Portside

Snowden, Oliver Stone’s new film is a perfunctory biopic about the NSA’s international surveillance programs that lacks his trademark fearlessness. The film feels trite in its efforts to depict America’s ensnarement in the creepy web of online spying.

It is the festival's Documentary Programme that offers the most bang for the buck. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City, about urban activist Jane Jacobs who saved New York neighborhoods in the 60s; it’s been awhile since we’ve seen a film about the revered muckraker, but All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone will once again raise the issue of truth in the media; the Canadian doc Black Code exposes how governments use the Internet to spy.

Moonlight is a profoundly moving film about growing up as a gay man in disguise, a difficult and damaging journey that’s realised with staggering care and delicacy and one that will resonate with anyone who has had to do the same. We’re starved of these narratives and Jenkins’ electrifying drama showcases why they are so hugely important, providing a rarely seen portrait of what it really means to be a black gay man in America today. It’s a stunning achievement.

Bob DeMars new documentary The Business of Amateurs about the National Collegiate Athletic Association argues that the organization places the profits of college sports programs ahead of the best interests of athletes. The documentary is billed as the first documentary that challenges the NCAA “from the perspective of former student-athletes.”

Jayro Bustamante‘s debut feature “Ixcanul” generates its power from an intimate observance of the quotidian. As such, its titular volcano — the translation of Ixcanul in the Mayan K’iche’ dialect spoken in Guatemala — is the least volcanic thing in it. Steeped in a culture rarely observed on screen and filmed entirely in Kaqchikel, Bustamante’s film explores a clash between reproductive rights and tradition.

“Equity” is bracing, witty and suspenseful, a feminist thriller sharply attuned to the nuances of its chosen milieu. In setting and mood, it bears some resemblance to J. C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” which similarly infused sleek and sterile corporate spaces with danger and dread. But unlike that film or Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” Ms. Menon’s movie is not about the system in crisis. It’s about business as usual. Which is to say about corruption, deceit and treachery.

If “Captain Fantastic” doesn’t cram all of human experience into that box we like to call the dysfunctional family — a category that suggests that all anyone needs to get through Thanksgiving is therapy talk and a group hug — it’s partly because its characters have politics, not simply feelings. The Cash children stumble, but they’re supremely capable and self-aware. What makes them unusual isn’t their knife skills; it’s that they talk seriously about ideas.

Boal’s litigation is supported by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “We firmly stand with Mr. Boal in his effort to protect these tapes,” says the organization’s executive director Bruce Brown. “Well-established law recognizes that journalists cannot do their jobs to keep the public informed if they cannot work free from government interference.”

The question is whether good film presents us a prettified view of the past or challenges us to realize that we are yet living with that past—and that, however comforting the desire to ignore it, we continue to pay a price for failing to own it. We owe the makers Free State of Jones a serious debt for giving us the opportunity to do that.

"Ludlow: Greek Americans in the Colorado Coal War" and "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble" -- two new documentaries, both of them stunning not only in their execution but in their implications, raise all the critical issues about the worth of human life. One takes place in the violent coal mines of the Southwest a century ago, and another takes place today in many locales leading up to appearances in concert halls all over the world.