Television/Film References in John Waters' Favorite Films of the Year
A list of television shows and film references in the films selected by John Waters as his favorite films of the year.
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- DirectorVictor FlemingKing VidorStarsJudy GarlandFrank MorganRay BolgerYoung Dorothy Gale and her dog Toto are swept away by a tornado from their Kansas farm to the magical Land of Oz, and embark on a quest with three new friends to see the Wizard, who can return her to her home and fulfill the others' wishes.Pink Narcissus - Actor–model Bobby Kendall’s ass: As beautiful and timeless as The Wizard of Oz.
- DirectorJean CocteauStarsJean MaraisJosette DayYvonne de BrayMichel is in love with Madeleine, so he decides to tell his parents of his intention to marry her. He thinks his announcement is innocent enough; his engagement, however, threatens to reveal dark secrets lurking within his family's home.The Virgin Suicides - Who would have predicted Sofia Coppola could bring to mind Cocteau’s Les parents terribles?
- DirectorFrank PerryStarsFaye DunawayDiana ScarwidSteve ForrestThe abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen queen Joan Crawford, is depicted.Chopper - Eric Bana, as the Australian psycho-murderer who wrote a best-selling autobiography, is as scarily likable as Faye Dunaway was in Mommie Dearest.
Cet amour-là - Jeanne Moreau is Marguerite Duras – and as much fun as Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. - DirectorTodd SolondzStarsJane AdamsJon LovitzPhilip Seymour HoffmanThe lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.Storytelling - The director of Happiness leaves you squirming in your seat, feeling gloriously bad. What more do you want for a $10 admission?
- DirectorPier Paolo PasoliniStarsPaolo BonacelliGiorgio CataldiUberto Paolo QuintavalleIn World War II Italy, four fascist libertines round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental, and sexual torture.The Piano Teacher - Not since Salò have we had a shocker like this. Isabelle Huppert is God.
The Last Mistress - A brilliant costume drama that gets down on its tripod to worship the amazingly pillowy lips of its male lead, Fu’ad Ait Aattou. The most seductively sexual on-screen storytelling since Salò.
Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 and 2 - I, a Woman meets Salò. I thank the director for every hideous second of this comic masterpiece. - DirectorFederico FelliniStarsMarcello MastroianniAnouk AiméeClaudia CardinaleA harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.Friday Night - he most provocative traffic jam since Fellini’s 8½. So slow. So infuriating. So sexy.
- CreatorJoe ConnellyBob MosherDick ConwayStarsJerry MathersHugh BeaumontBarbara BillingsleyThe misadventures of a suburban boy, family and friends.Ken Park - Leave It to Beaver goes hard-core. Bravo! Clark’s the only director who consistently makes the New York Times rise to his bait.
- DirectorTim BurtonStarsJohnny DeppMartin LandauSarah Jessica ParkerAmbitious but troubled movie director Edward D. Wood Jr. tries his best to fulfill his dreams despite his lack of talent.Baadasssss! - Not since Ed Wood has there been a film that captures “making of a movie” with such a firsthand knowledge and love of showmanship.
- DirectorFrank PerryStarsKeir DulleaJanet MargolinHoward Da SilvaTeenager David Clemens develops a hysterical fear that he will die if he comes into physical contact with another person. Perturbed, David's overbearing mother places him in a home for mentally disturbed young people.Head-On - A David and Lisa for the criminally insane moviegoer. You’ll feel like dating an alcoholic after seeing this Turkish/German love story from hell.
- DirectorSharad PatelStarsJoseph OlitaThomas BaptisteLeonard TrolleyThe chronicle of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and his tyranic rule from 1971 to his overthrow in 1979.The Last King of Scotland - Forest Whitaker tops the performance of Joseph Olita in 1981’s Rise and Fall of Idi Amin, one of my all-time favorite trash masterpieces.
- DirectorTaylor HackfordStarsJamie FoxxRegina KingKerry WashingtonThe story of the life and career of the legendary rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles, from his humble beginnings in the South, where he went blind at age seven, to his meteoric rise to stardom during the 1950s and 1960s.I'm Not There - A suggestion of a biography whose million little fractions add up to one knockout of a movie. The exact opposite of Ray!
