Highly divisive? In questionable taste? Excellent suits? If he took himself at all seriously, John Waters could very well be the human equivalent of Todd Phillips’ Joker. Luckily, he doesn’t, so the director instead added the clown prince picture to his annual top ten movie list, published Sunday on Art Forum. “Irresponsible? Maybe. Dangerous? We’ll see,” Waters writes of Joker. “The first big-budget Hollywood movie to gleefully inspire anarchy. Bravo, Todd Phillips! Only you could get away with it.” The director’s favorite film of the year, however? Gasper Noé’s dance horror flick Climax. “The best movie of the year gives new meaning to the term ‘bad trip,’” he raves. “Freak out, baby, freak out!”
Waters also loved Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (“A real crowd-pleaser that deserves every bit of its critical and financial success for pulling the rug out from under America’s true-crime obsession…”), Border (“You won’t believe this one!”) and the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace. (“Aretha never looked so talented or so lost, almost like an alien who is stunned by her own talents.”) Check out Waters’ full top ten list below:
1. Climax, directed by Gasper Noé
2. Joan of Arc, directed by Bruno Dumont
3. Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino
4. Border, directed by Ali Abbasi
5. Amazing Grace, directed by Sydney Pollack; later realized by Alan Elliot
6. Hail Satan?, directed by Penny Lane
7. Pain and Glory, directed by Pedro Almodóvar
8. The Golden Glove, directed by Fatih Akin
9. The Souvenir, directed by Joanna Hogg
10. Joker, directed by Todd Phillips