This week in movies you missed: Curious about the toilet, sex and eating habits of absolutist monarchs in early-modern Korea? Learn all about them in this sumptuous costume drama with a touch of comedy.

What You Missed

It's 1616. Gwanghae (Lee Byung-hun), a young king in Korea's long-lived Joseon dynasty, suspects someone is trying to poison him. He enlists his trusted chief secretary (Ryoo Seung-ryong) to find a lookalike who can foil assassins by standing in for him during the night hours.

The chief secretary finds Ha-seon (also played by Lee), a lowly entertainer who draws crowds with salacious routines in which he impersonates the king gettin' busy with his royal concubines. But he does look remarkably like the fierce monarch — and can imitate his voice and manner.

This week in movies you missed: The movies you see in theaters no longer "flicker." Your favorite summer drive-in is running a fundraiser to stay open. Your 18-year-old nephew is posting videos to YouTube and Vimeo and calling himself a "filmmaker."

What do all these phenomena have in common? They're symptoms of the seismic shift from "film" film to digital film. This documentary from Christopher Kenneally explains.

What You Missed

How will the film industry change when "films" are no longer shot on film, edited on film, screened on film or preserved on film? How close are we to that point? How did we get here? Is it the dawning of a glorious new age, or a dark moment in the history of a century-old art form?

Kenneally, making his feature directorial debut with this 2012 doc, doesn't answer that last question. Nor does its narrator, Keanu Reeves. Instead, they interview a slew of filmmakers, including some of Hollywood's most prominent directors: Martin Scorsese (pictured), James Cameron, the Wachowskis, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Steven Soderbergh, George Lucas and more.

This week in movies you missed: "Hannibal" has been renewed! And, in its honor, I'm keeping right on with Mads Mikkelsen Month here at Movies You Missed.

Fear not, this Oscar-nominated Danish costume drama involves neither cannibalism nor sharp objects ... till the end, anyway. But it does demonstrate, like the show, that you might want to think twice about making this guy your trusted personal physician and the keeper of your mental health.

What You Missed

Much like Marie Antoinette, Princess Caroline Matilda (Alicia Vikander, Kitty in the recent Anna Karenina) didn't lead the carefree life you might expect of 18th-century royalty. Born in England, she was married off in 1766, at the age of 15, to her cousin, King Christian VII of Denmark (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard). He was mentally ill and more interested in courtesans than in his bride.

No wonder, perhaps, that Caroline began an affair with the king's doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mikkelsen).

This week in movies you missed: It's a rainy day. It's a rainy weekend. How about a good ol' rousing Viking movie?

... except this one's more trippy than rousing, to be honest. Prepare for the weird.

Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Drive, screened his new movie (again with Ryan Gosling) at the Cannes Film Festival this past week. Spectators booed, and critics largely panned it as a laconic spectacle of meaningless violence. (More info from Vulture here.)

So what better time for us to watch one of Winding Refn's past laconic spectacles of meaningless violence, which is still a lot more interesting than most directors' movies? Valhalla Rising skipped our theaters in 2010 and is now available on Netflix Instant and various other services.

What You Missed

So, it's 1000 AD or thereabouts, Scotland I guess, and this dude with one eye (Mads Mikkelsen) has been a slave for, like, ever. He can kill anybody with his bare hands, usually in a few seconds flat, and the Vikings are really into no-frills gladiatorial combat, so his skills see regular use.

This week in movies you (probably) missed: Beware of last-minute wedding guests. Or: Hannibal Lecter plays a do-gooder.

Not really. But I'm so obsessed with NBC's "Hannibal" (and, if you enjoy David Lynch-esque imagery, fine food and/or the grotesque, you should be, too) that I've practically forgotten Anthony Hopkins. I can't look at Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen (pictured) without thinking of him making sorbet out of somebody's spleen, and being so very civil and charming about it.

Because he's so memorable on the show, I decided to explore Mikkelsen's filmography, which is plentiful on Netflix Instant. I saw a trailer for the Danish film After the Wedding at the Palace 9 back in 2007; the Oscar-nominated drama played for about a week there, if I remember correctly. So there's a good chance you missed it.

What You Missed: Mikkelsen plays Jacob, who runs an orphanage for street kids in India. To secure a huge donation from a Danish businessman, he must return to his homeland for an interview — which he does with reluctance, leaving behind an orphan whom he treats like a son.

