The Top 10 Movies of 2023 According to Legendary Filmmaker John Waters

Summary

• Filmmaker John Waters picks his Top-10 films from 2023.
• The only big-budget blockbuster to be found on Waters’ list is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
• Beau Is Afraid and a number of other intriguing titles populate Waters’ eclectic selection of movies.

There are many amazing auteurs in the annals of Hollywood history… and then there’s John Waters. The world-renowned filmmaker, aka the “Pope of Trash,” is arguably best known for his work in Pink Flamingos and Hairspray. But It’s hard to reminisce about the 1990s and not think of Johnny Depp’s wildly underrated performance in Cry-Baby or Kathleen Turner’s killer — pun most definitely intended — portrayal of the titular character in Serial Mom. And as 2023 fades away, and cinephiles prepare to welcome 2024, Waters has composed his Top-10 list of this year’s best movies. Waters said in a story he wrote for Vulture:

“When most people hear my name, they think of the city of Baltimore, where I still live. But few know I have kept a secret apartment in New York City for over three decades. Why? To see f—ed-up foreign movies with frontal nudity — that’s why. Here, what you should be watching this year — not at home but in a Gotham art house with a full ticket price.”

Outside of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which barely makes Waters’ list at No. 9, none of the other domestic or worldwide Top-10, highest-grossing films made the grade. Noticeably absent is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, but Waters has put together a list of must-sees nonetheless. Check out Waters’ best movies of 2023 (below), and the talented filmmaker has provided a bit of commentary for each of his selections.

Related: John Waters: Every Film He Directed, Ranked

John Waters’ Top-10 Films of 2023

Movie fans won’t find Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One or even the bright-pink blockbuster Barbie on filmmaker John Waters’ Top-10 flicks of 2023 list. But what they will find are a number of out-of-the-box, thought-provoking movies, which didn’t make quite the same noise in cinemas as the blockbusters did over the last 12 months — with the exception of the aforementioned Oppenheimer.

10. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

“A maddeningly radical, tedious, shockingly repetitious, brilliant two-hour-and-43-minute Godard–meets–Harmony Korine Romanian masterpiece in which we spend way too much time locked in the car of a confident, trashy, gum-chewing workaholic PA for a movie company as she does her chores. When I finished watching the movie, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it, but when I woke up the next morning, I realized I loved it. Suffer for cinema! Sometimes it’s worth it!”

9. Oppenheimer

Deserves the Oscar for being a big-budget, star-studded, intelligent action movie about talking.

8. Strange Way of Life

A refreshingly unironic new look at gay-cowboy memory, lust, family, and guilt that proves blood is thicker than semen.

7. 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.”

6. Sparta

“Are Romanian children better off with a closeted male pedophile who never acts overtly but shows them love or their real nasty hetero adult fathers who force them to act ‘mean’ and ‘tough?’ No wonder controversy rages about the making of the film. All I know is two things: The movie’s fantastic, and I’m glad I’m not a chicken queen.”

5. 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.”

4. 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.

3. Master Gardener

Another erotic movie featuring gardening, this time an S&M one with stud-muffin-Nazi overtones and Sigourney Weaver in the best performance of the year as a sugar mama with a heart for vengeance. Dig it. Dig it deep, sir.

2. 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 f—ed up. In other words, perfect.”

1. 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.”

For those cinephiles looking for even more variety, please check out the former President of the United States Barack Obama’s Top 10 and MovieWeb’s best films of 2023 now. And for those who just can’t get enough of John Waters, take a peek at this fascinating behind-the-scenes look from Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, which the so-called “Baron of Bad Taste” played an integral part in setting in motion (below):

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