Theatre DEAD GUILTY Apollo Theatre, London

Suture (no cert) McGehee / Segal (US) Only You (PG) Norman Jewison (US) Silent Tongue (12) Sam Shepard (US)

Once upon a time, gay video meant just two things: a butch, leather-clad Al Pacino in Cruising, or a limp-wristed John Hurt lusting after Ryan O'Neal in Partners. Way back then (the early 1980s, that is), the potential of the pink pound had yet to be realised, so in theory, the market didn't exist.

Geronimo (12), Director: Walter Hill (US); To Live (12), Director: Zhang Yimou (China); The War of the Buttons (PG), Director: John Roberts (UK); Monkey Trouble (U), Director: Franco Amurri (US); Sparrow (12), Director: Franco Zeffirelli (Italy); Threesome (18), Director: Andrew Fleming (US)

Time seems to have overlooked this remote region on the edge of the Sahara. Camels and goats are tended by barefooted herders. Women bake unleavened bread in the age-old fashion. Remarkab1y little here, in fact, has changed for thousands of years. It's somewhat surprising to learn, therefore, that the nearby monasteries have united in devout supplication - rain for the parched land? A year of good crops?

THERE is always belly-aching about the inequity of film awards and this year's Oscars are graced by a spat over Scent of a Woman, a comedy-drama in which Al Pacino's blind military veteran takes a schoolboy on a binge to New York.

GORE VIDAL, writer: 'I have seen a lot of films on video this year but I really can't say that anything marvellous springs to mind, although I did like The Player - anybody who's had anything to do with Hollywood knows how extraordinary and funny and precise it was. My contribution might be a more general observation: that a movie on video cassette always looks better than it is, but is somehow less interesting; whereas in the cinema films often look worse than they are, but are more interesting. You figure it out.'

A MAN beside a grave, silhouetted by sunset: such is the image that opens and closes Unforgiven. It looks too corny by half, but then westerns have always taught us that really high-grade corn can ripen into poignancy. We know the liturgy so well - the lonesomeness, the matching crags of paleface and rockface, the coat peeled back like a curtain to show the holstered gun; it should go stale, but the promise of adventure feels more reliable every time. Come home to real gunfire.

When Clint Eastwood is preparing a western, he wears the gear around for a while. He pretty much lives in the shirt and pants. He spends time in the hat. This sounds like a standard American film-star approach, until you realise that Eastwood is at the opposite extreme to say, Robert De Niro in his preparation. It's not that he needs to practise how it feels to wear a cowboy hat, if he's to get properly inside his part. It's a method acting lesson all right, but it's for the benefit of the wardrobe not the actor. The shirts and pants have to feel right about what they're doing. The hat needs to get used to being worn by Clint Eastwood.