John Waters Annual Top Ten List
Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 1:06PM by Nathaniel R
Everyone's favorite weirdo kitsch and camp-loving auteur has released his annual top ten list. Though we really wish he'd make one last movie (A Dirty Shame was a weird thing to end on 13 years ago!) at least he's still with us as a cultural voice. His lists are always so fun to read because they're reliably eclectic with a little bit of every type of movie and usually one thing we've never heard of (this time that's I, Olga Hepnarova... a black and white docudrama about a chainsmoking lesbian in Prague). Topping his 2017 list is Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. He writes:
The best movie of the year is a popcorn thriller, an art film, and a gearhead classic that grossed over $100 million. It deserved to! Watching the star turn of Ansel Elgort was like seeing John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever for the first time.
And he gets sassy to the nation's moviegoing parents about Wonderstruck:
Want an IQ test for your cinephile children? Just take them to see this beautifully made, feel-good kids’ movie about the hearing-impaired, starring a little girl who looks exactly like Simone Signoret. If your small-fry like the film, they’re smart. If they don’t, they’re stupid.
He also likes Wonder Wheel, Lady Macbeth, and the HBO film Wizard of Lies. Check it out.
Reader Comments (15)
I love him, so I’ll just agree to disagree with the statement “Say what you will, Mr. Allen has never made a bad movie.”
I wish Nocturama has opened in my city
I wholeheartedly share Waters' affection for WONDERSTRUCK! :)
I like his jacket.
Baby Driver was an OK The Fast and The Furious (was that even The original title. I don't recall). The script deserves a Razzie nomination.
I agree:
jarringly perceptive portrait of the Madoff family’s behind-the-scenes panic and denial over their greed. De Niro’s performance is restrained to perfection as Bernie, and Michelle Pfeiffer is downright astonishing as his wife. This ain’t no TV movie—give ’em both Oscars.
Waters knows movies and film history- his taste are sometimes quirky
He lost me at Woody Allen
Everyone has their own tastes.
Me34: It's an "OK Fast and the Furious". LOL. Aside from both being "Car movies", I don't see any similarity. "The script deserves a Razzie nomination." Also LOL. Last year's nominees were:
Batman v Superman
Dirty Grandpa
Gods of Egypt
Hilary's America
Independence Day: Resurgence
Suicide Squad
If you think the failings of Baby Driver's script (and, yes, this IS a weaker script than any Cornetto trilogy film) are really on that level? You're a bleeping idiot.
Absolutely encourage people to track down and watch I, OLGA HEPNOROVA. A thoroughly engrossing film (not docu).
The Madoff film was very well made but extremely depressing
I look forward to his list every year, even though I HATE Baby Driver - worst movie of the year so far sez I. Wonderstruck and Nocturama are "close but no cigar", and Woody Allen has never made a movie I've been enthusiastic about. But the inclusion of Graduation redeems the whole list. An exceptional film I thought everyone else had forgotten. Now I doubly regret missing Lady Macbeth, and look forward to tracking down it and the other 5 I haven't seen yet.
Has Woody Allen made a bad movie? With over 40 to his name, of course.
BUT Wonder Wheel does not deserve the critical trashing it got. Critics don't get Woody, and they certainly didn't get this beautiful, purposefully-over-the-top tongue-in-cheek melodrama.
What I love most about Woody is that he's still trying, still striving for something, and not merely phoning it in, and he's in his 80s. Hit or miss, success or failure, Wonder Wheel is him reaching for something different, and that's worth something.
Surprised not to see I, Tonya here. Usually he goes for divisive spectacles of bad taste.
This leads me to think that movie either doesn't go as far as it promises to go, or it's just not very good. Or both. But I suppose I'll keep an open mind.
I also wish that "Tom of Finland" wins the Oscar for Foreign Language Film...
... if not, "Summer 1993", of course.