All legs and hair and eyeliner and attitude, Cameron Diaz is nasty, conniving and selfish as Elizabeth Halsey, a middle-school instructor who cares more about scamming money for breast implants than about student participation or test scores. Diaz is funny, but she's no miracle worker, so she can't erase the movie's slow spots or make it feel shorter than its 92-minute running time. "Bad Teacher" is as uneven as that wobbly desk you got stuck with in seventh grade. Even so, it's far from getting an F. --Connie Ogle, McClatchy News Service

I count the exuberantly violent "Kick-Ass," "Funny Games" and "Straw Dogs" among my favorite movies, yet I can't get behind "Hobo With a Shotgun," a schlocky exercise in audience torture. The problem isn't the drenching bloodshed; the problem is the giggling sadism with which it's presented. The movie casts Rutger Hauer as an addled yet noble derelict who brings pump-gun justice to a town full of overacting drug dealers, dirty cops and pedophile Santas. Hauer just wants to mow people's lawns and get along, but soon he's blowing chunks off of bad guys. The movie just blows chunks. (Unrated.) --Colin Covert