- DirectorJean CocteauRené ClémentStarsJean MaraisJosette DayMila ParélyA beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.The Wrestler - The director may be channeling the Dardenne brothers, but Mickey Rourke eerily reminds me of Jean Marais bringing beauty to the Beast in Cocteau’s La belle et la bête. Just imagine Mickey’s Oscar speech!
- DirectorRonny YuStarsRobert EnglundKen KirzingerKelly RowlandFreddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees return to terrorize the teenagers of Elm Street. Only this time, they're out to get each other, too.Mesrine Parts 1 and 2 - Four and a half more hours about another French criminal/folk hero/stud. Who’s badder? More butch? Cuter nude? Carlos or Jacques Mesrine? Why not a subtitled ten-hour Freddy vs. Jason combined sequel about both? In Sensurround, s’il vous plaït.
- DirectorMark RobsonStarsCharlton HestonAva GardnerGeorge KennedyVarious interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.Mesrine Parts 1 and 2 - Four and a half more hours about another French criminal/folk hero/stud. Who’s badder? More butch? Cuter nude? Carlos or Jacques Mesrine? Why not a subtitled ten-hour Freddy vs. Jason combined sequel about both? In Sensurround, s’il vous plaït.
- DirectorJean-Jacques BeineixStarsJean-Hugues AngladeBéatrice DalleGérard DarmonA lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.Domain - My favorite movie of the year. A forty-year-old alcoholic aunt (played by Beatrice Dalle – “Betty Blue” herself!) and her gayish teenage nephew form a perversely close relationship by taking walks together. Lots of walks! So many walks you’ll be left breathless by the sheer elegance of this astonishing little workout.
- DirectorJacques DemyStarsCatherine DeneuveNino CastelnuovoAnne VernonA young woman separated from her lover by war faces a life-altering decision.Beloved - Another crackpot Umbrellas of Cherbourg homage by the French director who adores unrequited love, cigarettes, Catherine Deneuve, and especially Louis Garrel. Yes, it’s L‑O‑N‑G, but I wished the characters had kept on singing in the theater even after the projectionist had gone home for the night.
- DirectorJames WanStarsCary ElwesLeigh WhannellDanny GloverTwo strangers awaken in a room with no recollection of how they got there, and soon discover they're pawns in a deadly game perpetrated by a notorious serial killer.Amour - Misery is really in this year. “Hurts! Hurts! Hurts!” yells out the dying elderly wife to her longtime-caretaker husband, and ticket buyers will agree. Makes Saw seem like a romantic comedy.
- DirectorDavid Lowell RichStarsAlain DelonSusan BlakelyRobert WagnerA supersonic airborne disaster. In order to survive a flight headed for the Moscow Olympics, passengers of the Concorde must endure aerial acrobatics to dodge missiles and survive a device that decompresses the plane.I'm So Excited! - Flight goes queer. Right up there with Airport ’79 in the aviation-disaster genre. Only Pedro could pull off a joyously farcical yet eerily beautiful plane crash and not blow the budget by showing it.
- DirectorJerzy KawalerowiczStarsLucyna WinnickaMieczyslaw VoitAnna CiepielewskaA priest is sent to a small parish in the Polish countryside which is believed to be under demonic possession and there he finds his own temptations awaiting.Beyond the Hills - If you thought Mother Joan of the Angels was the best arty Catholic movie about exorcism, think again. The supposedly demonized young girl is not possessed – she just wants to be a lesbian!
- DirectorTod BrowningStarsWallace FordLeila HyamsOlga BaclanovaA circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.Camille Claudel 1915 - Not since Freaks has there been such a harrowing pairing of a star (the sensational Juliette Binoche) with a cast of genuinely handicapped actors. Once again, the great Dumont proves he is the ultimate master of cinematic misery.
- DirectorMac AhlbergStarsEssy PerssonPreben MahrtJørgen ReenbergThe young nurse Siv is frustrated by the strict restraints of her religious parents and her boring fiancé, Sven. At the hospital where she works a patient Heinz, a married antiques dealer flirts with her. Although she is warned that he is a philandering playboy, she allows him to seduce her and they have an affair. He tells her that he loves her and proposes to leave his wife for her. Having only just discovered a new world of sexual liberty, she rejects his proposal. She then breaks off her engagement with Sven, moves away from her parents and finds a nursing position in another city. She meets Lars, a sailor, and they begins a relationship. When he proposes marriage, she breaks up with him. She begins dating Doctor Dam at the hospital where she works. He also falls in love with her, so she stops seeing him and decides that no single man will ever completely fulfill her own desires. She has a sexual encounter with a stranger, Eric who she realizes perfectly matches her own promiscuity.Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 and 2 - I, a Woman meets Salò. I thank the director for every hideous second of this comic masterpiece.
