2017 Superlatives.

If the influence of Netflix bears any fruit herein, it's that I no longer feel the need to cling to numerical limits. 2017 has been a brutal year across the board, and I have unlimited love for anyone who would A) think that they might find some joy in my hierarchical foolishness, and B) actually read the whole thing. 

Everyone is dealing with too much. But in an ideal, non-fascist world, I think these selections would make for a great party and a great broadcast.

ACTOR

Claes Bang, The Square

Damien Bonnard, Staying Vertical

Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name

John Cho, Columbus

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Michael Fassbender, Alien: Covenant

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Kyle Mooney, Brigsby Bear

ACTRESS

Eili Harboe, Thelma

Anne Hathaway, Colossal

Lee Min-hee, On The Beach At Night Alone

Alice Lowe, Prevenge

Melanie Lynskey, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

Rooney Mara, A Ghost Story

Haley Lu Richardson, Columbus

Octavia Spencer, The Shack

Michelle Williams, All The Money In The World

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards...

Benny Safdie, Good Time

Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name

Jason Sudeikis, Colossal

Steve Zahn, War for the Planet of the Apes

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Betty Buckley, Split

Beanie Feldstein, Lady Bird

Betty Gabriel, Get Out

Mia Goth, A Cure for Wellness

Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip

Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread

Jennifer Jason Leigh, Good Time

Sophia Lillis, It

Sigourney Weaver, (Re)Assignment

Taliah Lennice Webster, Good Time

DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow, Detroit

Macon Blair, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

Bong Joon-ho, Okja

Liam Gavin, A Dark Song

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Luca Guadagnino, Call Me By Your Name

Kogonada, Columbus

Alice Lowe, Prevenge

Jordan Peele, Get Out

Joao Pedro Rodrigues, The Ornithologist

Ridley Scott, Alien: Covenant

EDITOR

William Goldenberg and Harry Yoon, Detroit

Han Mee-yeon and Yang Jin-mo, Okja

Gregory Plotkin, Get Out

Elisabet Ronaldsdottir, Atomic Blonde

Evan Schiff, John Wick: Chapter 2

Lee Smith, Dunkirk

Andrew Weisblum, mother!

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Bojan Bazelli, A Cure for Wellness

Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049

Peter Flinckenberg, Woodshock

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Call Me By Your Name

Rui Pocas, The Ornithologist

Brian Sowell, Sequence Break

Dariusz Wolski, Alien: Covenant

SCORE

Nathan Barr, Flatliners

Ola Flottum, Thelma

Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread

Van Hughes, Sequence Break

Clint Mansell, The Foreigner

Mark Mothersbaugh, Thor Ragnarok

Toydrum, Prevenge

Benjamin Wallfisch, A Cure for Wellness

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Justin Benson, The Endless

Macon Blair, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore

Rebecca Blunt, Logan Lucky

Kevin Costello and Kyle Mooney, Brisgbsy Bear

Ephthymis Filippou and Yorgos Lanthimos, The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Liam Gavin, A Dark Song

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, The Big Sick

Jordan Peele, Get Out

Steven Sears and Bill Watterson, Dave Made a Maze

David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer, Ingrid Goes West

Nacho Vigalondo, Colossal

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled

James Ivory, Call me By Your Name

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Endless Poetry

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Bad Black

Bloodlands

BPM

Okja

On the Beach At Night Alone

The Ornithologist

Park

The Square

Staying Vertical

Thelma

The Untamed

DOCUMENTARY

Beware the Slenderman

Did You Wonder Who Fired The Gun?

Faces Places

Filmworker

Industrial Accident

Mansfield 66/67

Obit.

The Road Movie

78/52

Whitney: Can I Be Me?

