This week in movies you missed: It's pre-Oscars month! Let's talk about some nominees that never reached our theaters.

That includes all but one of the potential Best Documentaries: The Act of Killing (my review here), Cutie and the Boxer, Dirty Wars and this week's MYM, The Square. (The fifth nominee, 20 Feet From Stardom, played at the Roxy and Savoy.)

What You Missed

You already know the story, or maybe you half-know it from chaotic footage on CNN and YouTube. In early 2011, activists filled Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest the military-backed rule of president Hosni Mubarak. He was forced to step down, to be replaced in 2012 by elected Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, who was in turn ousted last summer after liberal demonstrators protested his abuses of power.

That's where this documentary from Jehane Noujaim (The Control Room) stops, but the story is, of course, far from over.

Next week I'll start reviewing some Movies You (probably) Missed that just received Oscar nominations. Meanwhile...

This week in movies you missed: A middle-aged Austrian frau tries sex tourism.

What You Missed

Fifty-year-old divorcee Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) says goodbye to her teenage daughter and leaves her bleak apartment in Vienna for a sunny Kenyan vacation.

She finds herself in a sterile beach resort with armed guards protecting her from the populace. Her friend from home (Inge Maux) tells Teresa that great opportunities lie beyond the fences — namely, handsome young men who are eager to find European "sugar mamas."

Unlike her friend, Teresa hates the idea of paying for sex; what she seeks is a man who will look her straight in the eyes. After an awkward false start, she finds a young Kenyan named Munga (Peter Kazungu) who will interact with her like a lover and not a prostitute. Or so she thinks, until he starts asking for money.

UPDATES BELOW: 12/26/13 & 1/14/13

Though the semester is nearly over, a film class at the University of Vermont has welcomed a new student: acclaimed director Werner Herzog.

Herzog, who has been making films since the early 1960s and is best known for his films Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, has been an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College for the past semester, working with students and speaking at public screenings of his films.

UVM professor Peter Gruner Shellenberger, a visiting lecturer in film and photography, recently took some students in one of his filmmaking classes to Hanover to hear Herzog speak about his films. Shellenberger brought to the event a vintage Super-8 camera, preloaded with film and, at the Q&A session, asked Herzog if he would use the camera to make a film for the UVM students.

To Shellenberger's surprise, Herzog agreed.

"Did I think he would do this?" asks Shellenberger rhetorically. "Never in a million years. But, then, there’s a part of me that maybe knew that he would be open to it," he adds, referring to Herzog's reputation for unusual film projects.

Two weeks after giving Herzog the camera, Shellenberger received it in the mail, with a roll of unexposed film still inside it. Herzog also included a few unusual conditions:

What should happen is the following: please develop the film and hand it over to your students. My demand is the following: they have to make films, collectively or individually, which should include my footage. Obviously, they do not need to take everything, nor in the order I filmed the material.

The title of their film/films has to be WHERE’S DA PARTY AT?

In my footage this appears in one of the graffiti, and at least this portion of the text should appear in the film, or all the films.

This week in movies you missed: Scientists call it orca. Native Americans call it blackfish. SeaWorld calls it Shamu.

Gabriela Cowperthwaite's Oscar-shortlisted documentary argues that we should treat the killer whale with more respect. The result: a raft of performers have canceled their SeaWorld appearances. (Today, for instance, Trace Adkins.)

What You Missed

In 2010, an experienced trainer named Dawn Brancheau was killed by an orca named Tilikum during a SeaWorld show. Nearly 20 years earlier, the same whale (according to some witnesses) had drowned a trainer at his original home in a British Columbia sea park. Tilikum is also considered responsible for the death of a disturbed man who decided to "swim with the whales" at SeaWorld in 1999.

Trainer carelessness? Psychotic animal? Or proof that orcas don't belong in captivity?

Blackfish strongly takes the third position. Its stance is summed up by one interviewee's soundbite: "If you were in a bathtub for 25 years, don’t you think you’d get a little psychotic?"

This week in movies you missed: You've seen the "art of horror." Now hear the sound of horror.

What You Missed

Gilderoy (Toby Jones), a meek British sound engineer known for his work on nature and children's programs, has been hired to mix a brutal Italian horror flick in the Dario Argento vein.

He's way out of his depth at the Italian studio. The pompous producer (Cosimo Fusco) and lecherous director (Antonio Mancini) roll their eyes at Gilderoy's shyness and squeamishness. The secretary gives him the runaround when he tries to get his expenses reimbursed. And he just can't get used to the bearded Foley artists, known as Massimo and Massimo, who smash melons to approximate smashing heads.

Surrounded by the sounds of mayhem, Gilderoy starts to imagine himself the savior of a young actress doing ADR (Fatma Mohamed) who clashes with the producer over the volume of her screams.

