TIFF Review: ‘Freeheld’ Starring Julianne Moore, Ellen Page & Michael Shannon

If the Ocean County, New Jersey Board of Chosen Freeholders sounds like possibly the most boring villains in the history of cinema, save, maybe the Trade Federation blockade in “The Phantom Menace,” you would not be wrong. And if a movie whose central crisis is about the inability to transfer earned pension benefits to a domestic partner sounds a little bit like a trip to the DMV, you’d also be forgiven. These are some of the insurmountable problems in “Freeheld,” a would-be, but not-actually-inspiring movie about a landmark LGBT rights case that loses sight of the humans at its heart, gets bogged down in tedious municipal politics and fails to find a way to compellingly dramatize an important story.

Now a movie about people deeply in love, that are denied basic human rights, who struggle to their last dying breath to ensure their struggles are not in vain. Well, that sounds like a compelling story, and in truth it's the one "Freeheld" wants to tell. But the movie can't...