John Waters' Top Films of 2013: 'Spring Breakers' is #1

“Spring Breakers” may not have much of a shot at an Academy Award (despite A24’s campaign for James Franco), but the divisive Harmony Korine film has already made at least two Top Ten lists for best films of 2013: last week, the prestigious Cahiers du Cinema ranked “Spring Breakers’ #2 on its list and now filmmaker John Waters, a contributor to Artforum, named the indie hit his #1 film of 2013.

Waters ranked Bruno Dumont’s “Camille Claudel 1915,” starring Juliette Binoche, #2 on the list and ranks Dumont’s “Hors Satan” #4. He also calls Isabelle Huppert, star of “Abuse of Weakness” his “favorite actress in the world.” Films by Woody Allen (“Blue Jasmine”) and Pedro Almodovar (“I’m So Excited”) round out the list.

See Waters’ full list below:

John Waters’ Top 10 Films of 2013 (along with his reasons for including on the list)



1. Spring Breakers: The best sexploitation film of the year has Disney tween starlets

hilariously undulating, snorting cocaine, and going to jail in bikinis.

What more could a serious filmgoer possibly want?

2. Camile 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.

3. Abuse Of Weakness: Isabelle Huppert, my favorite actress in the world, plays a crazy

director (based on Breillat) who recovers from a massive brain injury by

falling for the convict swindler she casts in her film. Their

nonsexual, obsessive relationship is sheer perfection to watch,

especially when Huppert keeps falling down in those weirdly glamorous

orthopedic shoes.

4. Hors Satan: Nature never seemed more brutal than in this love story between a

mentally challenged holy man who performs miracles and a teenage bad

girl from the farm who foams at the mouth.

5. After Tiller: The brave documentary that asks the question, Which of the four doctors

who still perform late-term abortions in America do you like best? Me?

I’d pick the more matronly one from Albuquerque.

6. Hannah Arendt: Finally, a smart biopic about a writer. Barbara Sukowa gives a

phenomenal performance as the title character who caused an egghead shit

storm when she found her own Jewish intellectual freedom by coming to

understand the “banality of evil” at Adolf Eichmann’s trial.

7. 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!

8. Blue Jasmine: My Bay Area friend said it best: “We love the movie here. Only Woody Allen could make San Francisco look ugly.”

9. Blackfish: A whale snuff-film documentary that’ll make you root for the kidnapped

killer mammal and wish he had eaten alive Sea World’s evil owners.

10. 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.

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