2012 Film Olympics: The grassy knoll did it

Posted Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 4:47 PM Central
Last updated Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at 4:22 PM Central

by John Couture

If there's one thing that Americans enjoy more than dominating most other countries on the field of battle in sports, it's conspiracy theories. You name it, there's a bunch of whack jobs, er passionate people who will spout off their, uh, interesting theories.

JFK? Grassy Knoll.

Moon Landing? Fake.

Barack Obama? Kenyan. Muslim. Both.

So, when the U.S. soccer team won its semifinal match against Canada under dubious means some immediately proclaimed that it was a conspiracy. I don't know about a conspiracy, but it was definitely some shoddy refereeing.

Personally, I don't like to get pulled into the debate, but I do love a good conspiracy theory. I guess you could call me a fan of conspiracy theories and by extension conspiracy theory movies.

This proved harder that I originally thought, but here are the medal winners for best conspiracy movies.

BRONZE

Both the TV series and the movie that it spawned, The X Files: Fight the Future, were chock full of conspiracies. Agent Mulder was the King of all Conspiracy nuts and the fact that over the course of the series he was able to sway the scientific Agent Scully over to the Dark Side speaks volumes for his persuasive abilities.

SILVER

When you have a movie that is called Conspiracy Theory, there's a pretty good chance that it's going to end up on the medal stand. In this film, Mel Gibson plays cabbie obsessed with conspiracies in everything.

If only he could have channeled his character in real life, then perhaps Mel's personal life and career wouldn't have spiraled out of control. Then again, that may tipped the scales completely against him.

GOLD

The absolute king of all conspiracy movies has to be JFK from Oliver Stone. The absolute brilliance of creating such a loving film to the supposition that there may have been a conspiracy behind the most notorious assassination on record is beyond amazing.

It also helps that the cast was top-notch. If there was no JFK, I firmly believe that people would have accepted the Lee Harvey Oswald story by now. Now, that's a good conspiracy theory right there.

Warner Bros. is definitely in the business of creating conspiracy movies. With its double medal winning day, they vault to the top of the medal standings.

Make sure you come back tomorrow when we get a little patriotic on you.