Most film festivals like to sprinkle a few high-profile premieres into their schedules, and sometimes you get the feeling they didn't even care whether the movie was any good or not. But this year's South By Southwest slate of big-name films was surprisingly solid, with nary a clunker in the bunch.

A few of them, briefly: I already addressed the hilarious opening-night film, I Love You, Man, and Cargill raved about Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell. (I'll add my two cents: It's scary, funny, twisted, old-fashioned, innovative, and thoroughly delightful.) 500 Days of Summer, which I caught at Sundance, was the fest's closing-night film, and it's as devilishly smart and funny a relationship comedy as I've seen in many a moon.

Then there's Observe and Report, written and directed by Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way) and starring Seth Rogen as a mall security guard whose inflated sense of authority is just one of his many delusions. When a flasher starts harassing women -- including the makeup counter girl (Anna Faris) he's secretly in love with -- he makes it his mission to stop the pervert, get the girl, and save the world.

Comparisons to Paul Blart: Mall Cop are inevitable (and, of course, coincidental), but Observe and Report is to Paul Blart what Taxi Driver is to Taxi. This is Travis Bickle: Mall Cop, with a protagonist who is dangerously unhinged, obsessed with dispensing justice at all costs. The film is wildly funny, but also dark and outrageous, allowing the Rogen character to do things that movie protagonists just don't do. I loved it -- you don't see much dark humor executed so well these days -- but I suspect it will be divisive when it's released in theaters April 10.

Even funnier is The Slammin' Salmon, from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. This might come as a pleasant surprise to you, as the group's last two films, Club Dread and Beerfest, have failed to live up to the promise of their breakout hit, Super Troopers. The new one, about a restaurant owner trying to get his waitstaff to sell $20,000 of food in one night to pay off his gambling debts, could make Broken Lizard cult heroes all over again. The large-ish ensemble cast means lots of short scenes, loopy subplots, and rapid-fire one-liners that are mostly too vulgar to repeat here.

Of particular interest is Michael Clarke Duncan, who plays the restaurateur, Cleon Salmon, a former heavyweight boxing champ. If Duncan was ever this funny before, it escaped my notice. Here, he's playing a beautifully strange character, a megalomaniac with insane ideas, a dangerous misunderstanding of basic arithmetic, and a fondness for bringing squirming live swordfish into the kitchen and demanding they be sauteed. The Slammin' Salmon is essentially just a workplace comedy (and not the first to be set in a restaurant), but it's a madly inventive and quick-witted one.

A slightly riskier workplace is the focus of The Hurt Locker, a tense drama about Army bomb technicians in Baghdad that's been getting rave reviews ever since it played at the Venice and Toronto film festivals last September. While it's set in Iraq, it's about the effects of war in general, not that specific one, and it expresses no ideology whatsoever about the U.S. invasion. I mention that because otherwise audiences are liable to hear "Iraq movie" and disregard it when it's released in June, the way they've mostly ignored the films that actually are about the Iraq war.

It's directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, K-19: The Widowmaker) and stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty as the bomb squad, each with different approaches toward their work. The nature of their job lends itself to suspense, obviously -- bomb techs are far more interesting than, say, accountants -- particularly in a chaotic city where improvised explosive devices are as common as house cats. The Hurt Locker feels episodic and perhaps a bit overlong, but it packs an emotional wallop in the end when it addresses the disturbing fact that war is addictive.

* * * * *

Eric D. Snider (website) loves to observe and report your mom.

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