With December right around the corner, it’s time for endless “best of” lists, and this year John Waters returns with his signature early and peculiar selection of best movies of the year. Waters is famously one of the most opinionated filmmakers with a truly varied taste for films, and his list for 2020 is just what you’d expect from the man behind “Pink Flamingos” and “Hair Spray” during the year 2020.
Waters shared his top 10 in the next issue of ArtForum, and at first glance, he doesn’t disappoint. You’ll find no “First Cow,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” or even “Nomadland” here. Instead, Waters’ number one movie of the year is a film about a guy who cannot stop putting increasingly bigger things up his butt in the aptly titled “Butt Boy” (which is surprisingly great). Waters praised the film as “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 to his ass, I kid you not.” Do you need more convincing?
READ MORE: ‘Climax’ Tops John Waters’ Top 10 Of 2019 List, Which Also Includes ‘Joker’ & More
In fact, most entries on the list are horror, or horror-adjacent, and each one is weirder than the last. Coming up at number 3 is the controversial Blumhouse movie “The Hunt.” In contrast, the number 4 spot goes to the incredibly violent and quite fun Russian movie “Why Don’t You Just Die,” which can best be described as a live-action “Itchy & Scratchy” movie. In turn, John Waters described the film as “a blood-drenched, seat-ripping, Tarantino-influenced Russian grindhouse family revenge comedy.”
In a list full of non-conventional movies, the most conventional picks are both tied for the number 10 spot, Aaron Sorkin‘s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and Steve McQueen‘s “Mangrove,” both courtroom docudramas based on true stories. Walters suggests you do a double feature with both films, and when you’re done, “go out and film yourself getting arrested at a protest rally. Then you’ll be the best movie of the year.”
Here’s his entirety of John Waters’ top 10 for 2020, and you really should see all of them, because they’re different levels of great:
1. Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack)
2. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)
3. The Hunt (Craig Zobel)
4. Why Don’t You Just Die! (Kirill Sokolov)
5. The Audition (Ina Weisse)
6. Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux)
7. The Human Voice (Pedro Almodóvar)
8. True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel)
9. American Murder: The Family Next Door (Jenny Popplewell)
10 (tie). Mangrove (Steve McQueen) & The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)
