Best Indie Sci-Fi 1997-2021 V3.0: 95 Must-see Films, Plus 95 More
Q: How Good Are These Films?
A: Only two of the top 23 ranked films here were distributed by a major or mini-major studio. Each received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (even though it was both directors' debut film), Best Adapted or Original Screenplay, and Best Actor / Actress for the lead role (even though one was unknown and the other had never acted before).
That's how good.
Both Monsters in 2010 and Attack the Block in 2011 deservedly opened eyes with their quality-to-budget ratio, and the director of the former and the star of the latter both repeated those roles in Star Wars films.
The two films are now ranked 87th and 56th here, respectively. That's how good.
Today's younger filmmakers grew up on science fiction, and many love and understand it. The cost of making a sci-fi film goes down every year. Hence we've seen an explosion of great indie sci-fi films, beginning in 2012.
All but seven of the top 42 films here were released in the last decade. And I can't stress enough how deep this list is: I can go halfway down the second page before I get to a film I could have missed. There has never been a more fabulous time to be a sci-fi film fanatic than right this moment, and that statement will always be true (unless—until?—a favorite dispiriting sci-fi scenario overtakes us).
Q: What's the Idea Here?
A: I love cinematic artistry just as much as I love science fiction [*]. I enjoy bursting the brains of my fellow cinephiles by revealing that my three favorite directors are Ingmar Bergman, Ernst Lubitsch, and ... Christopher Nolan (here's my argument that he's an important narrative pioneer). My all time top-ten favorites list includes The Rules of the Game and A Separation alongside Donnie Darko (#1 on this list) and The Prestige (and of course 2001: A Space Odyssey, which pegs the needle on both).
I've tried to create a ranking for people like me. The films are thus ranked as science-fiction films, with an emphasis on both terms. Intelligence, both cinematic and scientific, is treasured, and their combination in metaphor even more so. A classic comedy that's just barely sci-fi thus ends up at #45 (Shaun of the Dead), and a brilliant piece of arthouse cinema that's scientifically stupid ends up at #66 (Melancholia).
The rankings, however, are very much secondary to my mini-reviews of each film, and there I do try to give information to guide viewers of all tastes, from cinephiles who like sci-fi, to sci-fi lovers with an arthouse allergy.
[*] I assisted the Philip K. Dick literary estate during the 1980's, and was a 2010 World Fantasy Award nominee for a 20-year career as the programmer of the leading literary science fiction and fantasy conference. On the film side, I'm one of The Hollywood Reporter's "hand-selected" "media influentials" for my online reviews (which means I get the mag for free) and a Top Writer on film at Quora, and I'm the assistant runner, scheduler and (pending COVID) current host of the Boston area's cinephile screening group. I have a standing invitation to write film entries for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and some of the better sentences here should eventually show up there.
Q: What's Included?
A: Which is to say, what's "sci-fi?" What's "indie?" Why start in 1997? And what's your definition of "film?"?
A #1: What's sci-fi?
First, while I use "sci-fi" as an umbrella term when needed (as here), the notes to the films make a distinction between "sci-fi" and "sf" (an older abbreviation), and do so consistently. "Sci-fi" uses familiar tropes, which is often a good idea, while "sf" strives for originality (here's more, including a brief history of how the distinction originated).
I use the widest possible reasonable definition of what's "sci-fi" or "sf" to make the list maximally inclusive.
"Slipstream" is a useful term used within the field to describe everything on the interesting borders of sf, especially narratives with non-realistic elements that don't fit comfortably into either sf or fantasy. If the notes to a film explain why I included it, it's slipstream in this broad sense.
"Slipstream" eventually developed a narrower meaning: it's the genre of narratives that consciously defy being classified by genre, by making roughly equal sense whether interpreted as some or all of sf, fantasy, surrealism, postmodern fabulation, or realism (with hallucinations or delusions). When I use the term in the film notes, I mean this "slipstream proper."
