the performer’s mercurial career decisions left both industry professionals and fans scratching their heads. The initial breakout star of the series, Chase quit early in the second season. Several bridges were set on fire, but did not burn all the way through. Soon enough, Hollywood success would seem as effortless as the man’s ability to keep selling physical and verbal comedy that delighted millions. Blazing chops and a quick wit fit hand in glove with WASPy elitism and libidinous come-ons (as was the custom of the day). But Chase was just as adept at projecting frustrated middle-class dad energy, turning Clark Griswold into an all-time great.

Zenovich will later button up the movie with footage of Chase basking in the adulation of an enthusiastic crowd at one of the many semi-regular, victory-lap screenings of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” where the actor participates in a moderated conversation and audience Q & A. Curiously, the irascible old clown appears to enjoy it. Before we get there, however, the director plays Chase’s greatest hits and biggest bombs. Celebrity pals, wife Jayni and their three daughters bear witness to all manner of celebrity misadventure and hubris, from box office disaster and talk show-hosting embarrassment to longtime cocaine addiction and near-death hospitalization.

Chase’s infamous and tasteless homophobic bullying of Terry Sweeney during the former’s SNL hosting gig in the 1985-1986 season sets the table for another elephant in the room: the narrative surrounding Chase’s departure from “Community,” linked to an outburst in which he reportedly used the N-word. Since Zenovich was unable to convince Dan Harmon or any cast members to speak on camera, the segment is somewhat unsatisfactorily represented by Jay Chandrasekhar. Zenovich’s movie certainly isn’t the last word on its polarizing subject but it is a sturdy enough exercise in showbiz portraiture.