The Earth Will Swallow it All

Nine year old Lamia and her friend Saeed venture into the city to scrounge ingredients for a cake to celebrate Sadaam Hussein's birthday — a quest fraught with real peril in precarious times. Winner, Camera d'Or, Cannes.

This month's Pantheon selection spotlights the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Dutch feminist filmmaker Marleen Gorris, and her charming, vibrant tale of an emancipated farmer who refuses to conform.

A Nigerian in Australia, Azubuike is a shoe salesman trying to keep his shop afloat and reconnect with his 12-year-old son in this tender, touching film.

Seaside town Amity is rocked by an unwelcome summer visitor, a great white shark with a taste for human flesh. How many tourists can they afford to lose before shutting down the beaches?

An orphan little girl befriends a benevolent giant who takes her to Giant Country, where they attempt to stop the man-eating giants that are invading the human world.

Could this be Spielberg's most underrated film? It's his only stab at animation, and it moves like Raiders of the Lost Ark on caffeine. The plotting may be antiquarian but the action never lets up. It's delirious stuff, often laugh-out-loud funny.