THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (2001)
Sky Movies 1, 8pm
Woody Allen has enjoyed an uneven career in recent years, and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is certainly one of his lesser works. A homage to 1940s film noir set in New York, it stars Allen and Helen Hunt as insurance investigators who are hypnotised by a sinister magician (David Ogden Stiers) into committing a string of jewel robberies. Dan Aykroyd and Charlize Theron co-star in Allen’s slight but amiable pastiche of golden-age Hollywood styles. (103 min)
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LAST RESORT (2000)
BBC Two, 11.20pm
Directed by the young Russian film-maker Paul Pavlikovsky, this touching and beautiful BBC film is a masterpiece in miniature. An incurably romantic Russian girl (Dina Korzun) arrives in England with her young son (Artyom Strelnikov). Abandoned by her fiancé, she applies for refugee status and is sent to a holding area on the coast. The result is what England looks like through the eyes of a foreigner, though that doesn’t mean the film is a catalogue of grey misery. Superbly acted, it is both about dreams of escape and a compelling love story. (73 min)
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EVITA (1996)
BBC One, 12.20am
After a sustained charm offensive aimed at Alan Parker, Madonna was cast as Eva Perón, beating off stiff competition from Meryl Streep. The singer is well cast as the ambitious actress who married the fascist dictator Juan Perón, becoming the unlikely darling of Argentina’s poor before dying at the age of 33. Co-starring Antonio Banderas, Jimmy Nail and Jonathan Pryce, Parker’s lush, Oscar-winning adaptation of the vintage Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was initially intended for Oliver Stone. But he abandoned his version after disagreements with President Menem of Argentina. (134 min)