While the multiplex is focused more and more on the $100 million-plus spectacle like "Avatar," the independent film is increasingly being lost in the chaos of national marketing campaigns.

Yet one possible solution to the art house woes has come in an unlikely place, the cable box.

If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, you have access to movies-on-demand channels that are filled with various video-on-demand menus. All these various VOD providers typically will sell you a 24- or 48-hour movie rental for just a couple bucks. All it takes is a click of your remote, watch the movie and then pay for the film on your next bill.

It's as easy as pie.

During Sundance, there were three 2010 festival premieres that were available via VOD for just a couple dollars. This means that while some people flew thousands of miles, spent thousands of dollars and waited in the freezing cold to see the hot new movie, you can spend around $4 and have it presented to you in the comfort of your home. These are big tests for the validity of the VOD option.

Director Chris Smith may have the biggest success story so far. He was the man behind the Milwaukee-based documentary, "American Movie," and his latest movie is called "Collapse."

You can find it on your movies-on-demand channels through March, and it represents perfectly the ways that a fringe documentary can elicit a mainstream audience without ever screening in a theater.

It's also one of the most unusual, unnerving documentaries I've ever seen. I bought the film myself when I saw that Roger Ebert had given it a perfect grade. After I read more about the movie in other national media outlets, I thought I'd give it a try.

At its center is Michael Ruppert, a 55-year-old one-time Los Angeles cop, whom the CIA tried to recruit to import drugs in the 1970s.

He made this public, was fired from the police force and shot at. In the 30 years since, Ruppert has been an investigative reporter, lecturer and conspiracy theorist.

In the riveting, compulsive, perhaps indispensable film, Smith spends 82 minutes interviewing Ruppert Errol-Morris-style with non-stop intensity, seamlessly and effectively using archival footage to illustrate the points and increase the energy level. It's shot in a darkened basement under a bright spot in immaculate shirtsleeves. He chain smokes with baggy eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache.

Ruppert's theory about the collapse revolves around the fact that modern human civilization is utterly reliant on oil. Take oil out of the equation and chaos ensues. Then collapse.

Ruppert hits us right away with peak oil, arguing that though actual supplies have been kept hidden by governments, even Saudi Arabia, which has more than any country, is starting to run out, and we're clearly now on the down slope of the bell curve.

He says no substitute will be effective, because all the alternative energy sources require too much energy themselves to produce. The planet's infrastructure is going to shut down; it's just a matter of time.

Parallel to this is economic collapse, and he predicted the present crisis - but expected it a year or so earlier.

It's just one man talking, but his arguments seem sound and his theories about the next great evolution of human civilization is compelling. You can watch and judge for yourself - any time you want, right on your own TV.