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Paul D. Austerberry, The Shape of Water

Conor Dennison, A Dark Song

Trisha Gum and John Sumner, Dave Made a Maze

Dan Hennah and Ra Vincent, Thor: Ragnarok

Jeremy Hindle, Detroit

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Endless Poetry

Chris Seagers, Alien: Covenant

Eve Stewart, A Cure for Wellness

Hugues Tissandier, Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets

COSTUME DESIGN

Miyako Bellizzi and Mordechai Rubinstein, Good Time

Olivier Beriot, Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets

Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread

Patricia Doria, The Ornithologist

Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky, Endless Poetry

Giulia Piersanti, Call me By Your Name

Mayes C. Rubeo, Thor: Ragnarok

ANIMATED FEATURE

Birdboy (Los Psiconautas)

Coco

The Lego Batman Movie

VISUAL EFFECTS

Alien: Covenant

Blade Runner 2049

A Quiet Passion

UNDISTRIBUTED

Bad Black

Bloodlands

Industrial Accident

Insomnium

Park

Show Yourself

Those Who Make Revolution Only Halfway Dig Their Own Graves

We’ve Forgotten More Than We Ever Knew

Without Name

BEST FILMS

1 Call Me By Your Name

To know that your first love matters. To live your life amidst literature, and music, and art, and beauty, and those meals, and to find yourself unmoored by the deepest kinds of love and hornitude, and to know that in the end, it matters.

2 A Dark Song

As if Clive Barker and David Simon had collaborated.

3 Colossal/Get Out

Unjust systems, concealed in the soft touch of love, that feed on everything distinctive and kind and interesting about you.

4 Phantom Thread

The best Joseph Losey film since the death of Joseph Losey.

5 BPM/Columbus/Dave Made a Maze/Lady Bird/Thelma

Dismantling the structures, figuratively and literally, with which the customs of the past have shaped us and how we live with others.

6 Alien: Covenant/Faces Places

The innate strength of humanity is to adapt and transform ourselves, and the spaces in which we live. But our flaws cannot be escaped. Teach the children well, to be sure. And leave the curmudgeonly old men behind.

7 Blade Runner 2049/The Endless/Sequence Break

Innovation and escape. A new way of looking at the linear and removing oneself from its matrix. Resourceful thinking and a willingness to embrace the strange and unusual.

8 The Square

"Tesla of Justice."

9 I Don’t Feel At Home in This World Anymore/mother!/The Ornitholgist

Stumbling around in a cosmic melodrama with no clear rules and no way to win. But always hope. Always faith in the process. The best religious pictures of the year.

10 The Beguiled/A Cure for Wellness/The Killing of a Sacred Deer

How to dismantle the patriarchy. Expansive, historical, gruesome, and deeply deeply satisfying.

WORST FILMS:

1 Transformers: The Last Knight

2 Boo 2: A Madea Halloween

3 Rings

4 The Snowman

5 Caniba

6 Friend Request

7 Beach Rats

8 Fifty Shades Darker

9 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

10 Fate of the Furious

A brief update.

I interviewed comedian Dave Stone.

I reviewed the exceptional Norwegian film Thelma.

And I reviewed The Square.

What I've been doing as of late.

Things which I have been up to over the past few months.



Oh yeah, and Lady Bird. I reviewed that.

Goblin, y'all! Goblin! With awesome YouTube mixtape attached.

A review of The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which is awesome, and people who dis it as having anything to do with Michael Haneke are mistaken.

For the sixteenth consecutive year, I attended the New York Film Festival.

A piece on the transcendent guitarist Mdou Moctar.

Adam Gold and I compiled our personal fave Depeche Mode tracks.

Aww shit! I was on a podcast talking about Depeche Mode.

A review of the Safdie Brothers' Good Time.

A review of the new It, wherein I was actually physically assaulted by a drunk person during the press screening.

A few words about the 'Nashville Statement.'

First off, after reading the so-called 'Nashville Statement," I find it to be inaccurately named; it reeks of some Williamson County bullshit.

It makes sense that this would drop during the day when noted charlatan Joel Osteen had to be shamed into following the most basic teachings of Christ. In exchange for an illicit spot on the Supreme Court, evangelical Christianity's embrace of Donald Trump and all that he stands for remains a jawdropping betrayal of principle.

