Author:   Justin Souther

The Story: A collection of teens deal with the pains of G-rated high school, while attempting to stage their senior-year musical. The Lowdown: A poorly directed, meandering musical full of unmemorable pop songs. As a whole, the movie is of little use to anyone who’s not already a fan of the series’ previous television incarnations.

The Story: A dorky high-school virgin steals his brother’s vintage muscle car and takes a road trip with his two best friends to Tennessee in order to have sex with a girl he met on the Internet. The Lowdown: An utterly generic, gross-out teen-sex romp, with some likable enough leads and an entertaining performance from…

The Story: A CIA agent stationed in the Middle East must figure out a way -- with the help of his arrogant boss -- to capture a mysterious terrorist mastermind. The Lowdown: A slick action-oriented thriller with some strong performances that tries to be something more by being politically aware, but never quite feels as…

The Story: The tale of how a young Billy Graham became the world’s most famous evangelist. The Lowdown: A quaint enough, but terribly uneven little movie that’s too confined by its low budget to overcome its shortcomings.

The Story: The true story of Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, the first African American ever to win the Heisman Trophy. The Lowdown: A completely formulaic sports biopic that drags out every trope of the genre while at the same time feeling excruciatingly long.

The Story: An anti-American filmmaker is visited by three ghosts who aim to teach him the importance of America. The Lowdown: Another in a long line of recent unfunny spoofs that also has the added drawback of simpleminded political heavy-handedness.

The Story: A college professor invents the intermittent windshield wiper, only to have his design stolen by the Ford Motor Company, causing him to spend the next decade fighting for the credit he’s due. The Lowdown: An utterly harmless little film, with a strong central performance by Greg Kinnear. Still, it can’t quite overcome the…

The Story: A slacker copy boy and a single mother get entangled with a mysterious cabal who coerce the duo into a baffling, dangerous plot. The Lowdown: A silly story line and wafer-thin characters derail this attempt at a high-octane thrill ride.

The Story: During World War II, four African-American G.I.s and a young wounded boy with a secret get stranded behind Nazi lines in a small Italian village. The Lowdown: A sprawling, ambitious, often unwieldy work from Spike Lee that rises above its challenges through its own singular uniqueness.

The Story: A young married couple move into an upper-middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles, only to bear the wrath of their police-officer neighbor, who doesn’t take kindly to the fact that they’re in an interracial relationship. The Lowdown: A good performance by Samuel L. Jackson and a surprisingly engrossing first half aren’t enough to…

The Story: A series of supposedly “based on a true story” vignettes mixed with a travelogue, all of which is supposed to illuminate the greatness of America. The Lowdown: An inept, low-budget, poorly acted attempt at patriotic flag-waving that would be more at home on public access TV than in theaters.

The Story: Two aging detectives go after a vigilante who’s knocking off criminals. The Lowdown: A largely pointless crime flick that’s never nearly as clever as it thinks it is, centered around a couple of phoned-in performances by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

The Story: Three high-school seniors -- and longtime buddies -- head off to college orientation for a weekend, only to become beset with booze, scantily clad women, tortuous frat boys and nearly every bodily fluid imaginable. The Lowdown: A crude, idiotic and unoriginal attempt at a teen gross-out comedy that’s not so much a movie,…

The Story: In order to save the drama department from budget cuts, an inept high-school drama teacher decides to write and stage an accidentally offensive sequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The Lowdown: A strong concept and a nice comedic turn by Steve Coogan isn’t enough to save Hamlet 2 from a lackluster climax.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? will be shown at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6, in Lord Auditorium at Pack Memorial Library as the final film in the library's Coen Brothers film series. Mountain Xpress movie critic Justin Souther will introduce the film and discuss it after the screening. Free.

The Story: A young girl -- with the help of an uncle who's down on his luck -- learns to play football. She becomes the first female to ever play in the Pop Warner Super Bowl, while at the same time raising the spirits of her downtrodden hometown. The Lowdown: A completely by-the-book, generic feel-good…

The Big Lebowski will be shown at 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 30, in Lord Auditorium at Pack Memorial Library as part of the library's Coen Brothers film series. Bold Life movie critic Marcianne Miller will introduce the film and discuss it after the screening. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) will conclude the series on…

The Story: A trio of young houseflies sneak onto a NASA rocket and hitch a ride to the moon with the crew of Apollo 11. The Lowdown: Presented in 3-D, this horrendously animated Belgian product is a tedious waste of time.

The Story: Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker and his young trainee fight to save the son of Jabba the Hutt and stop the evil plot set forth by the nefarious Count Dooku. The Lowdown: Silly, stilted and pointless, it's Star Wars distilled and refined to its very worst -- only this time accompanied by some truly…

The Story: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants return, now dealing with the not-so-simple tasks of college and growing up. The Lowdown: A pleasant little movie that will satisfy fans, but ultimately meanders too much to be interesting to anyone not already converted.

The Story: The Mummy franchise continues as adventurer Rick O’Connell and his family travel to China to stop an undead Chinese emperor from conquering humankind. The Lowdown: The third installment of this rebooted franchise is second-rate summer entertainment in every sense: It's cheesy, incoherent and chock full of terrible CGI.