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Mike Wallace Is Here directed by Avi Belkin, (PG-13, 1 hour, 30 minutes) Although Mike Wallace Is Here might not rise to the top levels of filmed nonfiction, it is a highly watchable if completely conventional retrospective of the career — but not quite the life — of the legendary CBS newsman whose name was known to strike terror in the hearts of the powerful people he questioned on camera.

Wallace’s battles with depression are aired, and there’s a bit about the death of his eldest son Peter in a 1962 hiking accident in Greece. That incident is presented (as it was in Wallace’s autobiography) as the spur that leads him to

turn away from the entertainment side of broadcasting and focus on hard news. (Wallace started out as an all-purpose radio announcer, resulting in an amusing archive of clips of the fearsome interviewer shilling for cigarettes and acting in melodramas).

What we’re left with is mostly a greatest hits collection, with clips of Wallace grilling the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Malcolm X, Salvador Dali, Johnny Carson, Donald Trump and Vladimir

Putin as well as a black-andwhite conversation with a fully kitted out Eldon Edwards, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from a 1957 episode of Wallace’s nationally televised prime-time show The Mike Wallace Interview.

Yet the documentary, recently featured at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, isn’t hagiography; it starts out with Wallace confronting Bill O’Reilly, then riding high as the face of Fox News, who, when challenged to defend his on-air bellicosity responds that he’s only on TV because of Wallace.

“If you don’t like me,” O’Reilly says, “you’re responsible.”

And how much responsibility Wallace might bear for the shouting climate of today’s infotainment products is not the only sensitive subject Belkin probes. Time is spent examining Wallace’s embarrassing role in the 1996 scandal surrounding an interview with tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand (an incident that was lightly fictionalized in the 1999 film The Insider, in which Christopher Plummer plays Wallace). And most chillingly, the film suggests a link between Wallace’s 1979 interview with Ayatollah Khomeini and the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

Mike Wallace Is Here was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and seems likely as not to figure in the Oscar race for best documentary.

Last Ferry (not rated, 1 hour, 26 minutes) An unconvincing yet creative suspense drama with intriguing characters in which a young lawyer, visiting Fire Island to explore his sexuality becomes the victim of a mugger, who drugs him in order to steal his stuff. While under the influence he witnesses a murder. With Ramon O. Torres, Sheldon Best, Myles Clohessy; directed by Jaki Bradley

Jay Myself (not rated, 1 hour, 19 minutes) This fascinating and trippy documentary by photographer Stephen Wilkes creates an insider’s portrait of his mentor Jay Maisel as he leaves the 30,000-square-foot building in the Bowery that he’s inhabited and filled with an eccentric collection of beautiful random objects for the last 40 years — known as ‘The Bank.’

10 Minutes Gone (R, 1 hour, 29 minutes) An awkward, absolutely predictable crime thriller with little to recommend it that centers on a man whose memory has been lost during the course of to a bank heist gone wrong. With Bruce Willis, Michael Chiklis, Meadow Williams, Kyle Schmid; directed by Brian A. Miller.

Jirga (not rated, 1 hour, 18 minutes) Honest, well-written, and ultimately affecting, this arty drama follows former Australian soldier Mike Wheeler (Sam Smith) as he returns to Afghanistan, seeking redemption from the family of a civilian he accidentally killed during the war. With Mohammad Mosam, Kefayat Lag Humani; directed by Benjamin Gilmour.