Between SUCKER PUNCH and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, it’s a big weekend for movies based on the fantasies of 12-year-old boys.

South By Southwest was a blast, as always. The film lineup might have been the best since I started going (2006), and it was great to see so many old friends and colleagues and to meet several new ones.

Here are links to all my SXSW reviews and features, gathered in one handy place so you can ignore them all at once.

10 SXSW Films That Could Be Hits (pre-fest).

“American Animal”
“A Bag of Hammers”
“The Beaver”
“Bellflower”
“The Future”
“Hobo with a Shotgun”
“The Innkeepers”
“Insidious”
“Paul”
“Source Code”
“Super”
“Terri”
“13 Assassins”

Snide Remarks: “South By South Wet” (post-fest).

Remember how last weekend had a couple of great new movie options? Well, go see those. This weekend’s offerings are significantly less thrilling.

The best of the lot is “Battle Los Angeles,” a solid collection of war-movie cliches applied to an alien invasion. Nobody’s gonna LOVE this movie, but it’s sturdy, entertaining stuff.

Then there’s “Mars Needs Moms,” which is lifeless and uninteresting, and “Red Riding Hood,” which is a fairy tale filtered through a “Twilight” lens. Don’t see either of them unless someone makes you.

I posted an embarrassing old artifact this week: a paper I wrote for a film class in 1997, when I was a few months shy of 23, stridently defending “Independence Day” as a great movie. Enjoy.

At Film.com, “What’s the Big Deal?” discusses “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” and I made some recommendations on how some recent movies could edit themselves out of their R ratings, like “King’s Speech” is doing.

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at Cascadia.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast. Ignore the iTunes “explicit” tag; we always keep it PG.

Last week I wrote something for Film.com about “Duck Soup,” the loony Marx Brothers movie from 1933. In discussing the influence the Marxes had on modern comedy, I mentioned the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team that made “Airplane!,” “Naked Gun,” and “Top Secret,” among other fine spoofs. To my great delight, David Zucker read the column and sent me an e-mail. With his permission, I reprint it here. Fans of comedy may find it instructive.

Eric,

I enjoyed reading your article on the Marx Bros.’ “Duck Soup.” I was particularly intrigued by the reasons you listed for the movie’s failure at the box office.  But I can tell you from personal experience the most important reason:

I first saw “Duck Soup” in 1967 in a packed lecture hall at the University of Wisconsin where I was majoring in film. I loved it, the audience howled, but the Marxes and their writers made a critical mistake when they assumed a movie packed with great jokes would automatically gain box office success.  What the movie lacked was a story grounded in reality, with real characters for the audience to root for.

After it flopped, Irving Thalberg told Chico Marx during a card game one night that he and his brothers could have twice the success with half the jokes. Bringing the brothers to MGM, Thalberg suggested a real ballet setting, and added Allen Jones and Kitty Carlisle to the mix — main characters that the audience could care about. “A Night at the Opera” opened to the Marxes biggest grosses ever.  The ZAZ team went through the same process, (although in reverse) basing our “Airplane!” script on an Arthur Haley B movie, “Zero Hour.”  Audiences actually cared about Bob Hays and Julie Haggerty, so the movie was quite satisfying in the last five minutes when Ted Striker actually lands the plane and wins the love of Elaine Dickinson.

Taking the wrong lessons from the success of “Airplane!” we then created “Top Secret!”, on the assumption that, like Duck soup, if we just filled 85 minutes with great jokes, we would have another big hit.  We were wrong.  Many people consider “Top Secret!” to be as good or better a movie than “Airplane!” but I know different. It was 85 minutes of jokes without a real plot, character, or situations.  After it flopped at the box office, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg took us in (without the card game) to Disney to direct “Ruthless People,” a movie ABOUT plot and character.  We learned the lesson, had another big hit, and subsequently applied it to all of our films after that.

While following the rule never guaranteed success, ignoring it certainly guaranteed failure.

David Zucker

Well, lookee here! It’s the first really good movie weekend of the year! Our false gods in Hollywood have not forsaken us after all!

I love two of the new releases: “The Adjustment Bureau,” a smart ‘n’ twisty sci-fi romantic thriller (?) starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt; and “Rango” (review at Cinematical), an endearingly bizarre cartoon starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon who goes to the Wild West. I would watch either of these movies again right now. MAYBE I WILL DO THAT VERY THING.

In limited release is “I Saw the Devil,” one o’ them bloody South Korean movies about revenge that are so popular right now in South Korea. I don’t have a review, but I saw “I Saw the Devil” at Fantastic Fest last September and was duly unsettled by its pursuit-of-evildoers-turns-you-evil story. Worth checking out, if that’s your thing.

Thus concludes the part where we talk about good movies. Also in wide release is “Take Me Home Tonight,” an ’80s-style (and ’80s-set) youth comedy starring Topher Grace, Dan Fogler, and Teresa Palmer. I got a few laughs out of it, but not enough to recommend it. They didn’t screen it until Thursday night; I may or may not write a full review.

I also got some laughs out of “Beastly” (review at Film.com), but those were unintentional. It is a stupid movie.

Big pile of stuff at Film.com this week. “Eric’s Bad Movies” dealt with “A*P*E,” a “King Kong” rip-off from 1976. “What’s the Big Deal?” tackled “Duck Soup,” which is perhaps the Marx brothers’ best movie. I also delivered the Ten Commandments of getting a film into Sundance (recycling a couple jokes from a very old column) and gave a preview of this year’s South By Southwest Film Festival.

I will be at SXSW! It starts next Friday. If you are also there, and if you see me, you should say hello.

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at Cascadia.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast. Ignore the iTunes “explicit” tag; we always keep it PG.