The second film from the comedy group Broken Lizard, "Club Dread" looks, is, and delivers stupid on an impressive scale. That's not to say that stupid is always a bad thing. This film promises stupid, from its obvious premise to its still stupid follow-through, but still entertains despite it not being anywhere as good as its predecessor "Super Troopers" or successor "Beer Fest." The film takes place on a party island, inhabited by throes of drunken, sexually uninhibited, and plied college kids who are looking to blow off some steam. The island is run by musician and Jimmy Buffet-esque performer Coconut Pete, played by a very entertaining Bill Paxton, who provides the bulk of the fun to this film. The film stars the entire troupe of Broken Lizard as the island's staff, who are in charge of such innocuous things as aerobics, running a Pac-man hedge maze, and DJ-ing the drug fueled club dances. Their personas are often obnoxious, addicted, and juvenile, only there to party and have sex with all the people they can. In comes the mysterious killer from the jungle, who slices open the staff with a machete while wearing a mask. A campfire encourages a backstory of a staffer who was tricked into having sex with a corpse and then went insane, killing six other staffers, cutting off his genitalia, and hobbling off into the jungle. The film doesn't work particularly well as a comedy, though it does feature gratuitous nudity, funny accents, and infantile humor. What makes this film still enjoyable after that is that the film actually works really well as a horror film. The best horror films have gruesome and imaginative kills, and with the amount of bloodshed, the variety of deaths, and the murderer having an agenda and all the power in this situation, it becomes a rather riveting film. Even the killer is immensely creepy when revealed, and has a hilarious reason for starting his rampage, which is a joke that I still find seriously funny, even now. Though this might not be the film you're expecting out of a comedy group, the horror in this film is horrifying, which remains its saving grace.

There are so many things wrong with this overblown, idiotic pile of feces that it's actually overwhelming me to put my thoughts in order to review it. Well, first of all, these giant wastes of ensemble comedy have been prevalent lately and they must end. The characters always end up ill defined, baseless, crude, and unfunny. That turns out to be a true statement of the cast assembled for this schlock, and what's so sad about it is that some of the biggest and most beloved names are attached to this film. I can critique every one of their performances negatively: De Niro is a pervert and a misogynist plain and simple, Keaton is playing yet another drippy old mom, Heigl is yet another disenchanted neurotic, and Williams plays another funny priest, because he just did so well in his previous role, right?! The premise is that a divorced couple pretend to be together to please their son's biological mother during his wedding, which in itself is simply too stupid to bear, and even if it was a smart start for a film, it is not utilized as a plot device as well as it could have been. Now, I definitely love mind numbing romantic comedic films, but this film is so far off from what is appropriate for a film to be. The humor is all adult, granting this film an R-rating, but none of said humor is anywhere near funny or smart. De Niro is in a role where he cheats, lies, and makes horrific comments and jokes that are women hating, nausea inducing, and pathetic. Every joke in this film revolves around sex, and really, aren't jokes. It's more shock humor than anything, but there's nothing shocking about a horrible older man who uses women and then makes fun of them for sport. Everyone in this film should truly hate one another, but they keep finding each other's antics to be eccentric or quaint, which is simply scary, not endearing. Only the siblings, who make fun of each other, have any scenes where familiar ties are displayed, but they slip right back into acidic behaviors. That and there's a large block of background information that gets schlepped onto us in the last several scenes of the film, and with prejudice, for no apparent reason other than to add more shock, and what do you know, it doesn't. Seriously, even for a film that at its core only wants to briefly entertain can't even do that right.

