Thematically, the subject is survivor’s guilt. Both Marie and Maurice really can’t get over the fact that one boy had to die—in much the same way the whole town can’t get over the fact that most of the male populace won’t be coming home from some unspecified war. The moral seems to be: if you can’t find a way to reconcile yourself with your past, and insist on reclaiming it, it’s like living with the dead… and it will kill you. What’s done is done, and trying to answer the question “Why?” is most often futile. Stylistically, The Shadow Within is unlike just about anything else out there that you’re likely to see.

Dave fancies himself a “player” whose sure-fire gift with the gals is guaranteed to, uh, jump-start a new love life for his two-years-gone widower grand-dad Joe. As Dave is putting his plans through their, though, he’s learning lessons about companionship from Joe. Joe, meanwhile, is learning from Dave about the more physical side of romance—that companionship is deep and satisfying, yes; but that an active sex life is pretty sweet, too. But writer/director/producer Marc Fienberg is not just after an SNL wink-wink, nudge-nudge sensibility. No, watch closely, stick things through to the end, and you might be thinking you just watched the rom-com equivalent of an M. Night Shyamalan film. Fienberg knows what he’s doing behind both pen and camera.

In an industrialized area of China, a girl infant is born deformed—and abandoned in a field. A young married worker finds the child, and against his wife’s wishes, adopts it. The girl grows up completely sequestered, hiding behind a veil even in her own home. In Malibu, meanwhile, Katie grows up as the spoiled only daughter of a squabbling twosome, lawyer Steven and his too-idle wife Bridgette. Katie naturally acquires the chronic American “whatever” attitude. When she’s challenged by a teacher to participate in an overseas relief effort and runs across the story of Mr. Matthews’ abortive encounter with Lin and Daniel the previous year, she’s hooked. By that time, most likely you will be, too.

Who owns an animal? Is a dog the same thing as a chair, an automobile, or a cigarette lighter? Is the human side of the relationship more akin to that of a guardian? Or a friend? One thing is certain: Pezanoski’s subjects all feel a special, inviolable bond with their dogs. And they all feel, to a degree, that their rights have been violated. If you’ve ever owned a pet you really might want to consider watching this dogs-and-their-masters documentary. Given that the film follows several dogs (and their corresponding people) displaced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, you might also want to turn flinchingly away.

This is a decent little Big Hollywood picture that may, like Michael Clayton, remind you of classic thrillers from the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite what the trailers show you, it relies more on characterization and engaging dialogue than on flash, chase, and sizzle. And probably no CGI whatsoever. The heart of this Darkness is the surprisingly moving and convincing tale of a father’s relentless love for his daughter. The tension is derived from the narrative invention that this particular father is a Boston police detective. The wheels within plot wheels concern eco-terrorists, dirty-bomb terrorists, conspiratorial politics, and slimy corporate schemers. Oh, and little dashes of radioactive isotopes thrown about for good measure.

Raise your hands. How many of you grew up reading Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, or Happy Hollister mysteries? Personally, I can remember spending many an engrossing summer afternoon with such simple-minded but entertaining kid lit… though, even at the time, I felt slightly embarrassed reading them. That feeling of adventurous innocence—coupled with a B-grade, TV-movie Mummy aesthetic—is captured perfectly in Walmart’s second foray into feature filmmaking. Yes, the legacy of the cliff-hanger tradition has us aping Raiders more than Tarzan these day—and Secrets is no Raiders. But if you’re okay with it not trying to be, you will probably enjoy it just fine.

Feeling like a cross between Stand by Me, Leave It To Beaver, and a 1960s Sunday School film strip lesson, The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry is yet another preaching-to-the-choir, family-friendly program for the faithful… but then again, it isn’t, either. There’s so much about Dustin’s experience with Mr. Sperry which rings true that I have to admit, as much as many critics might not care to, that filmmakers Rich and Dave Christiano have not made some ersatz nostalgic reflection on a rural-suburban America that never was. No, they have captured a one-time reality pretty accurately—if not compellingly so, from a narrative standpoint.

The Losers is loosely based on a comic book, but watching it you’d think it was inspired by the television action serials of the 1980s. That makes it a good fit in a year that will also see the release of a big screen A-Team and the “MacGyver”-inspired Macgruber. Director Sylvain White and his screenwriters do their best to provide plenty of macho banter, stunts and explosion and the results are somewhat mixed.

Arthouse films and New Video have done us all a tremendous favor with the release of the Henri Cartier-Bresson: Collector’s Edition, a two-DVD set that also includes a 32-page booklet explaining his body of work as well as containing reproductions of many of his seminal images—several of which you will likely recognize. The late Cartier-Bresson’s real value, of course, lay not in his filmmaking ability, but in the ethic with which he pursued his subjects. After you watch the collection of documentaries about his work found on Disc 2 of this set, you will be so grateful that he took the time to document the world and its very human inhabitants in the fashion that he did—the work of a true documentarian in every best sense of the word.

Based on the French thriller Nathalie, Chloe features an impressive cast and a fairly well respected director. The Sweet Hereafter’s Atom Egoyan is the director. Working from a script by Erin Cressida Wilson, he directs former Oscar-nominees Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson, along with rising star Amanda Seyfried. With all that talent and the promise of sexy thrills, how could it go wrong? There are many ways to answer that question.