Movies are inherently kind of silly. The idea of a bunch of adults playing make-believe and being extremely serious about it is a bizarre phenomenon that we’ve all just accepted, and that’s fine, because movies are also awesome. But the fact that every film, even a prestige drama, is fundamentally the same thing as a home video recording of a particularly intense game of dress-up means that the illusion is fragile. All it takes is one weird decision to immediately make the whole thing extremely ridiculous, and I cherish those moments like photographs of a dead relative.

I’ve seen well over 100 new movies in 2019, and because I am a dedicated public servant, I kept a mental list of all the funniest moments that absolutely were not intended to be funny.

To be clear, I’m not saying all of the movies on this list are bad. Actually, several of them are quite good. But even great films occasionally lose their self-awareness and become accidentally hilarious for a few seconds. (For instance, every time Russell Crowe sings in Les Miserables.) Join me, won’t you, for a look back at the finest moments of unintentional comedy in 2019.

Note: Major spoilers are discussed for almost all of the following films.

10. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is so forgettable that I had to triple-check to make sure it came out this year, and even now I’m not positive. A bunch of giant monsters fight while a bunch of people scurry around them like mice and say things that I couldn’t bother to remember. However, one of those people is O’Shea Jackson Jr., and I am forever in his debt for delivering one of the most delightful surprises of the year.

There is a scene in which Jackson’s character is talking to a room full of other characters via radio, and the camera focuses in on the console showing his ID photo as he talks. And folks, that shot of his ID photo is one of the greatest moments in cinematic history. You can just turn the movie off at that point, because Godzilla: King of the Monsters doesn’t get any better than that. (Indeed, no movie does.)

9. Under the Silver Lake

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Image via A24

Under the Silver Lake is one of my favorite films of the year. David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to the indie horror hit It Follows is a bizarre neo-noir mystery thriller full of weirdly funny moments, including the one I am about to highlight. Now, I know what you’re thinking - “if the movie is intentionally funny, what is it doing on your list, you absolute fraud?” Well, first of all, that’s hurtful. And secondly, I’m not sure this moment was meant to be funny.

Andrew Garfield, playing the most feral lunatic I have ever seen him play and I hope he does more unhinged roles like this in the future, stumbles outside to discover that a bunch of kids have vandalized every car on the street, including his. So naturally, he stalks silently up behind them and violently beats the shit out of them. Just pummels the absolute Christ out of a pair of 12-year-olds. He even takes the carton of eggs they were throwing and crams them one by one into one of the kids’ faces. I never realized how much I wanted to see the Amazing Spider-Man terrorize a bunch of shitty children.

8. The Prodigy

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Image via Orion Pictures

For those of you who missed The Prodigy, it was a pretty standard creepy-kid horror film that came out way back in February. The premise of the movie is that the soul of a notorious serial killer has somehow infected the body of a little boy who was born the instant the murderer was killed in a police raid. There may be more to it than that, but I’m not watching this piece of shit again and I don’t care to skim the absurdly detailed Wikipedia plot description. Anyway, the truly weird-looking murderer occasionally occupies the boy’s body so completely that the boy’s head supernaturally transforms into that of the killer, and it is without hyperbole the funniest goddamn thing in the entire universe.

The effect was meant to be jarring, which it is, but for none of the reasons intended. Picture, if you will, an adult man’s head suddenly appearing on the body of an 8-year-old boy. The guy has a serious dome, too, it’s like 90% forehead with a plunging widow’s peak that looks like it could cut through steel. It’s like somebody made an entire movie out of the Baby Forest Whitaker Key & Peele sketch.

7. The Fanatic

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Image via Quiver

The Fanatic, a goofy thriller from director / Limp Bizkit caretaker Fred Durst, was neither a good film nor the bumbling failure it was made out to be. But the teaming of Durst with star John Travolta is definitely fulfilling some kind of prophecy. It’s like the collision of two celestial bodies with the minimum amount of social responsibility required to avoid driving on the sidewalk. And at no time is this more firmly on display than during the film’s truly incredible finale.

