by Jordan Poss

Americans love their conspiracy theories, and nothing should prove that more clearly than the movies they watch. To cite just a few examples: National Treasure and its sequel, JFK, The Da Vinci Code, Enemy of the State, and the cleverly-titled Conspiracy Theory. Even NBC’s “Community” jumped in this year with a Men in Black-like episode in which food poisoning turns the entire cast into zombies—who are then cured and have their memories wiped.

Some of these films take their conspiracy theories more seriously than others. Some, like Men in Black and National Treasure, riff on paranoid coverup stories and pseudo-history in the interest of entertainment, a knowing wink-wink to people who laugh at the Weekly World News in the checkout line. Others look into the abyss of the all-powerful State with the thousand-yard stare, watching as Jason Bourne flees omnipresent assassins or Gene Hackman and Will Smith join forces to hide from Google Earth satellites. Many fall somewhere in between. Others—you just don’t know.

Which brings me to the trailer for schlockmeister Michael Bay’s newest opus, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

I wasn’t ready for it when it played before True Grit over the holidays. It performed a fantastic bait and switch, showing me the date July 20, 1969, stock footage of mission control, and computer generated images of lunar orbit. Then the music dropped into minor key, an anonymous pencilneck at NASA threw A Switch On A Machine, and I got a big wet smack in the face from nonsense. The trailer depicts the crew of Apollo 11—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin—landing on the moon, waiting for a prearranged radio blackout, and then bounding over a hill to view the gigantic remains of a Decepticon, buried like Ozymandias in the lunar dirt.

That’s what we can look forward to from the latest installment of Transformers—the first mission to the moon was, in fact, a secret mission to investigate alien technology while a break in radio traffic faked out the free world.

This is pretty typical tinfoil-hat fare. Secrets everywhere—secret missions, secret motives, secret knowledge hidden all over the place for secret reasons. But I guess we shouldn’t expect more from the man who gave us the final scene of The Rock.

Of course, there are people who believe the entire moon-landing phase of the Apollo program was a hoax, and it’s these people I really want to discuss. They have lots of reasons and “proofs”—all of them illogical or circumstantial and not proof of anything, respectively—but their assertion is almost always that all footage of the Apollo moon landings was faked. By the Government. By Hollywood. Or even Stanley Kubrick.

When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to be an astronaut and, as a result, I still know more about NASA and the space program than any man who wants a girlfriend should. I know, for instance, that Armstrong descended in the shadow of the LM (lunar module), not with the sun at his back. I know that there was a third member of the Apollo 11 crew—Michael Collins, who orbited the moon in the command module while Armstrong and Aldrin landed. I know that the radio blackouts during the Apollo missions occurred when the command module passed around the dark side of the moon and did not affect the LM, which was on the side of the moon facing the earth and therefore did not have a rock the size of Australia blocking transmissions. But most importantly, I’ve seen hours and hours of footage from all the Apollo missions and I know what moon landing footage should look like.

And that is not what the trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon looks like. The special effects are pretty obvious and everything has a nice ILM-ish sheen of fakery to it. Even Rammstein’s music video for “Amerika” looked better than this.

Conspiracy theorists nitpick photos and footage from the Apollo landings to find “proofs” of the hoax. The footage, they claim is fake. Faked by Hollywood. But let them watch the trailer for Bay’s new movie and see what Hollywood—with the power of Steven Spielberg, the absolute latest in special effects technology, and hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal—came up with.

Editor’s Note:  For some awesome—and genuine—footage of astronauts on the moon, check out the masterpiece documentary For All Mankind on hulu.  In The Shadow Of The Moon is also a masterpiece.

I like recommending films to people, especially now that people have so many films that they can Watch Instantly on Netflix. It makes it so much easier. So, with that said, I’m starting this little section that is devoted to film recommendations based off of what is currently available on Netflix Instant. These won’t archive very well as the Netflix films rotate in and out of Instant Watch, but I’ll still keep old posts up in case you decide to add the film to your regular queue.

I am not going to do big write-ups on the films I recommend, just maybe a sentence or two. Preceded by a link and brief synopsis from Netflix. I will list them by categories (and with icons), which you can find below. You can find a brief explanation of each category if you’re a little confused as to why I’m recommending certain films. I’ll probably only recommend a handful of the following categories with each post. I won’t be able to do every category like I am demonstrating here.

Lastly, I will be posting these randomly, I won’t be posting once a week or anything. I’ll try to get a couple up each month. I will number the posts too so that’s easy to keep up with how many there have been. If you watch any of the recommendations please leave a comment letting us know if you liked or disliked the film. Happy movie watching!

CLASSIC (Oldy, but goody. Most likely B&W, and undeniably good.)

RASHOMON Considered one of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces, this Oscar-winning crime drama unfolds as four witnesses to a rape and murder report their versions of the attack, leaving the viewer to decide what really happened.

Kurosawa, Mifune, and samurai swords. What more do you need?

DRAAAMA (Heavy-hitting Drama that will drain you emotionally, but a great film nonetheless.)

PARIS, TEXAS Director Wim Wenders is at his offbeat best in this “road movie” about weary drifter Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton). In a quest to rebuild his life and reconnect with his son, Travis — who’s been gone four years — tries to untangle his thorny past with his wife (Nastassja Kinski).

I adore this film. Beautiful cinematography and a wonderful performance from the incomparable Harry Dean Stanton. One of the best films I’ve ever seen on the subject of divorce, and lost love.

WHAT’S ON TV? (TV Shows worth investing in.)

BRICK CITY Mayor Cory Booker, Police Director Garry McCarthy and Central High School Principal Ras Baraka join the citizens of Newark to fight an uphill battle against crime, poverty and corruption in the New Jersey metropolis.

