Michael Higgs

Lover's Prayer -- A younger boy falls in love with a tragic girl who flirts with, and manipulates, her older suitors in 1800's Russia.

First filmed as a theatrical feature in 1982, Agatha Christie's 1940 mystery novel Evil Under the Sun was remade as a two-hour episode of the off-and-on British TV series Poirot. David Suchet is back as the infuriatingly brilliant and fussy Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who after suffering a fainting spell at a posh restaurant is whisked off to a fancy health resort along the Devon Coast. As he recuperates, Poirot is able to relax, secure in the belief that he can give his sleuthing a bit of a well-deserved result. Alas, this is not to be. Another guest at the resort, a world-famous actress, is murdered -- and virtually everyone else in the vicinity had both motive and opportunity to do the dirty deed. First telecast in the U.K. in 2001. Evil Under the Sun made its America bow on July 13, 2003, courtesy of the A&E cable network.

In this film based on an Ivan Turgenev story ("First Love"), the college-bound Vladimir (Nick Stahl) is spending the last summer before he goes away to school outside Moscow, in the country. He soon becomes smitten with the neighbors' beautiful teen-age daughter, Zinaida (Kirsten Dunst). It's not long, though, before Vladimir realizes that he's just one member of a long line of suitors vying for Zinaida's heart -- including his own father.

A younger boy falls in love with a tragic girl who flirts with, and manipulates, her older suitors in 1800's Russia.