One of the subgenres ushered in by the streaming era is the celebrity documentary. It’s not that they didn’t exist previously, but the number of celebrity documentaries pumped out by streaming platforms over the past several years — usually made at the behest of (or at least, with the cooperation of) the subjects themselves — have a way of turning these projects into exercises in image management, stripped of anything too complicated or unexpected.

Of the handful that have premiered just this month, only one — Apple’s examination of filmmaker Martin Scorsese — approaches anything close to absorbing. Let’s look at some of the others first.

Amazon’s “John Candy: I Like Me” comes from the actor Colin Hanks, who has a sincere appreciation for Candy the actor and the person. That’s fine, th

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