Finally, I've coined and use the term "metaphysical fantasy" for stories set in the present with a fantasy element that is fundamental to reality, original (at least in part), and substantively developed. These films feel exactly like sf, and their progenitor, # 113 Ink, was classified as such by some critics. I think they appeal more to sf fans than fantasy fans, and if that's the case, they clearly belong here.
What's not sci-fi?
Superhero movies are their own distinct genre, a unique form of science fantasy, so a superhero film needs some actual sci-fi element to warrant inclusion. And I say that as someone who puts the MCU ahead of the Potterverse / Wizarding World as the greatest achievement in popular storytelling after Tolkien. I devoured the classic Claremont / Byrne X-Men and Frank Miller Daredevil comics in the early 80's. I've seen all the MCU films (sometimes twice in the theater) and adore the best as much as anyone, and they simply don't give me the same vibe as sci-fi. They are fables.
In the same fashion, zombie films are excluded unless they address zombie science in some way.
I originally decided to exclude anime, as it has its own distinct audience. Then #6 Your Name. happened, and I couldn't resist including it. What makes sense to me is to include anime films that qualify as must-see films for sci-fi fans, and leave the merely good ones to the devotees. I'll include Paprika when I rewatch it, and I have a list of about a dozen candidates to check out.
A #2: What's indie?
I believe that the list will be most useful if it includes all sci-fi films that may have escaped wide notice. It therefore includes all films that did not earn a U.S. wide release, regardless of budget. It also includes widely released films that were made for US $20M or less (inflation-adjusted to the end of 2014), as a proxy for independent production; that trick is straight from Film Independent Spirit.
The "exclusive" films from the major streaming services present a definitional challenge that so far proves easy to meet. To begin with, Netflix alone places this label on films that, like ordinary VOD streamers, started life elsewhere—abroad theatrically, and/or on the festival circuit. "Exclusive" at Netflix just means that the film is not available for rent elsewhere, and won't simultaneously show up for free on the library services Kanopy and Hoopla. What we are really concerned with here are the Video Originals, films produced by the services. And you simply exclude the ones whose cast is headlined by a big-name star, or necessarily casts an unknown in the lead and has mutiple big names in supporting roles (the Okja rule). As long as there's no ambiguous middle ground between the likes of Tom Hanks (Finch) and Frank Grillo (#121), we're cool.
A #3: Why 1997?
After three years that produced just two original live-action sci-fi films of any budget worth seeing (Twelve Monkeys and Strange Days), 1997 brought us Gattaca, Face/Off, Men in Black, Contact, The Fifth Element, and #13 on this list. It's the start of the modern golden age of sci-fi cinema.
And it wasn't just sci-fi. In 1996 there were just 2 films that were sci-fi or fantasy (including supernatural horror) in the top 11 at the U.S. box office. But 1997 had 5 in the top 12 and by 1999 it was 10 of 12, including the top 5. It was a huge and apparently permanent change in popular culture (2018 had the entire top 11).
(That this is good rather than bad is a topic for another time and place—specifically, chapter 4 of my work-in-progress, Composing "The Hobbit": A Literary Detective Story).
A #4: What qualifies as a "film"?
For years I've been arguing that any "limited series" made for TV where every "episode" was directed by the same person, and where they all shared at least one common writer, should be regarded as a film. Why? The definitive list of the greatest films of all time includes several works that fit that description, most notably Kieslowski's Dekalog and Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Scenes from a Marriage were created as TV series, and the full versions are screened theatrically and regarded as the original cuts of the film. Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly recently made the precise same argument (see the link in #111). So I'm doing that here.
Q: How Are the Films Ranked? And can you make the answer interesting to non-geeks?
First, why am I the guy ranking these films?
1) I’m one of those annoying freaky people who can rank every film they see, in order of how much I like them. I grade on a 100-point scale, and I'm willing to use fractions.
2) My responses to well-regarded films hew very close to the consensus.
