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

Best in Film: 2012. The Awards.

BEST ANIMATED FILM: ParaNorman

BEST 3D:

(Native) Prometheus

(Conversion) Monsters, Inc.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: "Who Were We," from Holy Motors

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Darius WOLSKI, Prometheus

BEST EDITING: Cloud Atlas

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: Prometheus

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Broadcast, Berberian Sound Studio

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Prometheus

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Pina 3D

BEST FIRST FILM: Beyond The Black Rainbow

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Tom TYKWER/Andy WACHOWSKI/Lana WACHOWSKI,

Cloud Atlas

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Drew GODDARD/Joss WHEDON, The Cabin in The Woods

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Macy GRAY, The Paperboy

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Scoot McNAIRY, Argo/Killing Them Softly

BEST ACTRESS: Nina HOSS, Barbara

BEST ACTOR: Joaquin PHOENIX, The Master

BEST DIRECTOR: Kathryn BIGELOW, Zero Dark Thirty

SPECIAL AWARDS AS FOLLOWS:

To Matthew McCONAUGHEY for his exceptional body of work this year. Bernie, Killer Joe, Magic Mike, and The Paperboy. Four exceptional performances in four different tales of the South.

To The Awakening, for being the best film I saw this year that apparently nobody else has seen.

To Jessica BIEL in The Tall Man, because she's staggering in it and I never would have expected such a thing.

To Tyler ABRIZZI in ParaNorman, for being the best fat kid performance since Brett Kelly in Bad Santa, who is the Bjork of fat kid actors, which makes Bad Santa the Dancer in the Dark of fat kid movies.

SPECIAL FUCK YOU AWARDS AS FOLLOWS:

To the Village Voice 2012 poll for calling Cloud Atlas the worst film of the year.

To the AV Club 2012 poll for calling The Paperboy the worst film of the year.

At the movies: Up in the Air.

It's a difficult endeavor, trying to find humanity in someone whose job it is to mass-fire a company's workforce. It isn't their fault per se; if anything, they indict the spineless higher-ups who seek outside help to keep their own hands from getting dirty.

But these people exist, and Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is one of the best. A gifted salesman (who here sells the possibility of freedom rather than the despair of unemployment), Bingham spends most of his life on planes, in hotels, engaging with concierges, the future unemployed, and always the disembodied image and voice of whoever is the next level up. Imagine a luxury first-person shooter American version of Demonlover, and you’d not be too far off.

So his company, under the encouragement of up-and-comer Natalie (Anna Kendrick, better known as Bella's best friend from the Twilight movies), decides to start moving into the field of termination by videoconferencing. The lone wolf operative Ryan's come to represent nears obsolescence, and he finds himself having to show the new kid the ropes, knowing he is sealing his own end the whole time. But family drama has a way of intruding, and Mister Happy-On-His-Own finds himself trying to find something meaningful, while at the same time helping his sister get married and possibly building something with his occasional sex buddy (Vera Farmiga, with Meg Foster eyes and hair that speaks volumes as to ideology).

Already surfing in on a giant wave of awards and hype, Up in the Air is the kind of movie that could get by just on being well-made and entertaining; but it also manages to capture the prevailing emotional currents in this country and get at the major sea change in the way people are viewing their jobs and personal stability. Critics’ groups and the blogosphere are already awash with love for the film, and it’s hard to begrudge that- well-crafted films that deal with grownup issues are becoming rarer than unicorns.

Director/cowriter Jason Reitman avoids most of the foolishness that kept his last film Juno so at odds with itself, and in Clooney, he has a game persona to really explore some of the darker sides of the current recession. Add in a guest appearance by Young MC and a two-scene cameo by national treasure Danny McBride, and you've got an accessible, fairly deep film that serves up a few laughs and insights with its look into the state of the American individual. Awards will come in abundance, but it's the quality that matters, and certainly endures.