Operation Avalanche

There’s a headlong temerity to Mr. Johnson’s style that places the dippy thrill of moviemaking front and center, revealing a director (and a character) so high on his power to misrepresent reality that a future in politics seems all but assured.

It's impressive to see how Johnson manages tone in the film, as things go from sort of giddy and fun at the start to increasingly paranoid and then eventually taking a turn into a sort of brutal sadness.

The ending doesn’t quite land the gut punch it’s hoping for, but this is more about fun than about exposing deep, nefarious truths. At least, I think it is.

The film pulls off the action climax of this spy-vs-spy narrative quite well given its obviously limited means. But Avalanche will attract more attention for its sneaky ethic...and for its efforts at recreating a period-appropriate look.

The movie’s premise has trouble sustaining a feature-length running time, getting mired in repetitive jokes and a third-act swing into harder-core suspense that never really connects.

You know you're in trouble with a film when you're so bored by it that you wind up asking why things seem so implausible.

If the humor doesn’t always hit, the film’s darker conspiratorial turns never feel genuinely suspenseful, either. Even when Johnson ups the emotional and physical stakes for his character, the bogusness of the production interferes.

"Operation Avalanche" (2016, (soft) R, 90-mins) This is a low-budget mockumentary about why and how the US moon landing July 1969 was allegedly faked. Matt Johnson writes, stars, and directs this effort presumably with other friends/colleagues who play themselves in this drama set in 1967 even though the "landing" occurs in '69, weird since this doesn't play out over two years. Anyway, I could've sworn that David Blue ("Stargate: Universe") was in the role of Matt, but they only look alike apparently, kinda like how co-star Owen Williams looks really similar to Jim Parsons ("The Big Bang Theory"). Also how this movie was rated R is beyond me, I didn't see anything rating higher than PG. I'm going to go SPOILER at this point since most of you won't bother to watch this given the radical premise and I want to remember my experience of it. Matt and Owen are newly minted CIA operatives posted at NASA as documentarians to uncover a mole. Instead, they find out that NASA is at least five years from being able to land on the moon! So ambitious videographer Matt, pitches the CIA director (yeh right) that they can film an ersatz landing experience which gets the title name. Much drama and intrigue ensues but he's successful though alot of people around him are off'ed by the CIA. It's one of those movies to watch when you're sitting around going through your mail, paying bills, playing string with your cats, etc.