3) I firmly believe that by examining your responses to films when they differ from the consensus, you can eventually discover your tastes and biases, and then use that knowledge to make more objective assessments and rankings. It’s taken me a decade, but I finally believe I can do this adequately.
4) I’m actually best known as a statistical analyst.
I’ve got 501 files in my Excel/Movies folder. I’ve discovered some cool useful truths:
(First, note that Rotten Tomatoes ratings based on fewer than 20 reviews, and IMDB ratings with less than 25K votes, are unreliable, and don't necessarily play by the following rules of thumb. Almost all of the newer films here have an unreliable IMDB rating).
A) The best measure of a film’s contemporary critical response is its Rotten Tomatoes Average Rating from all critics (not shown unless you click on the far less meaningful TomatoMeter). It's better than their rating from “top critics,” which is in turn better than the Metacritic score from the best ones. You don’t become a top critic by having more reliable taste (what editor could tell?), but by writing better and more insightfully. Shrink the pool of critics, and all you do is add noise.
B) IMBD User Ratings of widely released films correlate fairly strongly with RT, much more so than people think. We only notice the exceptions (and sometimes the apparent disagreement is just a TomatoMeter illusion).
C) The RT and IMDB ratings are equally valuable; their combination is a better measure of a film’s quality than either one separately. (Why are film buffs, including fanboys, as useful as professional film critics? For one thing, some of the latter will miss the point of a smart commercial film by literally seeing the predictable film they expect rather than the one that's being shown—pure confirmation bias. A full explanation is a long essay or a book chapter. )
D) The two ratings are almost exactly equivalent at 7.1, but the critics’ rating has a spread about twice as large. RTAR at 8.6 and IMDB at 7.9 are actually in agreement, as are 5.6 and 6.2.
E) If you’ve rated a couple of thousand films at DVD.Netflix (as I have), their “guess” for you (their prediction algorithm) is as useful as the combination of RT and IMDB. And no wonder: it’s based on the ratings of people like you.
So … just how are the films ranked?
For this update I've done a massive job of tuning all the numbers involved for greater accuracy; the Film Note Guide below explains how they appear in the list. (And in a long note following the final entries, I outline all the algorithms involved, for those of us who regard algorithms as a form of chocolate.)
Now, we know from the above that the best score for what others think is 50% Netflix (which I can fake fairly accurately when it's missing), and 25% each for IMDB and critics.
So the only remaining question is, how I do mix that combo platter with my own (tweaked) judgement? What seems to work best is 2/3 me and 1/3 everybody else. That seems like a lot of me, but when you factor in how strongly my ratings already agree with the consensus of others, it's the opposite. So the ratings are 2/3 the consensus and 1/3 my informed disagreement with it.
If you read the reviews you’ll find many films that I clearly regard as better or worse than their ranking. Which is as it should be.
Q: What's Next?
A: I plan to start V3.1 without taking a break, watching a film each Friday night and one over the weekend (If I miss a night, I'll try to catch up later in the week. Other nights will be devoted to catching up to 2020-2022 films).
Entries for new films will be posted at Best Indie-Sci-Fi: The Additions List within 24 hours of their screening. Every Monday I'll add a version update listing the newly added film or films, with preliminary rankings, and the results of any re-watches (how much, if at all, their review has been changed, and their new ranking, if they have one). Each update goes at the top of the list, producing a summary of the version additions in reverse chronological order.
Further details, and a list of the films, are at Best Indie Sci-Fi: Watchlist #1, which, in conjunction with two further lists, also outlines future plans through 2027.
————————————
Film Note Guide
The notes on each film contain more than just my mini-review. They begin with a header with a wealth of information about the film's release and distribution, the components of its ranking (which contain useful information about how the film fares with various audiences), and its acclaim. This header is now separated from the review for readability. Here's what you'll see:
First, before the note is the IMDB Plot Outline, and they vary from terrific to bad to absent (the rambling ones that end with ... are Plot Summaries). I'm working on them and am already resonsible for 15.
