Based on true events, Adam Macdonald's Backcountry tells the story of Alex and Jenn, a young, urban couple who decides to go camping in the Canadian wilderness where Alex grew up.  Being the seasoned outdoorsman, Alex spent a lot of time convincing his girlfriend Jenn, a corporate lawyer, to go on the trip, with Jenn being far from someone who is comfortable in the wilderness.  Heading out into Provincial Park, on the secluded Blackfoot Trail, Jenn's worst fears slowly become a reality, as Alex and Jenn find themselves lost in the wilderness, being stalked by a territorial black bear.  Adam Macdonald's Backcountry is a serviceable survival horror film that manages to keep the viewers engaged thanks to its relatively strong characterizations, specifically in a genre in which they are severely lacking.  At its heart, Backcountry feels more like a relationship drama than horror film, with much of the film's running time centered around Alex and Jenn's strained relationship.  Shot in a way that exudes a sense of unseen danger, Backcountry is a film that slowly escalates, slowly ramping up the tension until the absolutely terrifying bear attack that happens well over an hour into the film's running time.  While this approach may test the patience of some viewers, Backcountry delivers in spades once the bear attack and subsequent chaos ensues, with the time the film spent fleshing out its characters only making the film more engaging.  The last twenty minutes of Backcountry are electric, horrific, and riveting, tapping into a primal state of fear and survival necessary for films of this ilk to be successful.  While Adam Macdonald's Backcountry is far from anything revolutionary, the film is a nice reminder of how simplicity is sometimes the best approach in crafting a survival horror film.

From the opening frame of the Zellner Brothers' Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter it's apparent that Kumiko, the main protagonist, is a complete and utter loner.  Kumiko doesn't really talk with her coworkers, being very anti-social and the film early on establishes that even her own mother seems frustrated with her.  Kumiko's major aspirations center around a popular Cohen's brother film, Fargo, with Kumiko believing the film's suitcase of stolen cash is indeed still buried in the frozen landscape of North Dakota.  Leaving Tokyo, Kumiko flies to Minneapolis, intent on travleing to Fargo, North Dakota and tracking down the stolen money for herself.  The Zellner Brothers' Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is quietly devastating film about a young woman that clearly needs some type of help.  The Zellner Brothers keep it compeltely ambigious to what exaclty is wrong with Kumiko to make her so detached, but the film does subltlely show a woman that is incredibly lonely and deeply confused about the difference between reality and fantasy.  Kumiko is a charater that is consistently pushed to do things she doesn't want to, unwilling to conform to the social expectations of societal and maternal forces.  Kumiko maintains the Zellner's dry sense of humor, with their strong abiility to capture the comedy and absurdity of everyday life.  The culture clash is another major aspect of Kumiko, with the Zellner brothers juxtaposing Japan and Minnesota/North Dakota, showing how both Kumiko and the folks of North Dakota simply do not understand each other on a cultural level in the slightest.  Unique, funny, and bizzare, the Zellner Brothers' Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is a quietly tragic film that ofers a unique vision of a woman who will stop at nothing to achieve her goal. 

Miller, a news reporter, has just been sent to the airport to interview one of the nation's top nuclear scientists.  On his arrival, a mysterious plane arrives at the airport, seeking emergency landing clearance.  After the intial panic, the plane lands safely, but that is only the beginning of a much larger nightmare, as the plane was full of murderous, toxic, blood-sucking zombies who need human blood to stay alive.  Highly contageous, these monstrous creatures send the military into a panic, as they fight a losing war of attrition against the ever-increasing zombie threat.  Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City is a highly stylized, gleefully ultraviolent, zombie apocalypse movie that deserves recognition if for nothing else than the constant chaotic atmoshpere it brings to the table.  From the opening frame of Nightmare City the film doesn't let up, throwing the viewer into this chaotic world of zombies who have grown nearly indestructable due to their atomic orgins.  Moving at a brisk pace, Nightmare CIty isn't concerned too much in thinking, completely satified in playing in the macabre.  Nightmare City is a big, dumb b-movie that shows no reluctance in embracing its absurdity, but what the film does have to say about technology and science is surprisingly poignant, if not earth-shattering.  With the zombies in the film being indirectly created by being explosed to nuclear radioactivity, Nightmare City delivers a heavy-handed commentary on the inevitable tragedy that is bound to occur when man attempts to play god, focusing on mankinds ability to craft such a destructive force as a nuclear weapon.  The film doesn't spend too much time dissecting this ideal, but it's present, almost mentioned half-hashardly, a moment of thought in-between the mindless violence and chaos of the rest of the film.  Featuring some of the best blood-splattering headshots in cinematic history, Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare CIty is film that fits right at home in the Italian horror films of the 70s and 80s, being a cheezy, low-thought, fun excursion into the zombie genre

