The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002)

Sometimes animated films created for kids can be enjoyed by adults, too. Usually, this means the addition of some hip, comic dialogue that sails over the youngsters' heads but connects with the grown-ups. The Powerpuff Girls Movie, based on the hit TV series of the same name, just gives it to you straight, without any self-conscious winks. But director Craig McCracken's imaginative visuals and energetic pacing are original enough to have developed a cult following among animation aficionados.

Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles are a trio of kindergarten girls with supernatural powers, which were accidentally bestowed on them by their guardian, Professor Utonium, in a misguided lab experiment. After they devastate their school and part of their hometown by mistake, their peers regard them as social freaks. Their only friend is Mojo Jojo, a monkey with a weirdly large brain. But he has secret plans to destroy the world with an evil simian army, and only the three Powerpuff girls have the strength and the smarts to defeat him.

Sahara (1943)

Desert warfare has its own peculiar dangers, as the looming Iraqi conflict may teach us. Hollywood has made only a handful of films about the perils of heat, thirst and sand. Sahara is one of the best. An American tank is separated from its unit after the fall of Tobruk in North Africa during World War II. Its commander (Humphrey Bogart) and his crew are running out of water and must make their way to an oasis.

Along the way they pick up a rag-tag bag of stragglers—some British Tommies (Lloyd Bridges and others), a Frenchman, a repentant Italian prisoner, a Sudanese corpora, a South African and a downed Nazi pilot. As a small German army is also trying to capture this objective, the tank and its camp followers are forced to defend themselves.