LSD, Satan, serial killers, and Joker round out John Waters' top 10 movies of 2019

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again, folks! John Waters has once more come to town with a sack full of film recommendations for all the weird, horny cinephiles out there looking for movies they may have missed or overlooked in 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his top ten of this year features a lot of nudity, illicit substances, and devil worship, but for a few fans, one of his selections may give them an initial pause: Joker.

“Irresponsible? Maybe. Dangerous? We’ll see. The first big-budget Hollywood movie to gleefully inspire anarchy. Bravo, Todd Phillips! Only you could get away with it,” Waters wrote of the DC Comics origin story, closing out a list that also includes solid entries like Climax, The Souvenir, The Golden Glove, and Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood.

While including Todd Phillips’ unlikely film in his lineup might seem a bit out-of-character for someone like Waters, it’s probably the least surprising movie of the bunch. After all, the movie’s director was keen to k’vetch about political correctness policing in Hollywood, and the film itself subverted conventional ideas of the superhero genre. And let’s not forget this is a story centered on an underfed actor smoking a cigarette through garish makeup telling society how screwed up and hypocritical we all are.