The header has the following components; all but #4, the ratings, are optional.
1. Status flag. * marks films added in the last major revision, while ^ and < indicate films that have been bumped up or down in the rankings via a recent re-watch.
2. Plot outline attribution. “—EV.” for the ones I wrote.
3. U.S. basic release information in parentheses. The year, if different from the IMDB year (first public screening); release nature when there was no full U.S. theatrical release. The options here are SD (secondary distribution, no box office reported to Box Office Mojo and the like), VO (video original), DVD, and VOD.
4. The ranking info. First is an adjusted IMDB rating, even in the rare cases where it's unchanged (while not perfect, I'm confident that it's significantly more accurate than the official one shown above it). It's followed by "Crit," the critics rating derived from RT and elsewhere (see #6 below) and now rescaled to match the IMDB score for easy, accurate comparison. When two Crit ratings appear, e.g., "6.9 > 7.1", that's by my adjustment. Films with less than 20 reviews get a Crit score in [brackets], created by adding the extra external reviews linked at IMDB to the ones at RT.
An IMDB or rescaled Crit score of 7.2 or better marks a must-see film for serious film buffs, while a 7.6 is a borderline classic. And the difference between Crit and IMDB is usually a good measure of how "arthouse" a film is.
Next come three sub-scores. "Broad," the grade from all viewers, combines IMDB and Crit and scales them upward to match the next two scores. Here, 75 is a should-see film, 80 a must-see, and 90 is extraordinary. "Fans" is from the Netflix prediction (and is occasionally adjusted a la Crit). "Me" always starts with my subjective rating; it may be followed with the number of times I've seen the film if more than once, and / or my separate objective rating when it exists. For instance, #7 Holy Motors is 96 (x2) > 95.
The overall score is last; a * or ** before it indicates a score reduced an extra 0.5 or 1.0 because they're borderline sci-fi (or for a few other good reasons).
(Notes on the film-by-film adjustments—my identified tastes and biases, and reasons for demotion—may at some point be added to the long geek note at the end.)
5. Release and indie status details. First, the theatrical distributor, when they have more than one film here or are well-known; (Mini) means a mini-major distributor and (Sub) means a subsidiary of a major. Unless indicated otherwise, Fox (Sub) = Fox Searchlight, Sony (Sub) = Sony Pictures Classics, and Universal (Sub) = Focus Features. (Wide) indicates a wide release. Following this, $ indicates a mid-budget film (> $20M) and $$ a big-budget (> $40M) one; $½ cost $40M on the nose.
6. Critical reputation ratings. The first, C10 is how well the film performed on year-end top 10 lists according to the invaluable CriticsTop10.com, which lists the top 50 films of each year. The second, TSP is where the film ranks among the top 1000 films of the 21st Century at the equally invaluable They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?. In both cases I give the overall ranking ("C10 = 23Y" means it was the #23 film of the year) followed in parentheses by the ranking among all of these films.
Note that by comparing the two relative rankings in parentheses, the end of year one from C10 and the all-time one from TSP, you can tell whether a film's reputation has grown or faded from its initial reception (the exception being the most recent films, who tend to enter the TSP list low).
7. Award wins and nominations. All Oscar categories; Independent Spirit Awards for (First) Feature, (First) Screenplay, Director, and International Film only; Hugo and Ray Bradbury (= Nebula) Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation.
The mini-rewiews are preceded by their own status flags: + for a review with minor changes and ++ for those with major, and > for one with an update of the director and/or screenwriter's subsequent and/or current activity, and < for new detail about their previous careers.
Finally, I give free-with-subscription sources other than those automatically provided by IMDB. "DVD.Netflix" implies three other alternatives (unless noted otherwise): free streaming services that interrupt the film with commercials (often inelegantly, I'm told), inexpensive VOD, and disks borrowed from local libraries. JustWatch.com is a good source for the first two.
