Film director John Waters is working on a novel titled Liarmouth. His last book Mr. Know-It-All (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), was just released in paperback.
1
BUTT BOY (Tyler Cornack)
A jaw-dropping, deadpan, bowel-bonkers thriller about a heterosexual dad who after a routine visit to his proctologist becomes a serial killer and inhales his victims up his ass, I kid you not. First a dog, then a child, and finally the very cop who pursues him. The finale takes place inside Dad’s rectum. Ah, they don’t make ’em like they used to!
2
SWALLOW (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)
What can I say? I love movies about people who consume foreign objects into any bodily orifice. This psychological horror film features an unhappily married woman who is driven to eat marbles, thumbtacks, batteries, and household knickknacks; shit them out; then wash and display these items like trophies in her own home. This picture even has a happy ending—abortion. Don’t ask why. Just watch. You’ll see.
3
THE HUNT (Craig Zobel)
A hilarious political-exploitation film that depicts a civil war between antifa and Proud Boy types that now seems almost prophetic. Betty Gilpin, in one snarling climactic scene, gets my vote for Best Deplorable Actress of the Year.
4
WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE! (Kirill Sokolov)
A blood-drenched, seat-ripping, Tarantino-influenced Russian grindhouse family-revenge comedy that begs one to watch it with other stoned or drunk ticket buyers in a packed movie theater. Sigh. Will this ever happen again?
5
THE AUDITION (Ina Weisse)
This Ingmar Bergman–meets–Joanna Hogg melodrama of obsession, compulsion, and self-destruction may end with a “Bad Seed” twist, but its whip-smart screenplay, which shows that all classical musicians are indeed insane, will fill you with arty masochistic inner peace.
6
DEERSKIN (Quentin Dupieux)
The fashion film of the year. A man becomes so fixated on a fringed jacket he finds in a thrift store that he sets out to kill every other person in the whole world who might dare to imitate his new signature look.
7
THE HUMAN VOICE (Pedro Almodóvar)
Tilda Swinton, celebrated, adored, and stalked by the camera in a thirty-minute dramaturgical, couture-driven, production-designed emotional crack-up, is pure cinematic enjoyment.
8
TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (Justin Kurzel)
A gory, insane, homoerotic, historical western featuring a gang of outlaw robbers who sometimes dress in drag just to fuck with the cops’ heads. A truly astonishing, unhinged performance by George MacKay as their leader gives new meaning to the word butch.
9
AMERICAN MURDER: THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR (Jenny Popplewell)
This doc has the visual goods to tell a hard-hitting true-crime story really well without cheesy reenactments, but what makes it even more powerful is how depressing it is for the viewer to discover the cute guy is the real killer.
10
Tie: THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (Aaron Sorkin) and MANGROVE (Steve McQueen)
Watch these two empowering real-life contempt-of-court docudramas together as a double feature. One goes back to 1969, when American white radicals actually had a sense of humor and used it as comic terrorism, and the other shows there was nothing funny about the West Indian immigrants who, a year later in the UK, refused to stop marching and kicked ass. Afterward, go out and film yourself getting arrested at a protest rally. Then you’ll be the best movie of the year.