Travolta plays a character named Moose, and stop right there his name is fucking what? Moose is obsessed with a B-movie actor named Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa), and after a series of escalating events including an accidental death and a transcendent altercation with a cartoonishly aggressive street magician, Moose breaks into Dunbar’s house and ties him up. Dunbar convinces Moose to cut him loose, at which point he headbutts Moose backwards through time, whips out a shotgun from above his bed where it was mounted like Excalibur, blasts Moose’s hand apart, then kicks him down the stairs and stabs his eye out with a hunting knife. (Because his name is Hunter, you see.) It’s a sudden outburst of extreme violence that the movie has absolutely not prepared you for, which is capped off by Dunbar helping Moose to his feet, handing him a dish towel to wrap up his destroyed hand, and quietly sending him on his way out the back door like Dunbar is a department store Santa and Moose just got done telling him what he wants for Christmas. It’s wild. Dunbar commits 40% of a murder and then politely walks Moose to the door. And just so we’re absolutely clear, Moose is John Travolta in a Hawaiian shirt and a Billy Ray Cyrus wig. It’s like a Tim and Eric sketch about a self-conscious murderer. It’s the most polite maiming in history.

6. Hellboy

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Image via Lionsgate

This year’s Hellboy reboot, starring loveable human cinderblock David Harbour as the titular demonic superhero and directed by Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers), was a well-documented bomb. I actually enjoyed its gonzo bloody horror and Harbour’s gruff angry dad energy, but it’s undeniably kind of a mess, and there are two standout moments of accidental comedy that earn it a spot on this list. First, the film opens with Hellboy traveling down to Mexico to locate a buddy who went missing investigating a den of vampires. Hellboy discovers that his pal has been turned into a vampire and has spent the past few days or weeks competing in local wrestling matches as a vampire luchadore. The movie never explains why a vampire would decide to do this, and honestly, it’s better that way, because then I get to imagine any scenario I want. Maybe he disappeared to pursue his dreams of becoming a wrestler, and was incidentally bitten by some other vampires wholly unrelated to the coven he was supposed to investigate. Maybe all vampires are wrestling fans in the Hellboy universe. Maybe he just recognized what a great gimmick he’d suddenly been gifted and didn’t want it to go to waste. Anyway, Hellboy kills him in a wrestling match. That’s how the movie begins.

The second moment comes towards the end of the film, when Hellboy travels to a mystical cave to harness the power of magic and the legendary wizard Merlin suddenly appears and offers him King Arthur’s mythical sword. You can’t just throw Merlin into your movie and not have it instantly become extremely silly (see Transformers: The Last Knight). Merlin is automatically funny in any context. He’s simultaneously the most famous wizard and the most dated wizard reference you could make. It’s like having Babe Ruth materialize to teach Hellboy about the importance of teamwork. Anyway, Merlin turns to dust like one minute after he appears, which is a real tomahawk dunk of a punchline.

5. Gemini Man

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Image via Paramount Pictures

The Will Smith thriller Gemini Man, in which the Fresh Prince battles a young clone of himself, felt like it should’ve been released in 1998. (And in fact, it has been in some form of production since the late 90s.) After the final battle, in which Old Will Smith teams up with Young Will Smith to destroy Even Younger Will Smith, the Smiths confront the villainous Clive Owen, who trained Old Will Smith and cloned Young Will Smith. (He raised Young Will Smith as his son and named him Junior.) With me so far?

Junior is pretty upset at learning he is but one of many clones, and is totes about to shoot Clive Owen in the head. Old Will Smith hits Junior with some wisdom, explaining that if he kills Clive Owen, he’ll become just as evil, because once you start killing people you never stop. Tearfully, Junior relents. And then Old Will Smith immediately shoots Clive Owen directly in the center of his face with the biggest shotgun I have ever seen in any entertainment medium. I believe it had fourteen barrels. I almost stood up in the theater. 10/10, strongly recommend.

4. Midsommar

Image via A24

Midsommar was director Ari Aster’s follow-up to his breakout hit Hereditary, and it was one of the funniest films of the year. I’m not entirely sure how much of that was intentional, to be perfectly honest, because Aster has said in interviews that he feels like parts of his horror film about a bunch of shitty American college students getting murdered by a pagan Swedish cult are very funny. I suspect that the film’s final scene, in which Dani (Florence Pugh) chooses to sacrifice her ex-boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) instead of one of the cult members, was meant to be shocking. But to me, the only thing shocking about seeing Christian mutely burning alive in a giant barn, stuffed inside a giant bear suit with an enormous pouty frown on his face, was how nakedly hilarious it was.

He’s just a big ol’ grumpy bear, sitting there with a big ol’ grumpy frown on his face, with fire blazing out of control around him. Christian began the film thinking he was going to break up with his girlfriend and go on a dope European sex vacation with his buddies, and things spiraled so out of control that both his vacation and his life are coming to an end in the most objectively absurd way possible. He doesn’t look sad, or horrified, or even self-reflective - he just looks super bummed, and the fact that he is looking super bummed while burning to death in a bear costume is deeply, deeply funny to me.