Not a single signer of this statement is an influencer or authority outside of their own myopic perversion of the words of Christ. There's not a person among them with any reach beyond the dreary, hateful choir they're preaching at.

As annoying as the polygentrification of this city's neighborhoods have been, as frustrating as the ensuing parking drama has grown, as many slapdash hot chicken experiments that proliferate on more menus than they really should, the great thing about Nashville is that the ignorant and homophobic mentality that resulted in this statement- well, it's no longer the majority. Keep your trifling rejection of the LGBT community in Brentwood, because Nashville isn't having it.

Christ is love. You know what would have been an amazing way of consolidating a myriad of Christian voices today? Helping the people of Houston. Reaching out to the needy and those who were hurting. Doing something kind.

But whatever. In the words of Haven Hamilton, I want this to speak to your heart... "They can't do this to us in Nashville. Let's show them what we're made of." Show your love to those in need. Christianity is about opening doors, not building walls. Stay strong, Houston. We've got love for you.

Catching Up with Jason Shawhan...

Here's some of the things I've been up to as of late...


A review of Annabelle: Creation.

An interview with comedian and MST3K's own Jonah Ray.

A review of Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit.

A review of Girls Trip.

A review of Spider-Man: Homecoming.

A review of Songwriter, one of the ten best films ever made.

A review of Baby Driver.

A review of the emotionless hate buffet that is Transformers: The Last Knight.

An interview with Jake Shears, formerly of the Scissor Sisters.

A review of Wonder Woman.

A review of Alien: Covenant.

Some assorted thoughts on The Films of David Lynch.

I was fortunate enough to be able to contribute to the Scene's overview of the Belcourt's David Lynch retrospective, and I had a blast with it.

At the movies: Guardians of The Galaxy Volume 2.

Despite it being the biggest movie in the world right now, it's possible you've not seen Guardians of The Galaxy Volume 2. I have some thoughts on the subject.

The Nashville Afterhours Old School Reunion.

I got to write about Nashville's Old School Afterhours Club Reunion show, as well as prepare an assortment of throwback classics for your listening enjoyment.

Famous People Talked to Me: Kumail Nanjiani.

Kumail Nanjiani is just the best. I have the utmost respect for him, and he's a delight to interview.

Famous People Talked to Me: Michelle Visage.

So I got to talk to Michelle Visage, and it was just awesome. She's a sweetie, and a great advocate for the community.

At the movies: Show Yourself.

It’s rare to find horror films that successfully manage to crosspollinate with other genres; it happens every now and then with comedy, with classics like (Shaun of The Dead, Slither, and Evil Dead II), or with Science Fiction (the Alien series, The Stone Tape). But those combinations are blends that we as audiences recognize. So what happens when something really unexpected comes along. Think along the lines of Rahtree: Flower of the Night or Lake Mungo, where you have a horror film that has found a way to expand the reach of the genre into truly unexpected territory.

Billy Ray Brewton’s film Show Yourself is like that. It’s a ghost story, and a weirdness in the woods tale, but it’s also an immersive nostalgia piece (think The Big Chill, or Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean), and that’s a unique mesh of elements. It also dabbles in self-help actualization and unsublimated tension, which is quite the reach for such a modest indie. It’s basically a one-man show, as Travis (Ben Hethcoat, who works his ass off onscreen for pretty much the whole movie) returns to the forest where he and his buddies would hang out back in the day. Only now, that group of friends has fragmented, with the recent suicide of Paul (Clancy McCartney) throwing previously held certainties into entirely different frames of existence.