- DirectorAndrew JareckiStarsArnold FriedmanJesse FriedmanDavid FriedmanDocumentary on the Friedmans, a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family whose world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes.Who Took Johnny? - An amazing, lunatic head-scratcher of a documentary about missing children with plot twists that will leave you creeped out, surprised, and excited. As good as Capturing the Friedmans.
- DirectorJohn WatersStarsDivineTab HunterEdith MasseyA suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.The Smell Of Us - When the director, playing a wino savant named Rockstar, actually sucks the toes of his French teen male star on-screen (with subtitles yet!), you’ll know you’re beyond Odorama. The smell here may be ripe, but Larry Clark is back in top form. Oh, yeah... it’s a great musical.
- DirectorUli EdelStarsJennifer Jason LeighStephen LangBurt YoungSet in Brooklyn during the 1950s against a backdrop of union corruption and violence. A prostitute falls in love with one of her customers. Also a disturbed man discovers that he is homosexual.Tangerine - Last Exit to Los Angeles. A beautifully shot underground transgender adventure story that’s worth seeing for the scary extras alone.
- DirectorLuchino ViscontiStarsDirk BogardeIngrid ThulinHelmut GriemThe dramatic collapse of a wealthy, industrialist/Junker family during the reign of the Third Reich.Helmut Berger, Actor - Maybe the best motion picture of the year is also the worst? One-time dreamboat movie star and lover of Visconti, Helmut Berger, now 71 and sometimes looking like Marguerite Duras, rants and raves in his ramshackle apartment while the maid dishes the dirt about his sad life. The rules of documentary access are permanently fractured here when our featured attraction takes off all his clothes on camera, masturbates, and actually ejaculates. The Damned, indeed.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsHéloïse GodetKamel AbdelliRichard ChevallierA silent, surreal parallel between a couple and a dog.Wiener-Dog - The funniest dog movie since Godard’s Goodbye to Language. Nasty, blunt, rude, and full of hideous surprises.
- CreatorJackie GleasonStarsJackie GleasonArt CarneyAudrey MeadowsA bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience.Wonder Wheel - An impeccably acted potboiler in which Woody channels Tennessee Williams meets The Honeymooners, with a pyromaniac kid thrown in to add a touch of Bad Seed flavor. Say what you will, Mr. Allen has never made a bad movie. This is one of his best.
- DirectorJordan PeeleStarsDaniel KaluuyaAllison WilliamsBradley WhitfordA young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.Lady Macbeth - The exact opposite of Get Out – here the bad white liberals actually win. Viciously funny and maybe the meanest movie of the decade.
- DirectorMervyn LeRoyStarsNancy KellyPatty McCormackGage ClarkeRhoda Penmark seems like your average, sweet eight-year-old girl. After her rival at school dies in mysterious circumstances at the school picnic, her mother starts to suspect that Rhoda was responsible.Wonder Wheel - An impeccably acted potboiler in which Woody channels Tennessee Williams meets The Honeymooners, with a pyromaniac kid thrown in to add a touch of Bad Seed flavor. Say what you will, Mr. Allen has never made a bad movie. This is one of his best.
The Audition - 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. - DirectorJohn BadhamStarsJohn TravoltaKaren Lynn GorneyBarry MillerAnxious about his future after high school, a 19-year-old Italian-American from Brooklyn tries to escape the harsh reality of his bleak family life by dominating the dance floor at the local disco.Baby Driver - 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.
- DirectorPaul MorrisseyStarsJoe DallesandroHolly WoodlawnGeri MillerDuring the course of a day, a heroin addict overdoses in front of an upper-class couple, attempts to fool welfare by having his girlfriend fake a pregnancy, and frustrates the women in his life with his drug-induced impotence.Sollers Point - Can a heterosexual director worship his male lead on film just as much as Paul Morrissey obviously did Joe Dallesandro in Trash? Sure looks that way. McCaul Lombardi is a blazing star in this small-scale but beautiful drama about a young parolee’s struggle to re-enter lower-middle-class life in Baltimore.