3. Avengers: Endgame

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Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Avengers: Endgame brought the last ten years of Marvel movies to a close with a lot of time travel and a massive climactic superhero battle that was the cinematic equivalent of throwing all your action figures into a bingo cage. It was a satisfying end to a mind-boggling undertaking that spanned 22 goddamned movies. And the film’s climactic moment, when Iron Man sacrifices himself to save the universe, was top 3 one of the hardest times I’ve laughed this year.

Let me explain. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) does the snap and brings everyone back to life, struggles through his heartbreaking final moments, then tries to say some last words and simply doesn’t have the strength. He dies. The theater goes stone silent. You could hear Ant-Man riding a pin drop. And then several children in the audience started sobbing openly. Easily a dozen little kids bursting into tears. It was like we’d all received a news dispatch that Santa had just been assassinated in Dallas. And I could not handle it.

2. Ad Astra

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Ad Astra (or Brad Astronaut) was a pensive drama about Brad Pitt scouring the galaxy for his dad Tommy Lee Jones, who vanished on a mission to discover alien life despite the fact that Jones is only 17 years older than Pitt and does not look like he has the patience to learn Klingon. However, Jones looks 100% like the kind of man who would fuck off to the edge of the galaxy to watch World War II documentaries on the History Channel where his wife and kids can’t bother him.

There are two profoundly hilarious moments hidden in Ad Astra, which are further enhanced by the two hours of navelgazing/stargazing melodrama surrounding them. “Hidden” is not an entirely accurate word, because the first moment is when Brad Pitt uses explosive decompression to detonate a rampaging baboon. Imagine, if you will, a slow-paced existential drama about an estranged father and son set against the backdrop of deep space travel. Now imagine that drama being suddenly interrupted by an extreme baboon attack in which no less than one (1) man’s entire face is eaten directly off of his skull, and Brad Pitt bringing an end to that attack by calling on the powers of space to pop that angry monkey like an overripe tomato. AD ASTRAAAA!

The second moment is more conceptual, but no less funny bone-ticklin’. Rather than be dragged back to Earth by his lame ass son Brad Astronaut, Tommy Lee Jones rockets off into space to float forever into oblivion. A few moments later, Brad Pitt’s spaceship is propelled back home by the force of a nuclear bomb. Tommy Lee Jones was still floating in the same general area at that point, which means that his 73-year-old body was also catapulted by the nuclear blast, albeit in the opposite direction, out into deep space. Which means that at some point, perhaps thousands of years from now, Tommy Lee Jones’ long-dead spacesuit-clad corpse will punch through the atmosphere of a distant alien world and explode into the ground like an asteroid, possibly triggering a mass extinction. I think about this a lot. AD ASTRAAAA!

1. The Lion King

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Image via Disney

Disney’s mega-budget remake of The Lion King was many things. “Cynical,” “ugly,” and “unnecessary” are all words that come to mind. It also produced what is easily the funniest cinematic moment of 2019. I am of course referring to the moment when a photorealistic lion falls to his death in slow motion while shrieking in James Earl Jones’ voice. Before your brain has time to fully process this information, the film cuts to a snap zoom of a photorealistic lion cub spending millions of special effects dollars doing its absolute best to make a facial expression as the screams of a Disney Channel star blast out of its tiny cat mouth. I felt something come loose in my mind and I still haven’t recovered. Indeed, I may never recover.

I laughed harder at Mufasa’s reimagined death scene than at any single comedy produced this year. It made me want to be a father, specifically so that I could name my children after it. I’ve become a Lion King evangelist, encouraging my friends and loved ones to watch what is objectively a shithouse fire of a film just so they can experience those brief glorious seconds of accidental genius. My one wish is that technology has advanced enough by the time I finally die so that I can have this moment playing on an eternal holographic loop above my tombstone.

Honorable Mentions:

Alita: Battle Angel - the reveal of how much of this movie is dedicated to roller-skating.

Replicas - The entire film.

Serenity - The reveal that a child programmed a video game island paradise in which his dead dad and very much alive mom drunkenly fuck on a yacht, and that a section of his video game island is devoted to sex trafficking.

Rambo: Last Blood - Rambo driving to Mexico and immediately getting his ass kicked into a coma.

Dark Phoenix - Michael Fassbender clearly taking a violent shit as he face-acts so hard to pull a helicopter out of the sky.

Crawl - a looter slowly browses the aisles of a convenience store while his friend is soundlessly being torn apart by an alligator in the background.