Travis is back in these woods to spread Paul’s ashes, and also start learning a new script. He’s got technology on his side, as well as an uproarious one scene cameo from national treasure Robert Longstreet as the cabin’s owner. But he’s also, for the most part, a decent dude working his way through some heavy shit. So when supernatural things start happening, it’s hard to have an instantaneous response. Writer/Director Brewton has us in unfamiliar territory, and that is an ever rarer wonder. We understand, instinctively, ghost stories, We get home invasions, and we understand hostage narratives. Show Yourself isn't something you've seen before; it's an experience that the viewer most process in a new way.

Le us also praise Hethcoat’s performance, because without it, the film wouldn’t work. It’s a lot of heavy lifting to do, being in almost every scene, and he finds a way to never react to any situation in exactly the way you might suspect. It’s an endearingly weird performance, and that’s just fine, because Show Yourself is an endearingly weird film. It’s rough around the edges, but it gets inside your thoughts and haunts the viewer even after it’s over. It's a film that remains vibrantly alive in the subconscious, more than a year since I first saw it. And it continues to evolve, after the second and third viewings as well.

At the movies: I Am The Doorway.

I AM THE DOORWAY

Stephen King’s short stories have always been his finest achievement- timeless and unrestrained portraits of humanity in crisis that remain as unsettling and effective forty years down the road as when they were first published. There’s a power in those works that works on a level different from his rightfully acclaimed legacy of novels and their many adaptations across countless media. But anyone with memories of the cover of the mass-market paperback of Night Shift will remember its key image- a hand, covered in bandages and eyes. I Am The Doorway, which lent the collection that striking image, was Lovecraftian SciFi of the highest order, so rich in ideas and tableaux that no one attempted to take it into the realm of the visual. But now, from the Czech Republic, a filmmaker has pulled off the cinematic equivalent of alchemy, taking that story and telling it visually without dialogue and with a subjective camera. In fifteen minutes, Director Robin Kasparik delivers artful cosmic horror, creative mise-en-scene, and the finest Stephen King adaptation in years. Be ready for a bold new voice in horror and science fiction.

At the movies: BLOODLANDS.

BLOODLANDS

The idea has been with us since humanity first forged the bonds of society, that we must use the threat of further violence to ward off the initial descent into violence, reaching its apotheosis with the Mutually Assured Destruction detente of the Cold War. Albania’s history of blood feuds may reach the same, final result as the MAD doctrine, but its canvas is wider, and of a much more deliberate and patient pace. Rather than a fell swoop, the blood feud is a grind that stretches across generations, plucking individuals one at a time, back and forth until The Why becomes a mystery, a tale told and retold, shifting across decades. The fickle and impetuous hearts of man are dangerous enough on their own. So when the shtriga (a witch birthed from the anger of a wronged mother) becomes involved, that spark of violence becomes an inferno.

BLOODLANDS is a tale of two families; one, a foursome of meat merchants, the other a ragtag group of mountain survivalists orbiting the shtriga. The father Skender is driven by pride and doubt, a patriarch all too aware that his tiny empire is crumbling from within. His pride is both the instigating event for a great reckoning and its explosive fruition, helped along by what could be the ancient magic of the witch of the mountains or might just as easily be a patient hand working on a canvas spanning a century. Multihyphenate Steven Kastrissios has crafted a visceral and rapturously beautiful film, a story that has a grand, mythic resonance that could have inspired Shakespearean drama just as easily as it could be a modern tale of horror and strife. The standout performance is Suela Bako as Skender’s wife Shprisa, a pragmatic woman capable of balancing a brusque, sometimes loutish husband alongside the ancient secrets of rites that have been hidden from the prying eyes of the modern.

Violent (including some upsetting but not gratuitous footage from an abbatoir), visionary, visually distinctive, and suffused with a sense of history moving inexorably through our modern sense of stability and civilization, BLOODLANDS is a remarkable film that should delight genre fans and arthouse patrons equally. It haunts the viewer long after it ends. Its reach is beyond the now, and it is patient.

At the movies: A Closer Walk With Thee.

