Acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, The Wind Rises, is not a cartoon for children, but a vision both beautiful and horrific on the promise and perils of art.

Animated children’s movies generally fall into one of a couple of different camps. There are kiddie flicks made just for kids, the sort of things that are visually stimulating enough to warrant 24/7 viewing by obsessive 3 to 5-year-olds, but which quickly lose their luster for anyone older. Then there are kids films that try to maintain some adult appeal, either through artful attention to great storytelling (Pixar) or through hammy pop culture references…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Ponyo Hayao Miyazaki proves again and again, with each film he makes, that you really don’t need an army of computers to make an incredible animated film, and that hand-drawn animation can be just as dazzling as anything a computer can generate. Western audiences at large were slow to come around to the idea that one…

FRIDAY: >> There are few names in modern dance as big as Merce Cunningham. The veteran dancer and choreograhper brings his company to the Kennedy Center tonight and Sat. to perform a few of their paradigmatic pieces, including Fabrications, featuring music by Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, and Sounddance, with music by David Tudor. These shows are a sure thing. $21 to $50, both shows at 8 p.m. >> Serious ambient and electronic music fans…