“Bad Teacher” aims to be the sister comedy to 2003's "Bad Santa," another one-joke, R-rated premise about supposedly kid-friendly people hating and cursing out kids, with hints of the more lighthearted “School of Rock” thrown in. But “Bad Santa” went all the way with its indecencies, and had an actual plot framed around them. And in “School of Rock,” the joke was that Jack Black’s teacher was the child, learning to shed his ego through his students’ sweetness.

Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky’s feature debut, originally titled “Insanely Happy,” (though there may be something lost in translation) is the story of a housewife who attempts to remain happy as her family is coming apart. Kaja is concerned because her husband doesn’t appear to love her anymore, her son is constantly irritated with her, and the bleak snowy landscape is starting to overcome her and her surroundings.

If you can imagine that without crawling into a mental fetal position, then you can imagine “Cars 2.” In this animated sequel from Disney’s Pixar studio, Owen Wilson’s neurotic race car Lightning McQueen turns over the keys to the two-ton four-wheeled village idiot Mater, the buck-toothed tow truck. Jar Jar, it’s your big chance!

In June 2009, O’Brien graduated from Late Night on NBC, replacing Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and knocking him back to an ill-conceived 10 PM slot; seven months later, due to poor ratings all around and complaints from NBC affiliates, Leno’s show was moved back to 11:35 PM, and O’Brien was asked to take a 12:05 AM slot. He refused, pointing out that an after-midnight slot isn’t “the Tonight show,” and walked away with $45 million. Not too shabby—most of us would have jumped at such an opportunity, and we wouldn’t get squat if we turned it down. But as the movie makes clear, Conan O’Brien is a wreck without an audience. When the filmmakers ask him if he’s ever happy out of the spotlight, he glares at them, and he doesn’t seem to be joking around. For the first time, Conan’s freakish height, his chuckle-under-the-breath Irish humor—laced with contempt even when goofily self-mocking—is more intimidating than funny.

Screen Comment critic Lita Robinson reviews this brand-new documentary by first-time director Cindy Meehl.

"...Buck’s hard-luck backstory provides the thrust of this documentary: his father beat him and his brother relentlessly after his mother died; the two were eventually placed in a foster home.

A trick rider from the age of three, Buck was around horses his whole life, and attributes his psychic connection to horses with his own experiences of what it’s like to be dead-frightened of another person..."

The inimitable Kevin Bowen reviews the latest Ryan Reynolds, Martin Campbell-directed vehicle "The Green Lantern."

Test pilot Hal Jordan joins an interplanetary army built on the idea that pure willpower can overcome fear, making the universe safe for corrupt politicians and the military industrial complex.

Unlike “Borat” which exploits similar stereotypes along the same leitmotiv (there’s the civilized West and then there’s everyone else), “Four Lions” manages to get several points across. In addition to lampooning jihadists for what they are, “Four Lions” pokes fun at xenophobia and chauvinism, too. And by doing so, director Chris Morris succeeds in exorcising the film of its risque subject matter far more effectively than had its story had been reduced to a one-dimensional, laugh-a-minute premise.

Iranian cinema is about to get a whole lot more interesting with Asghar Farhadi’s “Nader & Simin: A separation,” which in theory should be shown in limited release in about two months in the U.S.

Shot in semi-clandestinity in Tehran, it tells the tale of a couple, on the verge of separation, who are ripped apart by a parent’s Alzheimer’s disease and a caretaker hired to help him make it through the debilitating disease. Class differences and the slow disintegration of the couple’s life seem to be the order of the day in this narrative.

“Submarine,” directed by Richard Ayoade and adapted by him from Joe Dunthorne’s novel, is a bittersweet British comedy in the deadpan vein of “Harold and Maude” and “Rushmore.” Like those two films, it features a shaggy-haired, never-smiling teenage protagonist (Craig Roberts) who loves himself unconditionally but bewilders most others—including his parents. Trying to woo an aloof female classmate, for instance, he mumbles such precocious, ahead-of-his-years things as “Here’s to us and a wonderful evening of lovemaking.” The film, which also stars Noah Taylor (“Flirting,” “Shine”), Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”) and Paddy Considine (“Hot Fuzz”) opens Friday nationwide.

The soft-spoken Ayoade—who stars in the beloved British sitcom “The IT Crowd”—drew on Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, all lovers of deadly serious, affected youths, in developing his oddball hero. At a press conference last week in New York City, he mentioned “Taxi Driver’s” Travis Bickle as the character’s main influence, as both speak in “an uninflected voice-over, seeing the least important thing [that’s happening on-screen]. He’s an unreliable narrator, linguistically idiosyncratic.”

Ben Stiller received the script for “Submarine” and was asked by the Weinstein Company to be an executive producer. “I said, ‘What does that mean? Do we have to do anything?’ and they said we just had to support [Ayoade]. I liked the script and liked Richard’s other work, so we took a chance with it.”

Casting Roberts in the lead role was, Stiller and Ayoade agree, practically a no-brainer. “He’s like a young old man,” Stiller said.

“I’m not a terribly social person, so I want to work with who I like,” said Ayoade. “I don’t think I’d be the natural director for ‘The Bon Jovi Story.’”

Ayoade, who debuted as feature film director for “Submarine,” is currently working on an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella “The Double: A Petersburg Poem.”

(full review in Friday's edition)

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