- DirectorDavid LynchStarsJack NanceCharlotte StewartAllen JosephHenry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.Border - If Eraserhead had cousins, this transgressive troll couple would have welcomed them into their jaw-droppingly-bizarre world of overdeveloped noses, maggot-eating diets, and pedophile-hunting duties. You won’t believe this one!
- DirectorMichael PowellEmeric PressburgerStarsAnton WalbrookMarius GoringMoira ShearerA young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.Climax - he best movie of the year gives new meaning to the term “bad trip.” Frenzied dance numbers combined with LSD, mental breakdowns, and childhood trauma turn this nutcase drama into The Red Shoes meets Hallucination Generation. Freak out, baby, freak out!
- DirectorEdward MannStarsGeorge MontgomeryDanny SteinmannTom BakerA juvenile is mad at his mom so he leaves his home in San Francisco to join a charismatic LSD guru's cult in Spain and turns on, tunes in, and drops out. He also gets involved in murder.Climax - he best movie of the year gives new meaning to the term “bad trip.” Frenzied dance numbers combined with LSD, mental breakdowns, and childhood trauma turn this nutcase drama into The Red Shoes meets Hallucination Generation. Freak out, baby, freak out!
- DirectorPedro AlmodóvarStarsPenélope CruzMilena SmitIsrael ElejaldeThe story of two mothers who bond in unexpected way after giving birth the same day.The Onania Club - OK, I’m really going out on a limb here, replacing Pedro Almodóvar’s exquisite Parallel Mothers, a film everybody should love, with this loathsome unreleased feature everybody will probably hate. The Human Centipede director tops himself with a story of rich Los Angeles women who gather together to masturbate while watching news footage of the world’s misery. Often wrongheaded but sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, it has been rejected by film distributors worldwide. All I can say is that the movie sure as hell delivers. You will probably never be able to see it. Maybe that’s a good thing . . .
- DirectorTom SixStarsDieter LaserWinter WilliamsAshlynn YennieA mad scientist kidnaps and mutilates a trio of tourists in order to reassemble them into a human centipede, created by stitching their mouths to each others' rectums.The Onania Club - OK, I’m really going out on a limb here, replacing Pedro Almodóvar’s exquisite Parallel Mothers, a film everybody should love, with this loathsome unreleased feature everybody will probably hate. The Human Centipede director tops himself with a story of rich Los Angeles women who gather together to masturbate while watching news footage of the world’s misery. Often wrongheaded but sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, it has been rejected by film distributors worldwide. All I can say is that the movie sure as hell delivers. You will probably never be able to see it. Maybe that’s a good thing . . .
- DirectorLuchino ViscontiStarsDirk BogardeRomolo ValliMark BurnsWhile recovering in Venice, sickly composer Gustav von Aschenbach becomes dangerously fixated with teenager Tadzio.The Most Beautiful Boy in the World - Imagine, today, openly gay director Luchino Visconti being allowed inside a high school to parade auditioning half-naked teenage boys in front of him for his film Death in Venice. This harrowing documentary explores the perils of teen stardom for the kid who got the part and went from being the most beautiful to the most fucked up.
Last Summer - A devastatingly pernicious tale of a French lawyer for abused minors who falls in lust with her own fawnish but nasty underage stepson, played by Samuel Kircher, who gives the lead kid in Death in Venice a run for his money. Not since Paul Morrissey and Joe Dallesandro has there been a director-star connection this hot and unconsummated. She gets it. He gets it raw. - DirectorRichard L. BareStarsDavid BaileyTiffany BollingRandolph RobertsA tongue-in-cheek psycho movie in "Duo-vision." The entire feature employs the split-screen technique used in parts of Brian De Palma's "Sisters" that same year. As a handyman at a seacoast hotel, Randolph Roberts wears a monster mask while he kills and dismembers women with blond hair. Tiffany Bolling is a singer, Scott Brady is a detective and Edd "Kookie" Burns is a lifeguard. The music is the original organ score for the silent film "Phantom of the Opera."Vortex - The director’s most humane and unironic yet scarily claustrophobic feel-bad drama about death is filmed in split-screen Duo-Vision, so be prepared for twice the disturbing power of his other cinematic shockers.
