The Out-in-Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival may be short of cash, but it’s still the hottest ticket in town, writes Shaun de Waal.

The news that Cameron Crowe’s film <i>Almost Famous</i> has won a best-movie Golden Globe does not surprise. One is puzzled, though, that it won in the comedy/musical category, when it is a fine dramatic piece that is also very funny and just happens to contain musical sequences.

Still playing in the minor key of last year’s <i>Sweet and Lowdown</i>, Woody Allen has neatly tossed together the good-hearted comedy that is <i>Small Time Crooks</i>. He plays a rather dim-witted criminal whose cunning masterplans are surpassed by his wife’s skill at making cookies – and life takes a whole new turn into nouveaux riches.

With <b>Dancer in the Dark</b> it is as though Lars von Trier set himself the challenge of making a musical from the most unpromising materials possible. Here we have the tragic or melodramatic story of Selma Jezkova (Björk), a Czech immigrant, a single mother with a young son, working in a factory somewhere in middle America.

Ang Lee’s career as a director displays a remarkable variety – from the investigation of Taiwanese family matters in <i>Eat Drink Man Woman</i> to the sweeping American Civil War drama <i>Ride with the Devil</i>; from the delicate social mores of Jane Austen’s <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> to the martial arts fantasy of his new film, <b>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</b>.

This time last year we got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s apocalyptic action picture <i>End of Days</i>, in which he had to battle the devil himself to save the world from … well, from the devil himself. This Christmas his big-budget offering is <b>The Sixth Day</b>, in which he has to battle evil would-be world-dominators who have mastered the science of cloning people.

No chicken escapes from Tweedy’s farm," says an ominous voice as we look over the confines of that farm. It looks very much like a prisoner-of-war camp. In fact, <b>Chicken Run</b>, the delightful new animated feature from the makers of TV hit <i>Wallace and Gromit</i>, has a lot in common with those old prisoner-of-war films in which our courageous heroes keep trying to escape.

With school holidays and the festive season looming, the kids will need to be entertained. Two films released this week promise such entertainment, though anyone over 14 may find them a little trying.