A: Only two of the top 23 ranked films here were distributed by a major or mini-major studio. Each received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (even though it was both directors' debut film), Best Adapted or Original Screenplay, and Best Actor / Actress for the lead role (even though one was unknown and the other had never acted before).
That's how good.
Both Monsters in 2010 and Attack the Block in 2011 deservedly opened eyes with their quality-to-budget ratio, and the director of the former and the star of the latter both repeated those roles in Star Wars films.
The two films are now ranked 87th and 56th here, respectively. That's how good.
Today's younger filmmakers grew up on science fiction, and many love and understand it. The cost of making a sci-fi film goes down every year. Hence we've seen an explosion of great indie sci-fi films, beginning in 2012.
All but seven of the top 42 films here were released in the last decade. And I can't stress enough how deep this list is: I can go halfway down the second page before I get to a film I could have missed. There has never been a more fabulous time to be a sci-fi film fanatic than right this moment, and that statement will always be true (unless—until?—a favorite dispiriting sci-fi scenario overtakes us).
Q: What's the Idea Here?
A: I love cinematic artistry just as much as I love science fiction [*]. I enjoy bursting the brains of my fellow cinephiles by revealing that my three favorite directors are Ingmar Bergman, Ernst Lubitsch, and ... Christopher Nolan (here's my argument that he's an important narrative pioneer). My all time top-ten favorites list includes The Rules of the Game and A Separation alongside Donnie Darko (#1 on this list) and The Prestige (and of course 2001: A Space Odyssey, which pegs the needle on both).
I've tried to create a ranking for people like me. The films are thus ranked as science-fiction films, with an emphasis on both terms. Intelligence, both cinematic and scientific, is treasured, and their combination in metaphor even more so. A classic comedy that's just barely sci-fi thus ends up at #45 (Shaun of the Dead), and a brilliant piece of arthouse cinema that's scientifically stupid ends up at #66 (Melancholia).
The rankings, however, are very much secondary to my mini-reviews of each film, and there I do try to give information to guide viewers of all tastes, from cinephiles who like sci-fi, to sci-fi lovers with an arthouse allergy.
[*] I assisted the Philip K. Dick literary estate during the 1980's, and was a 2010 World Fantasy Award nominee for a 20-year career as the programmer of the leading literary science fiction and fantasy conference. On the film side, I'm one of The Hollywood Reporter's "hand-selected" "media influentials" for my online reviews (which means I get the mag for free) and a Top Writer on film at Quora, and I'm the assistant runner, scheduler and (pending COVID) current host of the Boston area's cinephile screening group. I have a standing invitation to write film entries for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and some of the better sentences here should eventually show up there.
Q: What's Included?
A: Which is to say, what's "sci-fi?" What's "indie?" Why start in 1997? And what's your definition of "film?"?
A #1: What's sci-fi?
First, while I use "sci-fi" as an umbrella term when needed (as here), the notes to the films make a distinction between "sci-fi" and "sf" (an older abbreviation), and do so consistently. "Sci-fi" uses familiar tropes, which is often a good idea, while "sf" strives for originality (here's more, including a brief history of how the distinction originated).
I use the widest possible reasonable definition of what's "sci-fi" or "sf" to make the list maximally inclusive.
"Slipstream" is a useful term used within the field to describe everything on the interesting borders of sf, especially narratives with non-realistic elements that don't fit comfortably into either sf or fantasy. If the notes to a film explain why I included it, it's slipstream in this broad sense.
"Slipstream" eventually developed a narrower meaning: it's the genre of narratives that consciously defy being classified by genre, by making roughly equal sense whether interpreted as some or all of sf, fantasy, surrealism, postmodern fabulation, or realism (with hallucinations or delusions). When I use the term in the film notes, I mean this "slipstream proper."
