Space Invaders, Part II: Fake News

OPERATION AVALANCHE (A) - Matt Johnson and Josh Boles -- the renegade young filmmakers behind the quietly clever "The Dirties" a couple of years ago -- perfect the "found footage" genre with a meticulous re-creation of the Apollo era in a story of CIA agents infiltrating NASA and making a film that fakes the moon landing.

Johnson co-writes, directs and stars as Matt Johnson, along with Owen Williams as Owen Williams, a pair of CIA employees who come to learn in 1967 that the Apollo space program is behind schedule and can't land a man on the moon before 1970, as envisioned by President Kennedy. So Matt and Owen come up with an elaborate scheme to create film footage that will make it look like we did.

They seize an opportunity to infiltrate NASA -- there is a mole inside NASA, and Matt and Owen pose as NEA filmmakers making a documentary about the space program. Once inside, they begin crafting the iconic sounds and images that the world will celebrate as a milestone in human history. The spitballing that leads Owen to come up with the phrase "One small step ..." is particularly entertaining.

But the pair become targets themselves, presumably by the mole who is suspected of working with the Russians. The film is categorized as a thriller, and it really does ratchet the tension while creating a Russian-nesting-doll narrative and building to a heart-racing conclusion, drenched in paranoia and intrigue.

Johnson and Boles miss nothing in immersing their characters and the viewers into the late 1960s analog world of white men in crew cuts and short-sleeved dress shirts. They have a blast romping around in space suits and sneaking onto the set of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" to steal the secrets of front projection. They order truck-loads of sand for their studio-created lunar surface. They come up with a way to replicate the feather-and-hammer-drop that eventually became a demonstration of weightlessness for Apollo 15.

Johnson, like he did in "The Dirties," totally immerses himself in the character and the world that he and Boles created. He has an infectious energy as a performer and an early Tarantino-like devotion to the movie-making process. He has a sure hand behind the camera. Like Wes Anderson, he and Boles create an alternative world and revel in it.

There's nothing particularly profound about this film, and it comes off almost as a modest lark. But when I sat down to list the movie's flaws, I couldn't think of any. This is inspired filmmaking by an inspired crew that delights in the art of storytelling. And they do it so well.

BONUS TRACKS
A scratchy old 45 plays at one point, Lord Luther's "Just One More Chance":



The boys bookend the film with Fogerty and CCR: