STUFF BY AND ABOUT JOHN WATERS

Director, pervert, trash-aficionado, creepy-mustache-haver, true-crime rubbernecker, celebrity-culture critic and all-around glittering personality, John Waters is one of the greatest human beings ever and his films surely must count as some of the most personal works by a director, even if they're about shit-eating drag queens or scumbags with unspeakable perversions. Netflix doesn't have his craziest work like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble or Polyester, but it does have a bunch of his latest work, that while not as anarchistic, are still very funny and surprisingly sweet films--even the ones about terrorists and sex addicts.

PECKER
Pecker is my favourite John Waters movie. It's about a simple, humble kid from Baltimore (played by John Connor!!) who likes to take pictures of the freaks and perverts in his hometown. His refreshingly "real" photos inadvertently rocket him to super-stardom in the sooty art world, a perhaps even more gross and dirty place than the slums of Baltimore. For all the dirty jokes and images, Pecker is a surprisingly sweet movie with a wonderful message about creating art for the pure pleasure of doing it. It's great! Oh and this is where the term "tea-bagging" originated from.


CECIL B. DEMENTED
Vincent Chase before he was Vincent Chase! Melanie Griffith in a wig with a gun! Dorff! Cinema terrorists! To be honest I was high when I saw this over 10 years ago so I don't remember it all that well. But I'm on a John Waters kick lately so I'm re-watching all his shit again, and this is on my list.



A DIRTY SHAME
Concussions are turning people into sex-addicts in suburban Baltimore. John Waters uses the brilliant Tracy Ullman and the awesome Johnny Knoxville to pit dirty perverts against puritanical squares. This movie is HI-LARIOUS.

CRY-BABY
This is one of John Water's "clean" movies, which only means it wasn't X-rated and didn't feature animatronic rat-fucking. But there's plenty of implied dirt and weirdness beneath it's PG-14 musical veneer. Yes, it IS a musical, but don't let that scare you off. The songs are really funny and the choreography is a blast. I just re-watched this (on NETFLIX bitches!) a couple of weeks ago and it was A-MAZING. I didn't think it would hold up as well, but it totally did.



John Waters: The Filthy World
To top everything off Netflix is offering this one-man show/standup performance Waters took on tour a couple of years ago. It's like those Evening with Kevin Smith type deals only it doesn't suck. It's basically John Waters telling perverted stories and zinging the crowd every other sentence. Seriously, I knew he was a super fun filmmaker and one of the best talk-show couch warmers you could ever hope for, but he's on fire for this thing. He could become a standup comedian for the rest of his career and probably make a killing.

KNIGHT AND DAY

Look, this isn't great or anything, but you've watched a lot worse for sure. Did you watch the new Conan remake? You did? Well, then you've seen at least one movie worse than Knight and Day so don't act so high and mighty. Don't pretend you're suddenly above Knight and Day, cuz you know what? You're not and you know it!

Here's the thing, movie stars are becoming extinct and Tom Cruise is one of the last fucking MOVIE STARS. So to pass this up is like saying you'll wait until all the tigers are dead and gone before you watch Planet Earth. We need to appreciate what we have right now before it's gone.

SOUTHERN COMFORT

Look at that poster! LOOK AT IT! It's not the same poster they use for Netflix, but whatever.

This is directed by Walter Hill, one of my all-time-favourites. He makes manly-man movies about manly men up against rocks and hard places who have to man-up and do shit like smoke and fight to get things straightened out. Southern Comfort is a kick-ass Deliverance rip-off about army reservists in the Bayou who piss off a bunch of hicks and then get their asses handed to them one-by-one. It's grrrrrreat!

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD

HOLY SHIT, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS YET? Fuck are you doing? Watch it already! You know what's better than watching 1 super nutso violent Aussie exploitation film? Watching awesome bits of a hundred super nutso violent Aussie exploitation films, interspersed with hilarious interviews with the nutso's that made them on why they made their shit so nutso.

I had to keep pausing this every 2 minutes to write down the title of yet another insane Aussie film that looked like the best thing ever. If you're a garbage-hound like me, this movie will haunt your dreams cuz like 75% of the killer movies featured in this doc aren't available here.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

If there's one terrifying lesson to be learned from this awesome "kids" movie, it's: don't trust kindly old people. Spoiler Alert!?!

Some say that nostalgia is the death of originality, but if wishing for a time when DABNEY COLEMAN was convincingly cast as a super spy means I'm a nostalgist, than guilty as charged. I'm also nostalgic for a time when nobody ever said/typed SPOILER ALERT!?!

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

I dare even the most jaded emo asshole not to smile during this. I FUCKING DARE YOU, BRENT!

You know when people say things like, "the feeling was infectious"? Well, the happy go-luckyness of Happy-Go-Lucky is infectious. Also, I just generally like movies that take place on other continents because it feels like I'm going on a really cheap vacation.