Finally, I've coined and use the term "metaphysical fantasy" for stories set in the present with a fantasy element that is fundamental to reality, original (at least in part), and substantively developed. These films feel exactly like sf, and their progenitor, # 113 Ink, was classified as such by some critics. I think they appeal more to sf fans than fantasy fans, and if that's the case, they clearly belong here.
What's not sci-fi?
Superhero movies are their own distinct genre, a unique form of science fantasy, so a superhero film needs some actual sci-fi element to warrant inclusion. And I say that as someone who puts the MCU ahead of the Potterverse / Wizarding World as the greatest achievement in popular storytelling after Tolkien. I devoured the classic Claremont / Byrne X-Men and Frank Miller Daredevil comics in the early 80's. I've seen all the MCU films (sometimes twice in the theater) and adore the best as much as anyone, and they simply don't give me the same vibe as sci-fi. They are fables.
In the same fashion, zombie films are excluded unless they address zombie science in some way.
I originally decided to exclude anime, as it has its own distinct audience. Then #6 Your Name. happened, and I couldn't resist including it. What makes sense to me is to include anime films that qualify as must-see films for sci-fi fans, and leave the merely good ones to the devotees. I'll include Paprika when I rewatch it, and I have a list of about a dozen candidates to check out.
A #2: What's indie?
I believe that the list will be most useful if it includes all sci-fi films that may have escaped wide notice. It therefore includes all films that did not earn a U.S. wide release, regardless of budget. It also includes widely released films that were made for US $20M or less (inflation-adjusted to the end of 2014), as a proxy for independent production; that trick is straight from Film Independent Spirit.
The "exclusive" films from the major streaming services present a definitional challenge that so far proves easy to meet. To begin with, Netflix alone places this label on films that, like ordinary VOD streamers, started life elsewhere—abroad theatrically, and/or on the festival circuit. "Exclusive" at Netflix just means that the film is not available for rent elsewhere, and won't simultaneously show up for free on the library services Kanopy and Hoopla. What we are really concerned with here are the Video Originals, films produced by the services. And you simply exclude the ones whose cast is headlined by a big-name star, or necessarily casts an unknown in the lead and has mutiple big names in supporting roles (the Okja rule). As long as there's no ambiguous middle ground between the likes of Tom Hanks (Finch) and Frank Grillo (#121), we're cool.
A #3: Why 1997?
After three years that produced just two original live-action sci-fi films of any budget worth seeing (Twelve Monkeys and Strange Days), 1997 brought us Gattaca, Face/Off, Men in Black, Contact, The Fifth Element, and #13 on this list. It's the start of the modern golden age of sci-fi cinema.
And it wasn't just sci-fi. In 1996 there were just 2 films that were sci-fi or fantasy (including supernatural horror) in the top 11 at the U.S. box office. But 1997 had 5 in the top 12 and by 1999 it was 10 of 12, including the top 5. It was a huge and apparently permanent change in popular culture (2018 had the entire top 11).
(That this is good rather than bad is a topic for another time and place—specifically, chapter 4 of my work-in-progress, Composing "The Hobbit": A Literary Detective Story).
A #4: What qualifies as a "film"?
For years I've been arguing that any "limited series" made for TV where every "episode" was directed by the same person, and where they all shared at least one common writer, should be regarded as a film. Why? The definitive list of the greatest films of all time includes several works that fit that description, most notably Kieslowski's Dekalog and Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Scenes from a Marriage were created as TV series, and the full versions are screened theatrically and regarded as the original cuts of the film. Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly recently made the precise same argument (see the link in #111). So I'm doing that here.
Q: How Are the Films Ranked? And can you make the answer interesting to non-geeks?
First, why am I the guy ranking these films?
1) I’m one of those annoying freaky people who can rank every film they see, in order of how much I like them. I grade on a 100-point scale, and I'm willing to use fractions.
2) My responses to well-regarded films hew very close to the consensus.
