John Waters

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  print December 2009

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1 Import Export (Ulrich Seidl) The most sorrowful movie of the year is also the best. The miserable lives of Ukrainian immigrants in Vienna make this agonizing but brilliantly directed opus the cinematic equivalent of slitting your wrists. A new genre? Depression porn? Hey, I got off.

  2 Antichrist (Lars von Trier) If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, this is the movie he would have made.

  3 In the Loop (Armando Iannucci) A smart, mean, foulmouthed British satire about the struggle for global power

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  print December 2008

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1 Sorry, it’s a tie: (A) Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen) Does anybody not think this is the best American movie of the year (even though it was made in Spain)? Come on, it’s got a great script, the actors look like real movie stars, and Woody Allen films Scarlett Johansson with the same obsession Paul Morrissey had for Joe Dallesandro. Gives heterosexuality a good name! (B) Love Songs (Christophe Honoré) I may be the only person who would pick this as the best foreign-language movie of the year, but what do I care if you don’t like this hipper-than-thou bisexual French musical?

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  print December 2007

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1 Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) The coolest high-concept art film of the year. A faux exploitation double feature from hell with coming attractions in between for films you’d kill to see if they were real. I could feel the ghost rats from Baltimore theaters past brushing up against my legs as I watched.

  2 Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot) This negative movie about an HIV-positive man is brave, funny, gaily incorrect, and smart as a whip. The best feel-bad gay movie ever made.

  3 Away from Her (Sarah Polley) Julie Christie deserves an Oscar for this wonderfully terrifying

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  print December 2006

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1 United 93 (Paul Greengrass) The best movie in the last five years. No cheap shots in this one! I have friends who would watch a snuff film, yet they refuse to see this great action picture—I don’t get why.

  2 Jackass Number Two (Jeff Tremaine) Playing on more than three thousand screens, Jackass 2 was the number-one-grossing movie in America on its opening weekend—and the male stars eat shit and drink horse semen for real. They’re nude a lot, too. If this isn’t cultural terrorism, I don’t know what is.

  3 The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald) Forest Whitaker tops the

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  print December 2005

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1 LAST DAYS (GUS VAN SANT) How does Gus get away with making films this great? So arty, so sexy, so maddeningly cool that I’m jealous. Michael Pitt is better at being Kurt Cobain than Kurt was.

  2 PALINDROMES (TODD SOLONDZ) Todd makes the perfect abortion movie: kind, scary, fair, and with amazing musical numbers! Come on over to Broadway, Mr. Solondz—we could use you.

  3 A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (DAVID CRONENBERG) Maria Bello is the best actress of the year, and for once you believe a scene in which the leading lady vomits from being shocked.

  4 GRIZZLY MAN (WERNER HERZOG) Timothy

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  print December 2004

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1. Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette) The best movie of the year. A scarily original underground documentary about a boy (the director) who saves his own life with a video camera. A truly sensational debut.

  2. Baadasssss! (Mario Van Peebles) Not since Ed Wood has there been a film that captures the “making of a movie” with such a first-hand knowledge and love of showmanship.

  3. The Mother (Roger Michell) A recently widowed grandmother turns horny and has a secret affair with her daughter’s much younger, loutish boyfriend. Gerontophilia never seemed so exciting.

  4. Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar)

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  print December 2003

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1. Irreversible (Gaspar Noé) The art shocker of the year is also the year’s best. Put on the horrifying sound-track CD (there is one), take a roofie, and remember this amazing journey into rape and, yes . . . intimacy.

  2. Dog Days (Ulrich Seidl) Runner-up. The most humiliating film ever made (for both actors and audience). Astonishingly hateful and original. Vienna never looked so depressing.

  3. The Son (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne) Lead actor Olivier Gourmet won the best-actor award at Cannes for this performance, despite the fact that he’s filmed almost entirely from the

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  passages Summer 2003

  Colin de Land

  IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, and I was standing, freezing, outside American Fine Arts, Co., when a shiny new purple pickup truck arrived with its ferocious cargo: The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Naked save for a coat of brightly colored body paint, seven band members leaped from the vehicle and paraded into the packed gallery for their performance. Inside the space, visitors were greeted by a photo in which bandleader Kembra Pfahler was seen prancing on a bed with another naked body—that of Colin de Land, the proprietor of American Fine Arts, painted completely blue and topped with a

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  print December 2002

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1. Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes) My favorite film of the year. A Douglas Sirk–inspired melodrama that actually works without being campy. How does a director this young know so much?

  2. La Chatte à deux têtes (Jacques Nolot) This hilarious, entertaining, and authentic film takes place entirely inside a Parisian porn theater. Somebody! Please! Give this movie American distribution!

  3. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke) Not since Salò have we had a shocker like this. Isabelle Huppert is God.

  4. Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón) Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal get my vote for screen

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  film December 2001

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1. Bully (Larry Clark) My favorite movie of the year: a dirty true-crime sexploitation picture that dares to be art. Larry Clark invents the “crotch-cam” shot and inspires the most outraged New York Times review of the season.

  2. Faithless (Liv Ullmann) Liv Ullmann channels Ingmar Bergman. See it on acid.

  3. L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta) A feel-good child molester with a hard-on of gold befriends a confused Long Island teen and his Gacy-bait sidekick.

  4. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch) Lipstick lesbians never had this much celluloid fun.

  5. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (Kevin Smith) GLAAD was

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  film December 2000

  John Waters

  JOHN WATERS

  1. Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier) The most hilariously moving, “feel-insane” movie of the year.

  2. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen) The jaw-dropping all-singing, all-dancing Ku Klux Klan—Busby Berkeley number is a real beaut.

  3. L’Humanité (Bruno Dumont) The endless saga of a simpleton cop so desperate to feel emotion that he spies on the sex life of his lusty neighbors and smells and kisses his crime suspects during interrogations.

  4. American Psycho (Mary Harron) A chain-saw movie for the elite; the funniest American comedy of the year.

  5. The Idiots (Lars von Trier) A

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  print December 1999

  BEST OF THE ’90s: FILM

  
  CINDY SHERMAN, artist:
  Thomas Vinterberg’s brilliant The Celebration (1998) is especially important because it signals the future of the medium, away from Hollywood’s excesses.

  JOHN WATERS, filmmaker: During the 1994 Cannes Film Festival I was sick in bed with the flu on the night Pulp Fiction premiered. Suddenly, from blocks away I heard the most stupendous roar of approval from the opening-night audience. I was so pissed to have missed the night Quentin Tarantino became an instant cinematic icon. But once I saw the movie I knew he deserved it. I guess you could call me a Quentin-hag.

  KIMBERLY