This story of a blackface Halloween kegger-party at a fictional, racially divided university generates enough fertile insight to keep the heaps of dialogue compostable to the point where it helps to cover some of the script’s more familiar dirt. Justin Simien’s caustic attack on Ivy League racism frequently finds characters spouting issues at the camera, not voicing authentic-sounding dialog. Many of the stereotypes up for discussion – good hair, jungle fever, blacks guys don't tip – have been covered elsewhere, and better. Simien, who clearly aims at aping Robert Altman’s relaxed narrative and loosely-framed, multi-character coverage, tacks on a few subplots too many. The most extraneous sidebar of the bunch (the occasionally touched-upon casting of a reality TV show), is expeditiously refreshed to ring down the curtain. The cast, most notably Tessa Thompson as the anarchistic hostess of the titular blogcast, help keep it from ever swerving into MTV movie-of-the-week territory. (2014) — Scott Marks