A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE'

Four kids, more than teens but flailing toward adulthood with uncertain grasp, have set up a small evangelical outreach congregation in a sketchy neighborhood where they’re in over their heads. Tensions are high, and it feels like nobody’s working toward the same set of specific objectives. Fortunately, for a little while, the general purpose of outreach is keeping things afloat. Until desire begins to rear both of its heads, and that ramshackle balance is shattered by the collision of fear, lust, rage, doubt, pagan gang activity, and Christian rock.

This film shocked me. And I don't shock easily. As a cautionary tale for evangelicals and gay boys, as an origin story, as an unconventional possession narrative, as the next BDSM scene you're going to try out when no one is looking, and as a horror film where horror means something different to each of the characters, A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE is a special film, as well as a queer film, a lacerating character study, and above all a sensitive, resonant, and viscerally shocking arrival on the genre film scene. I hope you enjoy it. And if you can't enjoy it, I hope it upsets you. And if it can't upset you, then I hope it makes you have Mulholland Drive-style weird dreams where you have to come to terms with the absolute moral truth of yourself.

At the movies: SEQUENCE BREAK.

Kinky, ghoulish, serrated, trippy as fuck, and kind of sweet, Sequence Break is yet another in 2017’s remarkable array of debut features. Imagine the narrative mechanics of The Last Starfighter, but told with the visceral grace of one of David Lynch’s psychogenic fugues.




You wouldn’t think a film this expert in the particulars of nonconsensual melting would elicit such an emotional catharsis, but here we are... Written and directed by Graham Skipper, whom you may know as the moral center of the Begoverse, or from his leading turn in last year’s haunted VHS board game epic Beyond The Gates, Sequence Break is like something distilled from the hippocampus (the part of the brain where nightmares and fever dreams live). It’s rooted in situations that even those poor souls with no affection for classic arcade games can relate to- in a way, the film’s transformative horror/hope could insinuate itself into a near infinite number of situations with creative people and the fields in which they hone their craft.




But arcade tech places us in a visual space where we understand the capabilities of The Now and The Then. And then it takes us further. Into The Beyond, which is a phrase I use both in its literal sense, completing the triplet, and as a shout-out to Lucio Fulci’s 1981 apocalypse of mortified flesh and inescapable dread. Skipper knows his shit when it comes to horror and SciFi, and he never goes for ‘spot the reference’ jukeboxery. But he’s also aiming wider than one might expect- Sequence Break is also one of the best weirdo romances since The Lobster, and it’s not inconceivable that we might see its title popping up as dating app profile slang in the not too distant future.




Oz (Chase Williamson, who could have stopped making movies after John Dies At the End and would still be a damn treasure) is the guy who fixes arcade games. It’s neither social worker nor 24-hour veterinarian, but it’s a job that is necessary. He’s a little weird, and routine-based, but that’s how the world is when you’re not working the traditional 9-to-5. He may well never meet the folk he brings joy to a quarter at a time, but he’s doing honest work that’s nothing to be ashamed about. And unfortunately, in a situation that’s becoming all too familiar to folk who have those small-scale artisan jobs, the economy just isn’t as supportive to peripheral artists. So at this moment, into the middle of this crisis, comes Tess (Fabianne Therese, who eschews quirkiness for a pragmatism grounded equally in agency and fun). She’s a writer, though that’s currently taken a backseat to tempcraft. So she’s also biding her time, cultivating an appreciation for gin and for lanky, scruffy dudes – like Oz.




The two have a casual, unforced chemistry, and they’re as cute together as they are funny. Also, Tess introduces the color blue to Oz’s life. When they first really talk to one another, her presence brings the blue light of a bar, a shade that was always there, into sharp contrast in the redscape of how we (and Oz) have been seeing things. Williamson delivers a deeply sensitive performance, bringing a lot across without ever telegraphing the journey he’s on. His Oz is the kind of guy who keeps his cost of living down. He’s not trying to rock the boat, or make a big score, or fuck anybody over. “You’re an antique,” she says to him, and he confirms that others have said the same thing. But he’s not an idiot manchild. He’s not anybody’s stereotype. But then there’s the matter of the mysterious circuit board that shows up at the arcade. It’s when Oz hooks it up to one of the nonfunctioning cabinets at the office that things start changing.