This is a 5 part mini-documentary-series that originally aired on The Sundance Channel. The access that the filmmakers have here is phenomenal. This show is so engaging, it’s some of the best TV programming I’ve seen in a loooong time. You can’t write stuff this good, unless of course you’re a writer for The Wire. Which by the way, if you are a fan of The Wire, this show is an absolute MUST.

JUST MISSED IT (New movies to Netflix Instant that were recently in theaters.)

MOON As he nears the end of a lonely three-year stint on the moon base Sarang, astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) begins to hear and see strange things.

Ok, so it was probably over a year ago that this was in theaters, but that’s ok because I think most people missed it. A great psychological thriller with some sci-fi elements and an amazing performance by the great Sam Rockwell. Worth watching for the Clint Mansell score alone.

WORD OF MOUTH (Smaller Indy films that you might not have heard of, but are definitely worth seeing.)

SHOTGUN STORIES Set in southeast Arkansas, this cautionary indie tale from director Jeff Nichols tracks a blood feud that erupts when two sets of half-brothers come to blows at their father’s funeral.

A powerful, but subtle, revenge film. Doesn’t focus on the violence of revenge but rather the consequences. I loved the fresh take on this genre. I also loved the fact that the feud is between two sets of brothers all with the same father, such great writing.

YOU COULD DO BETTER (You probably could have done a better job making this movie. So bad it’s good.)

CON AIR When the government puts all its rotten criminal eggs in one airborne basket, it’s asking for trouble. Before you can say, “Pass the barf bag,” the crooks control the plane, led by creepy Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich).

This first 5 minutes of this movie get me every time! So, so, soooo funny! Some of the worst acting you’ll ever see from some of the best actors working today, Cage especially.

FOR THE FAM (Bust out the popcorn, a movie the whole family can enjoy!)

3 NINJAS A neat twist on The Karate Kid finds three youngsters — Samuel, Jeffrey and Michael — aiding their grandfather (Victor Wong III) in his fight against an old “friend” named Snyder, who turns out to be a corrupt FBI officer.

“We should run, we should hide, we should kick their butts!” With the new Karate Kid coming out, this is a good warm up. If you’re afraid this is just a movie for the boys, and the girls in the family won’t enjoy it, boy are you ever wrong! There’s a girl in it… somewhere. Anyway, also make sure to take note of the basketball scene, not since White Men Can’t Jump have I seen such moves put on screen.

PAY TO SEE (May not be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but entertaining and worth the price of admission.)

SINGLES Generation X neighbors share their bittersweet, intertwined stories of the single life in director Cameron Crowe’s quirky relationship comedy set against the backdrop of Seattle’s grunge music scene in the 1990s.

For the ladies, this is basically the original Sex and the City. Definitely dated, and not that great, but fun to look back on. Grunge is actually back in style, so the ripped jeans and flannel shirts won’t look too unfamiliar. Full of Cameron Crowe’s (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire) sappy dialogue.

I LIKE AVATAR (If you like Avatar, and Jason Statham is your favorite actor, this is for you.  Light on story and heavy on blowing crap up!)

THE ROCK When a disgruntled ex-Marine (Ed Harris) seizes Alcatraz prison, taking hostages and threatening to blanket San Francisco with nerve gas, the feds send in a strike force led by a chemical-weapons expert (Nicolas Cage) and an ex-con (Sean Connery) who broke out of “the Rock” years earlier.

Pure action awesomeness.

REEL LIFE (Documentary recommendation.)

THE YES MEN This humorous documentary monitors the exploits of a group of jokester liberals who make names for themselves as they mimic members of the World Trade Organization at various venues across the globe.

Funny, entertaining, informative, and educational. The perfect ingredients for a great documentary. Watch it for 10 minutes and I bet you won’t be able to turn it off.

FILM BUFF (For the elite. The smug, film nerds that are willing to sit through a 3 1/2 hour B&W foreign film.)

FUNNY GAMES An affluent German family is settling into their lakeside vacation home when a young man named Peter (Frank Giering) comes to the door asking to borrow eggs. Anna (Susanne Lothar) is alone in the house while her husband (Ulrich Muhe) and son (Stefan Clapczynski) are off swimming.

This is the original one, I haven’t seen the remake yet. When I first saw this film it haunted me long after and I immediately wanted to track down everything by Michael Haneke. I was hooked from the moment that classical music turned to death metal in the opening title sequence. This film meets the insatiable appetite we Americans seem to have for violence in cinema. It pries our mouths open and forces it down our throats with a shovel.

OLD SCHOOL (Old enough to be on VHS, but not quite old enough to be a classic. Or good enough.)

THE PISTOL: THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND “Pistol” Pete Maravich (Adam Guier) pushes himself to the limit in this stirring biopic recounting the National Basketball Association all-star’s adolescence and first year on his high school’s varsity squad.

I used to watch this film religiously as a kid. It’s the story of Pete Maravich and how he learned the game of basketball. If you’re not into basketball then you could still watch the film and make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot every time there is a montage and you’ll probably blackout in the first 45 minutes.

Which brings me to our last category…

HAVE A DRINK (These ones will probably be best after you’ve had a few drinks)

THE OCTAGON A group of terrorist ninjas have been wreaking havoc on the life of a wealthy woman named Justine (Karen Carlson), so she hires former karate champion Scott James (Chuck Norris) to be her bodyguard.

Ok, I know the whole Chuck Norris thing is way played out, but this film is golden. This is the type of film that made Chuck Norris what he is today. You have to watch at least 15 minutes of it just to hear the hilarious, whispering voice-over that Norris does throughout the film.

be sure to check back on our Instant Pix section for more recommendations