3) I firmly believe that by examining your responses to films when they differ from the consensus, you can eventually discover your tastes and biases, and then use that knowledge to make more objective assessments and rankings. It’s taken me a decade, but I finally believe I can do this adequately.
4) I’m actually best known as a statistical analyst.
I’ve got 501 files in my Excel/Movies folder. I’ve discovered some cool useful truths:
(First, note that Rotten Tomatoes ratings based on fewer than 20 reviews, and IMDB ratings with less than 25K votes, are unreliable, and don't necessarily play by the following rules of thumb. Almost all of the newer films here have an unreliable IMDB rating).
A) The best measure of a film’s contemporary critical response is its Rotten Tomatoes Average Rating from all critics (not shown unless you click on the far less meaningful TomatoMeter). It's better than their rating from “top critics,” which is in turn better than the Metacritic score from the best ones. You don’t become a top critic by having more reliable taste (what editor could tell?), but by writing better and more insightfully. Shrink the pool of critics, and all you do is add noise.
B) IMBD User Ratings of widely released films correlate fairly strongly with RT, much more so than people think. We only notice the exceptions (and sometimes the apparent disagreement is just a TomatoMeter illusion).
C) The RT and IMDB ratings are equally valuable; their combination is a better measure of a film’s quality than either one separately. (Why are film buffs, including fanboys, as useful as professional film critics? For one thing, some of the latter will miss the point of a smart commercial film by literally seeing the predictable film they expect rather than the one that's being shown—pure confirmation bias. A full explanation is a long essay or a book chapter. )
D) The two ratings are almost exactly equivalent at 7.1, but the critics’ rating has a spread about twice as large. RTAR at 8.6 and IMDB at 7.9 are actually in agreement, as are 5.6 and 6.2.
E) If you’ve rated a couple of thousand films at DVD.Netflix (as I have), their “guess” for you (their prediction algorithm) is as useful as the combination of RT and IMDB. And no wonder: it’s based on the ratings of people like you.
So … just how are the films ranked?
For this update I've done a massive job of tuning all the numbers involved for greater accuracy; the Film Note Guide below explains how they appear in the list. (And in a long note following the final entries, I outline all the algorithms involved, for those of us who regard algorithms as a form of chocolate.)
Now, we know from the above that the best score for what others think is 50% Netflix (which I can fake fairly accurately when it's missing), and 25% each for IMDB and critics.
So the only remaining question is, how I do mix that combo platter with my own (tweaked) judgement? What seems to work best is 2/3 me and 1/3 everybody else. That seems like a lot of me, but when you factor in how strongly my ratings already agree with the consensus of others, it's the opposite. So the ratings are 2/3 the consensus and 1/3 my informed disagreement with it.
If you read the reviews you’ll find many films that I clearly regard as better or worse than their ranking. Which is as it should be.
Q: What's Next?
A: I plan to start V3.1 without taking a break, watching a film each Friday night and one over the weekend (If I miss a night, I'll try to catch up later in the week. Other nights will be devoted to catching up to 2020-2022 films).
Entries for new films will be posted at Best Indie-Sci-Fi: The Additions List within 24 hours of their screening. Every Monday I'll add a version update listing the newly added film or films, with preliminary rankings, and the results of any re-watches (how much, if at all, their review has been changed, and their new ranking, if they have one). Each update goes at the top of the list, producing a summary of the version additions in reverse chronological order.
Further details, and a list of the films, are at Best Indie Sci-Fi: Watchlist #1, which, in conjunction with two further lists, also outlines future plans through 2027.
————————————
Film Note Guide
The notes on each film contain more than just my mini-review. They begin with a header with a wealth of information about the film's release and distribution, the components of its ranking (which contain useful information about how the film fares with various audiences), and its acclaim. This header is now separated from the review for readability. Here's what you'll see:
First, before the note is the IMDB Plot Outline, and they vary from terrific to bad to absent (the rambling ones that end with ... are Plot Summaries). I'm working on them and am already resonsible for 15.
The header has the following components; all but #4, the ratings, are optional.
1. Status flag. * marks films added in the last major revision, while ^ and < indicate films that have been bumped up or down in the rankings via a recent re-watch.
2. Plot outline attribution. “—EV.” for the ones I wrote.
3. U.S. basic release information in parentheses. The year, if different from the IMDB year (first public screening); release nature when there was no full U.S. theatrical release. The options here are SD (secondary distribution, no box office reported to Box Office Mojo and the like), VO (video original), DVD, and VOD.
4. The ranking info. First is an adjusted IMDB rating, even in the rare cases where it's unchanged (while not perfect, I'm confident that it's significantly more accurate than the official one shown above it). It's followed by "Crit," the critics rating derived from RT and elsewhere (see #6 below) and now rescaled to match the IMDB score for easy, accurate comparison. When two Crit ratings appear, e.g., "6.9 > 7.1", that's by my adjustment. Films with less than 20 reviews get a Crit score in [brackets], created by adding the extra external reviews linked at IMDB to the ones at RT.
An IMDB or rescaled Crit score of 7.2 or better marks a must-see film for serious film buffs, while a 7.6 is a borderline classic. And the difference between Crit and IMDB is usually a good measure of how "arthouse" a film is.
Next come three sub-scores. "Broad," the grade from all viewers, combines IMDB and Crit and scales them upward to match the next two scores. Here, 75 is a should-see film, 80 a must-see, and 90 is extraordinary. "Fans" is from the Netflix prediction (and is occasionally adjusted a la Crit). "Me" always starts with my subjective rating; it may be followed with the number of times I've seen the film if more than once, and / or my separate objective rating when it exists. For instance, #7 Holy Motors is 96 (x2) > 95.
The overall score is last; a * or ** before it indicates a score reduced an extra 0.5 or 1.0 because they're borderline sci-fi (or for a few other good reasons).
(Notes on the film-by-film adjustments—my identified tastes and biases, and reasons for demotion—may at some point be added to the long geek note at the end.)
5. Release and indie status details. First, the theatrical distributor, when they have more than one film here or are well-known; (Mini) means a mini-major distributor and (Sub) means a subsidiary of a major. Unless indicated otherwise, Fox (Sub) = Fox Searchlight, Sony (Sub) = Sony Pictures Classics, and Universal (Sub) = Focus Features. (Wide) indicates a wide release. Following this, $ indicates a mid-budget film (> $20M) and $$ a big-budget (> $40M) one; $½ cost $40M on the nose.
6. Critical reputation ratings. The first, C10 is how well the film performed on year-end top 10 lists according to the invaluable CriticsTop10.com, which lists the top 50 films of each year. The second, TSP is where the film ranks among the top 1000 films of the 21st Century at the equally invaluable They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?. In both cases I give the overall ranking ("C10 = 23Y" means it was the #23 film of the year) followed in parentheses by the ranking among all of these films.
Note that by comparing the two relative rankings in parentheses, the end of year one from C10 and the all-time one from TSP, you can tell whether a film's reputation has grown or faded from its initial reception (the exception being the most recent films, who tend to enter the TSP list low).
7. Award wins and nominations. All Oscar categories; Independent Spirit Awards for (First) Feature, (First) Screenplay, Director, and International Film only; Hugo and Ray Bradbury (= Nebula) Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation.
The mini-rewiews are preceded by their own status flags: + for a review with minor changes and ++ for those with major, and > for one with an update of the director and/or screenwriter's subsequent and/or current activity, and < for new detail about their previous careers.
Finally, I give free-with-subscription sources other than those automatically provided by IMDB. "DVD.Netflix" implies three other alternatives (unless noted otherwise): free streaming services that interrupt the film with commercials (often inelegantly, I'm told), inexpensive VOD, and disks borrowed from local libraries. JustWatch.com is a good source for the first two.
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