Sequence Break shares certain of its fundamental elements with Cronenberg’s Videodrome, but its New Flesh rejects the linear hierarchy of Dr. O’Blivion’s mutagenic signal. Its White Eye is the Vajrayana of body horror, using technology as a means of transformation that philosophically feels like a biochemical remix. We repeat, we revise, we reorient. As videogame movies go, Sequence Break sits right up there near the top with Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. It gets at the aspirational nature and expansive possibilities of games, but rather than text-block backstorying the viewer into oblivion right after the opening credits, it goes immersive. Its edges don’t fit in neat spaces, conveying the audience from point A to B and so forth.






It rewards repeat viewings in the way that ‘70s and ‘80s sagas did, letting the viewer determine where the parts fit after spending some time with the story. In its vibrant color schemes and moody electronic score (imagine Vangelis and Tangerine Dream getting all pilled out in 1983 and having a no holds barred synth fight), it’s a versatile beast of a film, acquainted with the worlds of the analogue and the digital. And while Sequence Break isn’t necessarily the film you’d throw on at a party (it’s a measured, moody, meaningful film, not made for casual or indifferent viewing), it’s the horror/SciFi film you share with the ones who matter. If I had to program it in the center of a Triple Feature, I would put it between Lord of Illusions and Beyond The Black Rainbow. You know, for when you have to tear off that scab that we call reality every now and then.

Catching Up with Jason Shawhan.

Some of what I've been up to since the beginning of 2017...

A review of PERSONAL SHOPPER.

A review of PREVENGE.

A review of KONG: SKULL ISLAND.

A review of GET OUT.

A review of XX.

A review of FIFTY SHADES DARKER.

A review of JULIETA.

A review of SPLIT.

My interview with PAUL VERHOEVEN, which was lifechangingly awesome.

THE VERY BEST OF 2016

“Consumed with worry.”
An epitaph for 2016. A prophecy for 2017.






BEST SONGS:
01 Prince – Moonbeam Levels
02 All Hail The Silence – The Alarm
03 Carly Rae Jepsen – Cry
04 Beyonce – Sorry
05 Ladyhawke – Wild Things
06 Sia – Waving Goodbye
07 Rihanna – Love on the Brain
08 Pet Shop Boys – The Pop Kids
09 Kevin Abstract – Runner
10 Solange – Don’t Wish Me Well
11 Kelly Clarkson – It’s Quiet Uptown
12 Brendan MacLean – Never Enough
13 Childish Gambino – Redbone
14 Shooter Jennings – Love Kills
15 Beyonce & The Dixie Chicks – Daddy Lessons (Live)
16 Plumb – Smoke (Dave Aude Remix)
17 Celine Dion – Encore un Soir
18 Tan – Telephone Tan
19 S.W.I.M. featuring Natasha Giannaraki – Anazatisi (Never Find It)
20 Puro Instinct – Peccavi
21 Britney Spears – Make Me
22 Kanye West – Fade
23 The Weeknd – I Feel It Coming
24 Lady Gaga – Diamond Heart
25 Julian Winding – The Demon Dance
26 Giorgio Moroder featuring Karen Harding – Good For Me
27 Brendan MacLean – Tectonic
28 The Lonely Island featuring Emma Stone – Turn Up The Beef
29 Book of Love – All Girl Band
30 Kiiara - Gold



BEST ALBUMS:



01 Beyonce/Lemonade
02 Solange/A Seat at the Table
03 Ladyhawke/Wild Things
04 Carly Rae Jepsen/E Mo Tion Side B
05 Brendan MacLean/Funbang1
06 Childish Gambino/“Awaken, My Love”
07 Shooter Jennings/Countach (For Giorgio)
08 Kevin Abstract/American Boyfriend
09 Pet Shop Boys/Super
10 Tan/Musik City
11 Jean-Michel Jarre/Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise
12 Celine Dion/Encore un Soir
13 The Weeknd/Starboy
14 Tegan and Sara/Love You to Death
15 Azealia Banks/Slay-Z






BEST TV:
Channel Zero: Candle Cove, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lady Dynamite, Not Safe, Other Space, Search Party, Stranger Things, Yuri on Ice



WORST FILMS:



01 PATRIOT'S DAY
02 INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE
03 DON'T BREATHE
04 SUICIDE SQUAD
05 EYES OF MY MOTHER
06 INCARNATE
07 SHUT IN
08 YOGA HOSERS
09 THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM
10 RATCHET AND CLANK






BEST DIRECTOR



Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cemetery of Splendor)
Anna Biller (The Love Witch)
Robert Eggers (The VVitch)
Karyn Kusama (The Invitation)
Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Evolution)
Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster)
Oz Perkins (I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House)
Joel Potrykus (The Alchemist Cookbook)
Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room)
Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier)
Paul Verhoeven (Elle)
Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)






BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY



David Birke (Elle)
Eric Heisserer (Arrival)
Jeong Seo-kyung and Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden)
Whit Stillman (Love and Friendship)



BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY



Anthony Bagarozzi and Shane Black (The Nice Guys)
Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (The Invitation)
Yorgos Lanthimos and Ephthymis Philippou (The Lobster)
Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)
Ephthymis Philippou and Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier)
Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias (Little Men)



BEST COSTUME DESIGN



Colleen Atwood (The Huntsman: Winter’s War)
Erin Benach (The Neon Demon)
Anna Biller (The Love Witch)
Sarah Blenkinsop (The Lobster)
Sonia Grande (Julieta)
Linda Muir (The VVitch)









BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN



Anna Biller (The Love Witch)
Doug Chiang and Neil Lamont (Rogue One)
Thomas S. Hammock (Blair Witch)
Craig Lathrop (The VVitch)
Lisa Soper (Clown)
Patrice Vermette (Arrival)



BEST 3D



Doctor Strange
Ghostbusters
Kung Fu Panda 3
The Legend of Tarzan
The Mermaid
The Secret Life of Pets



BEST EDITING



John Axelrad and Kayla Emter (Miles Ahead)
Christopher Barwell (Under The Shadow)
Julia Bloch (Green Room)
Job ter Burg (Elle)
Joan Sobel (Nocturnal Animals)
Joe Walker (Arrival)



BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY



Natasha Braier (The Neon Demon)
Manuel Dacosse (Evolution)
Greig Fraser (Rogue One)
M. David Mullen (The Love Witch)
Jack Pettibone Riccobono and Shane Slattery-Quintanilla (The Seventh Fire)
Linus Sandgren (La-La Land)






BEST ORIGINAL SCORE



Mark Korven (The VVitch)
Mica Levi (Jackie)
Cliff Martinez (The Neon Demon)
Max Richter (Morgan)
Suzuki Keiichi (For The Plasma)
Adam Wingard (Blair Witch)



BEST ORIGINAL SONG



Equal Rights (Popstar)
The Great Beyond (Sausage Party)
The Riddle of The Model (Sing Street)
Waving Goodbye (The Neon Demon)
Wiener-Dog (Wiener-Dog)
You’re Welcome (Moana)



BEST VISUAL EFFECTS



Arrival
Beyond The Gates
Blair Witch
Doctor Strange
The Jungle Book
The Mind’s Eye



BEST DOCUMENTARY



I Am Not Your Negro
No Home Movie
The Seventh Fire
13^th
Tickled
Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present



BEST FILM WITHOUT A U.S. DISTRIBUTOR



All The Cities of The North
The Death of Louis XIV
Found Footage 3D
The Lure
Nocturama
What’s The Matter With Gerald?