- DirectorJulia DucournauStarsVincent LindonAgathe RousselleGarance MarillierFollowing a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for ten years.Will-o-the-Wisp - A racially risky, raunchy Portuguese musical about class and pyromania that will light you on fire. Facials! Fake dicks! A real arty head-scratcher of a film that makes Titane seem tame.
- DirectorJohn WatersStarsDivineDavid LocharyMary Vivian PearceA spoiled schoolgirl runs away from home, gets pregnant while hitch-hiking, and ends up as a fashion model for a pair of beauticians who like to photograph women committing crimes.Sick of Myself - A pair of narcissistic Norwegian lovers can’t stop competing for the public’s attention. He’s a sculptor who uses furniture he steals as material, and she takes recalled poison medication on purpose to make her skin break out in rashes and boils so she can become a model with disabilities. No, it’s not Female Trouble, but it’s just as nuts. Pretty? Pretty? Pretty fucked up!
- StarsLucille BallDesi ArnazVivian VanceThe wife of a band leader constantly tries to become a star - in spite of her having no talent, and gets herself (along with her best friend) into the funniest predicaments.Everything Went Fine - Assisted suicide for the elderly has never been so madcap. So I Love Lucy. So feel-so-bad-you’ll-feel-good. With a cast to die for—literally. Hanna Schygulla (AGAIN!), Jacques Nolot (my hero), and Charlotte Rampling as the nastiest ex-wife in the world.
- DirectorRobert BressonStarsAnne WiazemskyWalter GreenFrançois LafargeThe story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.EO - Another tribute film, this time Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar meets Old Yeller. Can a donkey remember? Just ask Isabelle Huppert, who pops up in this movie for no apparent reason except that she’s the best actress in the world.
- DirectorRobert StevensonStarsDorothy McGuireFess ParkerTommy KirkA teenage boy grows to love a stray yellow dog while helping his mother and younger brother run their Texas homestead while their father is away on a cattle drive. First thought to be good-for-nothing mutt, Old Yeller is soon beloved by all.EO - Another tribute film, this time Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar meets Old Yeller. Can a donkey remember? Just ask Isabelle Huppert, who pops up in this movie for no apparent reason except that she’s the best actress in the world.
- DirectorDouglas SirkStarsJane WymanRock HudsonAgnes MooreheadA rich playboy whose recklessness inadvertently causes the death of a prominent doctor tries to make amends to his widow, and falls for her in the process.Fallen Leaves - Another deadpan Finnish kitchen-sink melodrama from one of the world’s greatest auteurs. An alcoholic factory worker and a lonely supermarket clerk meet by chance and struggle to fall in love. It’s drab, it’s short, it’s beautiful, and it lacks nothing. Just call it Unmagnificent Obsession. Shut up and love it.
- DirectorWilliam FriedkinStarsGene HackmanRoy ScheiderFernando ReyA pair of NYPD detectives in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a heroin smuggling ring based in Marseilles, but stopping them and capturing their leaders proves an elusive goal.Full Time - An exhausting thriller, as exciting as The French Connection, about a normal single-mother hotel worker and whether she’ll get to work on time in Paris during a transit strike. Trust me—it’s brilliant.
- DirectorAaron HorvathMichael JelenicPierre LeducStarsChris PrattAnya Taylor-JoyCharlie DayA plumber named Mario travels through an underground labyrinth with his brother Luigi, trying to save a captured princess.A Prince - You’ve never heard of this one, but I’d never heard of Super Mario Bros. when it came out either, so there. A most unlikely gay movie about a gerontophilic hot male farmer and his two old-man lovers who drop dead for no apparent reason other than being “embarrassed by youth and beauty.” It’s dirty in a soil-like way. Dicks turn into mythic creatures; men howl like dogs. Slow, spooky, and poetically fucked up. In other words, perfect.
- DirectorMichael AndersonJohn FarrowStarsDavid NivenCantinflasFinlay CurrieA Victorian Englishman bets that with the new steamships and railways he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days.Beau Is Afraid - A superlong, super-crazy, super-funny movie about one man’s mental breakdown with a cast better than Around the World in 80 Days’: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane, and Amy Ryan. It’s a laugh riot from hell you’ll never forget, even if you want to.