Best Movie Experiences of 2019

These are not the best movies I saw in 2019 (although there is considerable overlap between that list and this). Instead, these are the best experiences I had seeing movies this year.

In reverse order:

10. The April Hullabaloo

In April, I watched 5 mystery movies. The best of them was "The Art of Self-Defense", one of my favorite movies of 2019. Seeing it 3 months before it was officially released felt special.

The most bewildering was "The Peanut Butter Solution", a Canadian children's movie about dead hobos and long pubic hair with songs by Celine Dion. I know it sounds like I'm just making that up, but I swear that describes the movie. For years I had seen the trailer as part of Alamo Drafthouse's "WTF" pre-show reel and assumed it was some clever parody of inappropriate children's movies. The trailer starts:

"From the people who brought you 'The Dog Who Stopped the War'..."

But it's real. It's all real. I really saw this thing. A sold out theater saw it with me.

9. Knife + Heart

This was billed as an homage to DePalma and 1970s giallo movies. I dislike DePalma movies and most giallo movies, but the music in the trailer made me take a chance on it. It was very, very good. The music makes it.

8. Piercing

This starts like an arty serial killer movie but goes in unexpected directions. It includes a fabricated world, something I see more and more of these days. It could easily be set in our universe but isn't, seemingly just to give art directors more to do. I approve.

7. Booksmart

Another great movie music experience. "Slip Away" by Perfume Genius. Wow.

6. Parallel Love: The Story of a Band Called Luxury

The trailer looked interesting, but the day of the show I read a review that said band (Luxury) was a ... Christian rock band. I felt angry and lied to. How could there be a good movie about a Christian rock band?

Turns out, it is a good movie about a rock band that is also Christian. Kind of like U2.

The best part was that the lead singer, Lee Bozeman, came and talked to us after the show. He's an Orthodox priest now and very good at sharing his passion for that religion. I'm an atheist, but I enjoyed hearing his perspective.

5. Hail Satan?

The week after Lee Bozeman shared his Christian faith with us, a bunch of local Satanists shared theirs. The movie was great. The Satansists were, too. I'm an atheist, but I enjoyed hearing their perspective.

4. Under the Silver Lake

This is another fabricated world movie. I think. I saw it with my daughter on a lark. I wasn't that fond of the director's previous film, "It Follows", but I loved its fabricated world. The tech was subtly different from our own, and seasons didn't work right.

This one was great. Any movie that hires its own cryptographer deserves viewing. It's a big rabbit hole that critiques guys with time to crawl down rabbit holes. I bought a copy of the the single "Turning Teeth" by Jesus and the Brides of Dracula.

3. Jojo Rabbit

I was so excited to see this film. I love everything Taika Waititi's made. The trailer made me cry. The movie made me spray tears out of my eyeballs all over the inside of my glasses. We saw it twice and I loved it each time.

2. Graveyard Fest

For over three days I sat in a theater filled with horror fans and watched movies. Eighteen movies. They started about 10am and played until about 2am on two of those days. That's too many hours spent at the movies, but it was delicious. By the end we were all insane.

I saw "Knives and Skin" here, which was one of my favorite movies of 2019. We also saw a Hong Kong horror movie where actors vomited live centipedes and a Lifetime movie. I kid you not. We got to see the gore cut of "Tammy and the T-Rex", where Paul Walker's brain is placed in an animatronic T-Rex for Denise Richards to groove on. We saw "All the Gods in the Sky", which was brutal.

It was way too much and I will never forget it.

1. Bad Black

This movie was released in 2016, so it can't make the top 10 list for 2019. But the evening I saw it was one of the best movie experiences of my life.

"Bad Black" was made in Uganda by Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey. He created "Wakaliwood", a local, do-it-yourself movie factory with money he raised making bricks. Neighbors became actors and crew. All of the props and sets are homemade. His films are inspired by big budget Hollywood action films. They take a movie title like "Commando" and build a world where almost everyone is a commando.

The films are accompanied by "video jokers" who translate and comment on the film in real time, sort of like a one person MST3K. The films are funny and the VJs are even funnier.

"Bad Black" was fantastic. It's the story of a poor orphan girl's rise to power as a crime boss. There are a lot of car chases, kung fu and gun fights. The VJ is hilarious. The special effects are astounding. The budget was well under $100.

You should definitely watch some Wakaliwood movies. My description won't do them justice.

The night we saw "Bad Black", Alan Hofmanis was in attendance. He's a guy from New York who heard about these movies and went to Uganda to be part of them. He told us stories about making the movies, sold us merch, and filmed us dying in the theater when Superbola Hunter showed up and gunned us all down. Hopefully our deaths will be used in a future Wakaliwood production.

Nabwana couldn't attend because the US won't give him an entry visa.

Being gunned down in a theater is terrifying, but preferred to growing so old and infirm that going to a theater becomes painful.

The best part was a Skype with Nabwana I.G.G. He explained that he hadn't seen many of the Hollywood films referenced in his work. His brother saw them and told him the stories.

It was 6am in Uganda and his kids were getting ready for school. They came by and stared at the theater full of "mzungus", all jazzed by what their dad had made.

I will never forget that evening at the movies.