Another film about football, this sports drama has been lauded by critics for its grotesque portrayal of on-field action, its raw emotion, and fighting spirit. It went on to inspire a television show that was a critical darling until its end in 2011, and remains one of the few sports movies that many relate to and love. The film follows the Odessa-Permian panthers in their 1988 season, a real team that was characterized by a book of the same name in which this film was based. It follows the team as their star coach has to grapple after the injury of one of their best players, and the ensuing losing streak. The film becomes an underdog tale as the team struggles to gain a foothold among the other teams competing for the title of state champion. Like other sports movies the action is rather built up, there is the tension of the town's Southern poverty thanks to an oil shortage in that year, and the characters having to traverse the regular hardships of their teenage existence. The town itself has a perverse stake in the football season and this generation's prowess, their interest ever present but most so in the beginning of the film, and though addressed throughout with an ex-champion father to one of the players, now a loud alcoholic played by Tim McGraw, there isn't really any change in that attitude. Instead that small town arrogance permeates the rest of the film and this football team's prominence is covered by the town's radio, television, and public opinion, which is simply sickening. The film also does not represent its characters very well, only briefly looking at their personal lives and more often than others cutting to the football field where they are harassed and abused by their assistant coaches and family members. The characters are badly defined, most often badly acted, and forgettable. "Boogie" is the only empathetic or interesting character, and he barely has anything to do with their season. In the end the attitude of sports being most important prevails, and none of the characters show any growth, only expressing their sadness at never playing again. Besides being an underdog story there isn't much tension, and with all the buildup that's vitally important, which is why this film leaves you deflated.

This documentary deals with the vast and crumbling educational system of the United States, and the roadblocks that keep children from gaining a thorough and full education. Director Davis Guggenheim first started his research ten years prior while covering a public school classroom and from there gained insight into the problematic system now in place to educate the nation's children. Guggenheim looks at the various causes of the gap between us, as an industrialized first world power, and the rest of the world in terms of education. There doesn't seem too much of a problem when it comes to federal funding, because the education budget has increased drastically in the last several years, and so Guggenheim more times than others points to the ineffectualness of the school system itself. Most problematic seems to be the teachers unions in place at this time. Though they do protect all teachers from discrimination, pay decreases, and unwarranted attacks via the US government, it also tenures ineffective and sometimes negligent teachers into positions that they should not be holding. They are guaranteed their job, and if they are found to be wanting, are not dismissed but given credence to be moved through the system as easily as some of these kids. Guggenheim also looks at the problems that have more to do with poverty, unstable homes, and the lack of direct aid to stricken neighborhoods. These children especially have a higher dropout rate with the equivalency in reading level of an elementary school child, and that has more to do with having a grading system that moves children up grade levels without warrant and those students not getting enough attention with giant class sizes. Teachers are not paid enough, children are tested unfairly, and overall the dropout rate is enormous throughout the country. Guggenheim unfairly puts a large emphasis on the role of charter schools, showing that they are intensely effective when it comes to test scores and college acceptance rates when they are only 17% superior in math test scores. The film also misrepresents some statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, by saying that seventy per cent of eighth graders cannot read at grade level, which is false. Overall though, the evils of the system and the ineffectiveness alike are represented and many of the points raised are valid.

A lot has changed since the original 1996 "Scream," and this fourth installment in the franchise is apt to point every one of those changes out time and again. Original director Wes Craven and original screenwriter Kevin Williamson come back for more, and do so with the willingness of an entirely new cast and the old one, an unprecedented feat seeing as how the last film was made eleven years prior. The original film celebrated the diverse inclinations of the horror genre, while also poking fun at it thanks to veteran director Craven helming the vehicle. What was great about the original was that it knew what it was (Meta) and nearly broke the fourth wall time and again by addressing itself over and over. More than its cheekiness though was that "Scream" simply was an amazing horror movie: it utilized new technologies for ingenious kills, had two manic and yet unsuspecting killers, and had thoughtfully written and entertaining characters. This sequel does willingly give itself make to Meta, and with gusto, bringing in an entirely new cast to replace the archetypes of the original and jumpstarting the original's breadth of knowledge on horror films. The horror film obsessed generation that we're introduced to in this version though are not enjoyably familiar, only agitating and crass. The original cast, in conjunction, only mirrors some of their more prominent characteristics, including Gale's tenacity, Dewey's slovenly ineptitude, and Sidney's propensity for being a victim. The film does not reboot itself, does not do much that's new in the way of kills, and doesn't distract from two killers, only makes us wait until they're eventually unmasked. I will say that the ending, with its distractions and climactic turns, was unprecedented and did something many reboots are too cowardly to do. That's what's great about the "Scream" franchise, and after the bitter taste of the third, this is a great retelling of an age old story. Though I don't think it's an unnecessary sequel, I do agree with a quote from the last moments of the film: "You forgot the first rule of remakes. Don't fuck with the original!"