Mark Moffatt Movies

The two-part Australian miniseries Fields of Fire III was the third and final annual installment in the Australian TV saga inspired by Robert Marchand's novel Cane. Returning to the fold were Todd Boyce as British expatriate Bluey and Melissa Docker as Aussie lass Dusty, whose romance and marriage had dominated the proceedings in Fields of Fire (set in the late '30s-early '40s) and Fields of Fire II (set in the immediate post-WWII era). Now it was 1951, and the emphasis was on Italian refugee Gina (Peta Toppano), newly widowed after the death of her black-marketeer husband. Returning to her roots, Gina set up a cane field with her brother Paolo, experiencing the usual trials and tribulation of small-business entrepreneurs in the uncertain years following the War. Fields of Fire III was broadcast by Australia's Nine Network on July 16 and 17, 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though she has made quite a name for herself with theatrical films like My Brilliant Career, Australian director Gillian Anderson got her start making a documentary about three girls growing up in Adelaide. The first one followed them when they were fourteen, and it's titled Smokes and Lollies. The second one catches up with them at age eighteen, and it's titled 14's Good, 18's Better. After an interval of eight years, she has caught up with the three again in this documentary, and now they are young women, aged twenty-six. One girl has remained married to the fellow she married earlier but is showing signs of maturity and independence which were not evident in the two previous documentaries. The second has been married twice, but is now divorced, and is caring for her born-out-of-wedlock eleven-year old daughter quite nicely. The third never married but is engaged. Her wedding provides the culminating drama of this documentary. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The ugly American bullying his way through a foreign country was a subject for comedy in several films of the 1980s, most notably Bill Forsyth's Local Hero and this film from exiled Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev. Eric Roberts plays Becker, an aggressive marketing executive for the Coca-Cola Company; he has been assigned to figure out why sales in hot and dry Australia aren't higher. Becker comes up against a low-key but formidable adversary, T. George McDowell (Bill Kerr), whose homegrown soda has cornered the market in his little corner of the country. Complicating matters is Terri, a local woman (Greta Scacchi) Becker hires as his secretary; she's McDowell's daughter and a single mom who's romantically attracted to the brash American. Becker wants to make a deal on his (and his employer's) terms, but he finds himself falling prey to the charms of life Down Under and the ministrations of Terri. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi