Limelight

Depending on your age, Limelight could make you nostalgic for those bad old days - and sort of glad you'll never be able to relive them.

As a trippy, trifling memorial to a time before its eponymous club was a mini-mall and rave culture a woozy memory, Limelight delivers the messed-up goods.

Transporting as it is, this doc leaves a bad taste in your mouth, if just for the ill will it drudges up.

This is still a fascinating history, especially when Limelight touches on the club scene's dark side: A lengthy dissection of the Angel Melendez murder, complete with an appearance by weathered-looking killer Michael Alig, chillingly shows how the out-all-night lifestyle can take its toll.

Watching Limelight, about the rise and politically engineered fall of onetime Manhattan nightclub kingpin Peter Gatien, is like looking through a family album: If you're in the family, you might be interested.

All outrageous stuff. Gatien's story is worth telling. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that director Billy Corben presents it in such a methodical fashion.

Even if Corben hadn't photographed Gatien with lighting that makes him look like a horror-movie villain, he'd hardly come off as innocent.