It feels almost like a disservice to classify Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie'as merely, a horror film.  From it's tragic story to the mysterious tone pumping through every frame of I Walked With A Zombie, this film completely transcends the horror genre, almost as if it's creating its own brand of gothic atmosphere.  While I Walked With A Zombie certainly has its fair share of horror elements, this is not a particularly scary film in the traditional sense.   What makes this film so compelling is its creepy tone, with Tourneur injecting the film with great gothic atmosphere that makes the whole film wallow in an overwhelming sense of dread.   This is to be expected from a Val Lewton / Jacques Tourneur collaboration, with the film delivering beautiful black and white cinematography from start to finish, eliciting a sense of danger and uncertainty.  I Walked With A Zombie also presents a very complex picture of human relationships, exploring how perception, not fact, can influence a person's decision making.   At its heart, I Walked With A Zombie is a tragedy of how personal brooding and contorted emotion can destroy the the individual. and I really enjoyed the complexity of the narrative, frequently giving the viewer multiple explanations for events portrayed in the film, with no definitive answers.

This is probably the best film of the "Woman in Prison' genre that I have seen, outside of something more exploitative. It involves the typical tropes of the genre, the hard-tough prisoner (Annie), the fragile-gentile woman (Millie), and our main protagonist, Linda. The film is centered around Linda, a former nurse, who is serving a three-year sentence for Larceny, a crime she committed in order to not go hungry.  She is a character forced into a tough situation due to losing her job and what elevates Condemned Woman over many similar films of the genre is the transformation which takes place in Linda's character. Early on in the film Linda is very much a pessimist, who sees no future for herself.  She has been beaten down by life, but as the film progresses, Linda begins to change, because of the love she shares with the jail's psychiatrist, but also because of what happens around her in terms of the other characters. There is an absolutely beautiful, heartbreaking scene in the late stages of the film, involving Millie, which in a sad but poignant way, is the turning point to Linda's new-found transfromation, giving Linda a reason to live and be happy.  A relatively well photographed film that features a fantastic montage sequence centered around the typhoid epidemic,  Lew Landers' Condemned Women offers a solid redemption story about rebirth 

Loosely based off of Alan Ayckbourn's play, Alain Resnais' final film, Life of Riley, is meditation on love and affection, following three couples living in the English countryside.  Using illustrated setting-based cue-cards and beautifully designed production design, Life is Riley creates an aesthetic that attempts to bring the theater-setting to celluloid, with Resnais' creating a meta examination of these characters where the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur.  The story centers around amateur dramatics Colin and Kathryn, who receive news that their friend George, a playwright, is fatally ill and only expected to live a few months.  Of course, the couple can't keep George's secret, sharing this tragedy with other friends of George, setting off a whirlwind of emotion.  Many of the characters in this film are admist rehearsals of a stage play, and Resnais beautifully uses their fictional personas to touch on these characters deep-rooted desires, offering a unique, playful, and poignant study of affection that shows how tempered such emotions of love can be in such circumstance.  While these character's go over their lines, Renais explores these character's true-selves in a very meta way, exposing their deceits and mixed emotions that make it hard to decipher their character from their true self.  This aspect of the film is interesting on multiple levels, almost as if Resnais is commenting on the blurred consciousness that exists between actors and the character's they portray.  With George's illness, many of these characters are forced to face their own mortality, which begins to create conflict among these three couples, as they are forced to reflect on their current relationship and overall vision of what love should be.  Uniquely structured and told,  Alain Resnais' Life of Riley is a playful and exuberant study of human emotion, capturing the self-reflection and jubilant absurdity that often comes when facing one's own mortality.