Marijuana is the most profitable farmed substance in the USA, and Americans consume more cocaine than any country on earth. So there's real money to be made, and it's not that difficult if you're willing to take the risks. Filmmaker Cooke's narration teaches us how to start by working a corner, supplying our community and building a full-on business (there's no lack of customers). Eventually, even greater success can be found working with cops and federal agents, and in becoming a full-on cartel kingpin.

Like a 90-minute infomercial, the film takes us on a step-by-step journey with personal stories of how people did it. On-screen commentary from ex-dealers, addicts, cops, lawyers, scholars and activists combines with a collection of footage from police surveillance to episodes of Simon's iconic series The Wire. The main theme is that demand is so enormous that declaring war on drugs could never have been anything but counter-productive.

Indeed, the film traces the horrors of a political and judicial system that has fallen far out of balance, with details that are deeply upsetting. It's also intriguing to hear that the problems only really started when drugs were outlawed in the 19th century in race-fuelled legislation that led to Prohibition. And once Nixon declared war on drugs, for the same paranoid/bigoted reasons, the problem escalated dramatically, leading to a present day in which America has more people in prison than any nation on earth.

But former dealers explain that jail time is worth the risk because there are just too many customers out there. And while the majority of buyers and sellers are white, blacks are four times more likely to be arrested and given sentences that are grotesquely out of proportion. All of this is presented with a clear-headed lack of prejudice, leading to Cooke's bracing conclusion: "If we decriminalised all drugs, we would have billions of dollars to battle addiction, drug abuse and poverty. But as long as we support a drug war, we will continue to encourage our children to pick up the game."

At age 50, filmmaker Panh begins to look back at his childhood. He was 13 when the Kmer Rouge's revolution upended Cambodia in 1975, deporting his family to brutal work camps where they died one by one. Only Panh survived, with his only possessions being standard-issue black clothes and a spoon to eat what little food he could find. But he also remembers the happier days before Pol Pot set out to create a classless idyllic society by killing anyone who was educated or wealthy, oblivious to the famine and death that swept the countryside.

To tell this story, Panh builds a series of astonishingly detailed tableaux and populates them with hundreds of wood-carved figures, making sure we know where he is in each scene. Based on his vivid personal memories, these sets give us a sometimes startlingly intimate perspective on these events, especially as he watches his family members die around him. And each scene is backed up by priceless found film footage shot by the Kmer Rouge for propaganda purposes.

The amount of work that went into making this documentary is impressive, and the events recounted are powerfully disturbing, especially since we are essentially watching everything through the eyes of a child. But the filmmaking style distances us from horror that clearly felt like the end of the world. Especially as the narrative structure continually cycles back to Panh's happy childhood before the revolution, which was full of culture, film, music, art and history. And of course his family and friends.

As all of this is destroyed, the film becomes relentlessly dark. And a deliberately sleepy pace is created by Douc's eerily flat, downbeat voiceover narration, plus plaintive music. We only get subliminal glimpses of the human spirit standing up against tyranny: the people are depicted as utterly passive through all of this violent oppression. As an account of one of history's most horrifying chapters, this is an important and creative film. But the somewhat indulgent approach means that it lacks any real insight beyond the lasting legacy of evil.

We watch this mainly through the eyes of Ahmed Hassan, a young protester who takes to the streets in January 2011 as Egypt finally demands and end to Mubarek's oppressive 30-year rule, which was backed by the West. Galvanised by young activists like Abdalla (star of The Kite Runner) and musician Essam, thousands of Christians and Muslims filled the square peacefully, then were jubilant when it worked. But over the next three years, a lack of real change drew protesters back the square over and over, even as the new military government cracked down viciously.

For example, when elections were were called, a new feeling of betrayal emerged when the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to hijack the revolution for their own gain. After making a deal with the military leaders, they won both the parliament and the presidency in spring 2012. But ongoing protests against this divide-and-conquer system, which was just as tyrannical as what went before, led to President Morsi being removed from office in July 2013.

The film lays out the events chronologically, showing us every key moment using both TV coverage and footage shot by the protesters themselves, including Hassan. Watching him change from a bright-eyed, optimistic teen into a torture-scarred survivor is pretty harrowing, but his tenacity and resilience are deeply inspirational. He and his comrades give the movie a driving sense of urgency, especially as we drop in on significant discussions between protesters, including ideological arguments and friendships strained by sectarian issues.

This intimate approach helps us vividly understand the haunting questions: How is it possible that the military is shooting unarmed civilians in the streets? Who will lead us out of this mess? In fact, the emotions are sometimes overwhelming. So it's understandable that the film feels a bit long and unsure how it will end. A tighter final section might help, but the fact remains that the fight continues. As Ahmed observes, "Protest is now part of our culture."

In Austin, Texas, Tim Jenison is a successful inventor, a nerd who has too much money and time, so decides to work out how the 17th century painter Johannes Vermeer could possibly have painted such photorealistic paintings. With only the paintings as clues, and a suggestion from British artist David Hockney that Vermeer may have used optics, Tim sets out to recreate one of Vermeer's most complex paintings, The Music Lesson, using a lens and a set of mirrors. When his trials go better than he thought, he goes for it.

Having tricksters Penn & Teller take us through this story adds a blast of wit, as they peel back the layers to reveal how something incomprehensible might have been done (and there are hints that perhaps the film itself is a double-bluff). Jenison is a terrific central character: a goofy genius who freely admits that he has no artistic skill, and yet he successfully paints a series of remarkable images. Far from being a cheat, he solves this conundrum through creative thinking.

Which of course raises the question of whether Vermeer himself was a cheater or an artistic innovator. The fact is that he produced his astonishingly detailed work more than 150 years before the advent of photography. So even though Jenison travels to Delft, learns glazing so he can grind his own lens and mixes his paint from 17th century materials, his final creation is both technically astounding and artistically accomplished.

Penn & Teller assemble this with several hilarious asides, from an aborted rant about Buckingham Palace rules (that's where Vermeer's original hangs) to lively input from Hockney, Steadman, Mull and Blakemore. They also make the most of Jenison's painstaking 130-day project, the culmination of an 11-year effort to crack Vermeer's secret. But what makes this film essential is its exploration of the tension between objectivity and subjectivity. Jenison may claim that his work is objective, requiring no artistic talent, but his passion tells another story.