This week in movies you missed: How hard is it to set yourself up as a guru? Relatively easy, this documentary reveals.

NOTE: Right now, I'm in an indecisive zone when it comes to obtaining Movies You Missed. While I decide whether to commit to a separate Netflix discs plan, I'll be doing this the cheapskate way, watching stuff that's available on Instant. Such as this 2011 flick from director Vikram Gandhi, which played at last March's Green Mountain Film Festival but never in the Burlington area.

What You Missed

Gandhi is a third-generation Indian American who grew up in New Jersey. His parents schooled him in Hinduism, but he was skeptical of religion from an early age. And, he says, every encounter with a guru, whether in the U.S. or in India, just made him more suspicious. Sure, these self-styled holy men were charismatic, but what made others follow them? Were they really giving any spiritual sustenance their followers couldn't give themselves?

To find out, Gandhi devised a Morgan Spurlock-style stunt: He would be a guru. And, of course, film the process. (Watch him on Colbert here.)

Are there movies I missed that I'd like to be reviewing right now? Hell, yeah.

New on DVD this week is Upstream Color (trailer here), the latest from Shane Carruth (Primer), a self-distributed festival success that was too weird for most U.S. theaters. It's on DVD, Blu-ray and video on demand, and I hope to review it in this space once it reaches my evil overlord, Netflix.

(Sorry, Netflix. I didn't mean that, really. You're a million times better than Blockbuster even if you did kill my favorite video store. I've never had any problems with your top-notch service. Thanks for bringing me the excellent "Top of the Lake." Is that enough groveling? Now, please expand your streaming catalog.)

Anyway, here's an interview with Carruth about putting his film out there by himself.

Meanwhile, what movies are hard to miss this week?

It's been fun writing Movies You Missed. But, with Burlington's Waterfront Video due to close its doors for the last time on Tuesday evening, I no longer have a reliable source for movies that never reached our theaters because they were too indie, arty, foreign, misguided, insane and/or weird.

True, many of those movies will still pop up on the-streaming-service-whose-name-we-don't-speak and its companion discs-through-the-mail service, not to mention iTunes and other services I don't know about. (Full disclosure: I've been streaming from Netflix for the past couple of months. It's great for catching up on "Friday Night Lights" and "Fringe," but no substitute for an excellent video store.)

I'll continue to use this weekly space to preview the weekend's new movies (in theaters and on DVD) and, perhaps, to write short reviews of MYMs that pop up on whatever service I'm using. (For instance, did you know you can stream local director Liz Canner's Orgasm Inc.?)

But for now, back to Waterfront Video, where you can still rent movies for one more weekend. I asked buyer/curator Seth Jarvis and manager Chris LaPointe to name some of their all-time most memorable movies that never reached (or didn't stay in) Vermont theaters.

After 17 years in business, Burlington's last dedicated video-rental store will close its doors at the end of the business day on Tuesday, April 30.

Store buyer and curator Seth Jarvis explains that "We are closing due to a confluence of circumstances — most notably the passing of Waterfront Video's owner and patron saint, Murray Self — as well as significant changes within the industry."

To newcomers to the Queen City, it may come as a surprise that Burlington has a video store, much less a video store that carries as many art-house flicks and documentaries as blockbusters.

Somehow this local business outlasted the Blockbuster chain, even as research firm IBIS World declared video rentals a "dying industry" (along with newspaper publishing, for the record) and even Netflix tried to exit the physical DVD rental business.

Old-timers know how the store held on to its loyal customers.

This week in movies you missed: This one's different.

Cartoon College isn't on DVD yet. It's also not in theaters. But you don't have to miss this professionally made documentary that brings you inside Vermont's own Center for Cartoon Studies. (Trailer here.)

If you love comics, you shouldn't miss it. Especially if you've ever dreamed of drawing them for a living.

Filmmaker Tara Wray did. In 2007, she headed to CCS as a comics fan and potential student — but eventually decided she "couldn't draw," she told me in a 2008 interview. Instead, she stuck around to film the students as they progressed through the rigorous two-year program, from first-year "boot camp" to a nail-biting final thesis review.

Wray and codirector Josh Melrod ended up spending three years filming the students in White River Junction, and followed them to a convention in New York City where they strove to market their wares. The filmmakers collected interviews with famous indie cartoonists, such as Art Spiegelman of Maus, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Charles Burns and Francoise Mouly.