In just a few more hours, 2019 will be in the books. Actually, for the purposes of weird movie monitoring, we put 2019 to bed last month; from now on we’ll be ending our personal movie calendar on the last day of November, to allow our future 366 Weird Movies Yearbooks to go out in December. We’re not missing out on much; usually, December releases are limited to Star Wars sequels and Oscar bait dramas. (Although we do regret not being able to fit the animated severed hand romance I Lost My Body into 2019, a review will keep until early 2020. And, of course, we regret not considering December’s Cats, the Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation that divided the furry community).

As always, there were hard cuts at the bottom of the top 10 list. After all, 2019 saw Tommy Wiseau (as a mortician) and Greg Sestero (as the homeless guy Wiseau bef(r)iends) renew their onscreen chemistry in the sprawling two-part epic Best F(r)iends. Nicolas Cage gave us another gonzo performance as a truck driver whose dead wife’s spirit possesses the body of his new girlfriend’s hot jailbait daughter in Between Worlds. And speaking of speaking with the dead, who can forget Holy Trinity, about a dominatrix who  develops necromantic abilities after huffing cans of new age air freshener? Well, you can’t forget what you never saw, and that one, along with Alien Crystal Palace, the French sex film that casts the Egyptian god Horus as a mad scientist, and Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, wherein the messiah and an Ethiopian President/superhero figure into a social media virus plot, have so far proven too weird to be picked up by distributors. Maybe 2020 will bring these gems to wider audiences.

As for the choice of movies: I personally pick them using a secret proprietary formula that accounts for cinematic craftsmanship, the degree of surrealism/weirdness, and the perceived prestige in the weird movie community based on buzz and reader feedback, then I rank them in whatever arbitrary order I momentarily feel like without regard to any of that. (This year, I actually solicited second opinions for each of the nominees, but I’ll still take all the blame if you want to complain that The Forest of Love should have been the fifth weirdest film of the year, not the sixth).  As always, films are listed in random order—the weirdest of orders.

So, on to the official Weirdest Movies of 2019 List! May each successive year grow stranger and more challenging than the next…

7. Diamantino: A right-wing political party tricks a simpleminded, empathetic Portuguese soccer star into becoming its spokesman. With visions of puppies, an adopted refugee who’s actually a government spy, and hermaphroditic side effects of a cloning project, this political satire gets pretty wild by the final act. As Rafael Moreira explains, “[t]he film’s delightfully crazy sense of humor and surreally satirized reality, contrasted with the sincerity with which it treats its main character, makes for a definite achievement.”

1. Under the Silver Lake: A Los Angeles slacker becomes obsessed with the disappearance of his hot blonde neighbor; his investigations Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2019 →

Here is my obligatory annual top 10 list of movies, ranked according to mainstream standards. In other words, weird movies are allowed in this list, but I attempt to rank 2019 releases according to their general merit, intended for people who don’t specialize in the genre. Provocative cults film like Under the Silver Lake can (and did!) make this list, but they will not automatically be catapulted to the top. When ranked by mainstream standards, they may even show up in a different order (and do!). Stay tuned for the top 10 weird movies of 2019 at a later hour.

2019 Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): Chained for Life, The Forest of Love, Jojo Rabbit, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Women, Luce, Transit, Us.

Contenders I couldn’t fit in screenings of before this article’s the deadline: Atlantics, Honeyland,  Uncut Gems.

10. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Read Giles Edwards’ review! Toby, once an idealistic filmmaker and now a director of commercials, revisits Spain to find that the old shoemaker he cast as his lead in his “Don Quixote” student film now believes he is Quixote and Toby is Sancho Panza. It would have been a relief if the result of this legendary event that spent almost three decades in development hell was just acceptable. It’s actually good. Terry Gilliam gives us a whacked-out classical postmodernism reminiscent his 80s and 90s classics, with near-perfect comic chemistry between Jonathan Pryce‘s “Quixote” and Adam Driver‘s “Sancho” and an almost overwhelming serving of medieval spectacle in the billionaire costume ball finale.

9. Under the Silver Lake: Read the Apocryphally Weird review! A Los Angeles slacker becomes obsessed with the disappearance of his hot blonde neighbor–his investigations uncover increasingly bizarre conspiracies involving a dog murderer, hidden messages in songs by the hip new band “Jesus and the Brides of Dracula,” and secret death cults. If you were jonesing for more Inherent Vice, here comes another messy California-set stoner conspiracy theory noir; this one puts you right inside the mind of its paranoid and dangerously unhinged antihero. It had a troubled debut at Cannes and a delayed theatrical release, but it’s destined to find an audience and be a crowned a “cult favorite” in the near future.

8. Apollo 11: An assemblage of restored footage from NASA and other sources chronologically documenting 1969’s 8-day Apollo 11 mission that landed a man on the moon. Will the crew make it back safely? Is the Earth really round? Did Stanley Kubrick accidentally leave a visible boom mic in frame? You’ll have to watch to find out.

7. Toy Story 4: Woody, now with a new owner and no longer the favorite toy, tutors a newcomer, finds a lost friend, and tries to defend himself against a broken antique doll who wants his voice box. Old favorites return, but this late sequel features new toys: two stuffed carnival prizes, a Canadian motorcycle daredevil, and of course, Forky. It features some surprisingly complex moral choices, for a toy Continue reading TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2019: MAINSTREAM EDITION →