This week in movies you missed: Have we got a Christmas movie for you! Celebrate the season in Korea on "108 stories of terror."

What You Missed

Christmas is coming to the luxury residential skyscraper complex of Tower Sky in Seoul, and its owners have planned a party to end all parties. VIPs will fill the lobby, and helicopters will fly overhead and shower snow on passersby.

No one heeds a warning about dangerous air currents, nor does anyone care that the building's sprinkler system is screwed up, because this is a disaster flick.

Anyway, everyone's busy living out his or her own mini-soap. Building manager Dae-ho (Sang-kyung Kim) is a single dad trying to find a way to smuggle his adorable moppet into the party and tell his crush (Ye-jin Son) that he likes her. The "legendary" local fire chief (Kyung-gu Sol) has promised his wife that he'll spend Christmas Eve with her. About a dozen other characters I've already half-forgotten have their own dramas.

The only question is, who will live and who will die when Tower Sky inevitably goes up in flames?

This week in movies you missed: Michael Cera plays against type in the indie movie with the year's best title, hands down (though Netflix just calls it Crystal Fairy).

What You Missed

Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffmann) who led a charmed life of doodling in her journal and accruing good karma with random acts of kindness. Then she took a trip to Chile, where she met her nemesis, the Pollo Loco.

Actually, his real name was Jamie (Cera), and he was an American tourist like Crystal Fairy. When they met at a party, he told her he was on a mission to consume as many hallucinogens as possible, specifically a cactus fabled to grow in a small rural town.

Crystal Fairy was totally down with ascending to a higher plane of consciousness, especially in 2012, the end of the material world as we know it. So when Jamie suggested she meet up in the boonies with him and his three Chilean friends (Juan Andrés Silva, José Miguel Silva and Agustín Silva), she did just that.

Only then Jamie did a 180 and started acting like a control-freak douche-nozzle. He ordered his three friends around, he pretended he'd never invited Crystal Fairy on the trip, and he pursued his magical cactus with the aggressive humorlessness of a businessman demanding the right amount of foam on his latte.

That's when he got his nickname — and Crystal Fairy set out to teach him how somebody really seeks enlightenment.

This week in movies you missed: A movie star airs her family's dirty laundry on film.

Thing is, the star in question is Canadian — not to mention the talented director of Away From Her and Take This Waltz. So Sarah Polley's documentary is considerably more tasteful and thoughtful than my initial description makes it sound.

What You Missed

A young woman ushers an older man into a recording studio and asks him to read a lengthy narrative he's prepared. We soon learn this is Polley and her dad, British-born actor Michael Polley. Most of the other interviewees we see her settling in front of the camera are members or friends of her Toronto family, too.

These interviewees begin to talk — mostly about Diane Polley, the director's deceased mother. A gorgeous, vivacious, larger-than-life woman, Diane made headlines in the '60s, when she and Michael appeared together on stage. We see her in real Super 8 footage, and then recreated in fake Super 8 footage by actress Rebecca Jenkins. Meanwhile, the interviews begin to hint at a family secret to be revealed.

This week in movies you missed: It's 1980 all over again in this period piece from mumblecore mainstay Andrew Bujalski, who shot it on vintage black-and-white analog video for a painfully authentic look.

What You Missed

Programmers from the nation's top tech schools have converged on an unassuming hotel for their annual computer-chess tournament, in which the computers play each other.

The winner gets to square off with a self-satisfied human chess master (played by film critic Gerald Peary) who has made a bet that no computer will best him for a decade. (In fact, it took until 1997 for IBM's Big Blue to score a fairly decisive victory over a human chess master.)

Meanwhile, a '70s-style encounter group composed of middle-aged couples roams the halls, trying to enlist some of the nerds for birthing rituals and swingin' sex. Grad student Peter (Patrick Riester) despairs of his software, which appears to be trying to commit suicide rather than beat its opponents. Mysterious freelance programmer Mike Papageorge (Myles Paige) can't find a room. And all the programmers are bemused and fascinated by the sole female geek in their midst (Robin Schwartz).

This week in movies you missed: Ryan Gosling and Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn, together again. To little purpose.

What You Missed

Brothers Julian and Billy (Gosling and Tom Burke) are drug smugglers who run a fight club in Bangkok. One night, Billy employs and murders a 16-year-old hooker. As the boys' mom (Kristin Scott Thomas) says when she shows up, "I'm sure he had his reasons."

The nature of those reasons is moot, because Billy quickly falls victim to vengeance engineered by a cop (Vithaya Pansringarm) with a sharp blade, a fine singing voice and strong notions of right and wrong.

Julian wants to let the matter rest there, given that Billy was kinda indisputably a dick, but Mom is having none of it. She taunts him with insults to his manhood until he reluctantly agrees to seek counter-vengeance. Big mistake.