Disc Reviews

When I first looked over the DVD art for Finding Faith the first thing that had me scratching my head was, how does someone do a family-friendly film about kidnapping and sex trafficking?  This is supposed to be inspired by true events and is a film dealing with individuals and their faith in God during their time in need.  The cherry which actually convinced me to give this film a chance is that it stars Erik Estrada (Mr. Poncherello himself from the TV series CHiPs).  As a childhood fan of Estrada, this film was pretty much impossible to resist.

The film opens with a narration from Sheriff Brown (Estrada) as he discusses all the bad things he’s encountered throughout his career but leads us into our story that is about finding good in a bad situation. At a ranch somewhere hidden away in the mountains a suspicious-looking man approaches; tending to a horse inside is a young female that the man seems to be looking for.  Is he an innocent visitor or is something more sinister at play?  This is quickly answered when the female pulls again, and members of law enforcement close in to make the arrest.  For anyone who has seen To Catch a Predator, this is a familiar sight.

It can never be said that there is not a certain allure to living dangerously; whether it be skydiving (something I will be becoming very familiar with in the near future), bungee jumping, skiing, snowboarding, or deep sea scuba diving, it is well known and accepted that each one of these activities carries an inherent risk to them, but as I said, there is a certain allure to living dangerously. Shane McConkey was the embodiment of that belief. Now before this documentary, McConkey, I had never heard the name; however; suffice to say I believe I now have a good idea who this fearless individual is, or should I say who he was.

He was a man who was absolutely in love with the thrill of skiing and thrill-seeking; he made no excuses for the way he chose to live his life, and he did things on his terms all the way up until the tragic skiing accident that ended his life in 2009.

We can never hope to know all the secrets the government keeps, which includes experiments conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency or even more secretive and possibly unknown agencies. It would be impossible to investigate all the theories and conspiracies, because that could fill a library full of meandering speculation and endless conjecture. Even more speculative is a large number of drugs that have been deemed illegal and suppressed from rigorous and open medical examination. One of these drugs is DMT, which is the most widely available hallucinogen in nature and exists in the human body naturally and probably is produced by the pineal gland in the brain. It is becoming increasingly popular through religious Brazilian ceremonial Auyusca tea, which has been upheld under the Freedom of Religion Act and the Supreme Court.

 Banshee Chapter is a straight-out horror film that uses an original approach of investigating some of these ideas. The film is what is considered a micro-budget film, yet took the novel approach of filming in 3-D. They knew they were probably breaking rules, because 3-D is hard enough with a big budget, let alone a film that uses mostly natural light sources and handheld cinematography. It mostly works pretty well. It uses a lot of classic conventional scares to make up for its lack of big-budget effects.

Aw, another tale of biochemical-induced zombies on the verge of causing an apocalypse; it’s good to see that the film industry’s recycle mill is still in working order. This time around the focus is seventy years after the battle of Stalingrad. (Well, at least the focus isn’t on Nazis this time; I guess we can consider that a small victory.) An outbreak of a nerve gas contagion has resulted in the creation of mutated men best characterized as zombies. By now you can probably assess that going into this film, my expectation for the success of the film were not that high, and now that the credits have rolled, I can say nothing has changed.

During World War II, Stalin, much like Hitler, was obsessed with the idea of creating a superior soldier. He believed that the way to achieve this goal was through the process of biochemistry. He authorized experiments to create a nerve gas. This gas had unexpected side effects; the soldiers exposed to the gas became mutated, their minds distorted; they became volatile unstoppable killing machines that went after anything and everyone. During the battle of Stalingrad, the nerve gas went missing and was believed destroyed.