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR



Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
Tom Bennett (Love and Friendship)
Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!)
Joe Mangianello (Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday)
Kyle Mooney (Zoolander No. 2)
Makis Papadimitriou (Chevalier)






BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS



Olivia Colman (The Lobster)
Greta Gerwig (20^th Century Women)
Lily Gladstone (Certain Women)
Dakota Johnson (A Bigger Splash)
Janelle Monae (Moonlight)
Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys)



BEST ACTOR



Casey Affleck (Manchester By The Sea)
Colin Farrell (The Lobster)
Ryan Gosling (The Nice Guys)
Ty Hickson (The Alchemist Cookbook)
Aharon Traitel (Tikkun)
Anton Yelchin (Green Room)



BEST ACTRESS



Sonia Braga (Aquarius)
Isabelle Huppert (Elle)
Sandra Huller (Toni Erdmann)
Natalie Portman (Jackie)
Narges Rashidi (Under The Shadow)
Emma Stone (La-La Land)
Anya Taylor-Joy (The VVitch)






BEST PICTURE
01 The Alchemist Cookbook/The Lobster
Deeply profound meditations on identity in the face of a society that just doesn’t make any sense. Rebellion from opposite ends. To win is a concept inevitably defined by those from whom power derives.
02 Arrival/La-La Land
As always, genre fare tells us exactly where the heart and soul wants to live. Better ways, sprung from the humanity that so often limits us.
03 Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday
The kindest, sweetest, most versatile love story of the year.
04 I Am Not Your Negro
One of the greatest American thinkers and critics speaking across time; visceral and wrenching and deeply painful. We haven’t learned a thing.
05 Aquarius/Cemetery of Splendour/The Nice Guys/The VVitch
The act of excavation. Inspecting the foundation. The places where conspiracies build, and restless spirits are drawn in. Every space is a mystery.
06 Clown/Tikkun
The social contract cannot abide monsters. Whether by grotesque action or mere contrary existence, a being which pushes out from within makes that which is established nervous and uneasy; ideology can never be a supportive caress. Deeply upsetting and uncompromising, political visions.
07 Elle/Lemonade/The Love Witch
We think we know a woman’s story by its trappings. By its means of presentation. But women’s stories are not so easily bound by facile first impressions. Further investigation is warranted. Multiple viewings yield untold rewards. There is so much more than a cursory glance can reveal.
08 Chevalier/Everybody Wants Some!!
Exceptional and kind films which deal with male socialization and patterns of interaction while never descending into macho foolishness.
09 Green Room
Human decency in an all-night battle to the death with highly-bureaucratized and weaponized racist bullshit. A business plan does not make an abhorrent ideology any more palatable or acceptable.
10 The Neon Demon
Sleek abstractions that careen the Grimmest fairy tale tropes, cautionary Hollywood excesses, and videogame structure off of one another. Playful and portentous, with a militant chromatic philosophy; when the color blue finally showed up for its close-up in the final scene, I gasped.









2017 FILMS I ANXIOUSLY AWAIT

ALIEN: COVENANT

THE BEGUILED

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

COLOSSAL

DARK NIGHT

GET OUT

A GHOST STORY

HIGH LIFE

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE

KEDI

LIFE

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

PREVENGE

(Re) ASSIGNMENT

ROXANNE ROXANNE

SEQUENCE BREAK

SILENCE

SUSPIRIA

WONDER WOMAN

XX

Thank you for reading this far.

Subsequent Catching Up with Jason Shawhan

What all have I done since the last big update? Well...

A review of PASSENGERS.

A review of SING.

A review of LA-LA LAND.

A review of ROGUE ONE.

A review of EVOLUTION.

A review of AQUARIUS.

Excerpts from the Press Conference for BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK.

A piece on the PET SHOP BOYS, as well as a review of their concert.

My write-up of the 2016 New York Film Festival.

Oh yeah, and the piece about BEYONCE, LEMONADE, and THE FORMATION TOUR.

And my ballot for the 2016 Indiewire Critics Poll.