Best Indie Sci-Fi: Watchlist #1

This list is a companion to Best Indie Sci-Fi 1997-2021 V2.0.

It is followed by Best Indie Sci-Fi: Watchlist #2 and Best Indie Sci-Fi: Watchlist #3.

Every year the cost of making an sf film of a given quality goes down, which means that every year more films worth checking out appear. I periodically hunt down the new ones, and in the process I invariably find older ones that are just now gaining attention (or have finally been classified as sci-fi at IMDB).

I divide all unseen films into three tiers by apparent quality and promise. Tier A has films that seem likely to be a should-see film or better, tier B has films with roughly a 50-50 chance, and tier C is the films that seem unlikely but need to be checked out. (Many of those that fall short will qualify as "could-see" films and eventually appear in the main list.)

As of the completion of the current V3.0 (formerly V2.1), the three tiers will contain upwards of 155, 72, and 86 films respectively (I'm still looking). Yes, that's 313+ films. When you include the films I've already rated, and the 78 films I've examined and decided weren’t worth a look, 53% of all the films I'm aware of are in the top tier! Obviously there are more second- and third-tier films made than first-tier, but the former are also much less likely to be picked up for streaming or distribution.

Worthy of note: at the completion of V2.0 the three tiers contained 129, 56, and 67 films respectively. Since I'll have watched 43 films for this update, that meant that 313 - 252 + 43 = 104 films were added, basically a third of the watchlist! It would seem that new films are far outpacing my ability to watch them, but the simple fact is that I'm doing a concerted conscientious effort to track down everything missing. I think the number of interesting new films per year is in the neighborhood of 40, and I also suspect that the streaming services are getting close to running out of interesting old ones to unearth. It should be possible to keep up once I get caught up ... which is why I've decided to try and average two films per week.

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As you may have guessed, each Watchlist corresponds to a tier. Because this first tier is so populous, it has itself been subdivided onto three groups, more or less by their likelihood of becoming must-see films.

First up are the 39 films for V3.1 (which will also include 15 rewatches). Target date is the end of August 2022.

The 42 films for 4.0 are next (together with 18 rewatches). The goal here is to finish by the end of September 2023. V 4.0 will at long last include an update of the very interesting "popularity" scores, and should have a "last word" ranking of all but the newest of the best films, as all will have been watched at least twice.

Finally, there are 73 films to be split between V4.1 and V 5.0 (along with 34 re-watches, to fine-tune the rankings of the next-best films). The goal is to finish by the end of 2024.

After that? I have a list of 64+ indie-ish sci-films from 1968 to 1996, but I've only seen 18, nearly all of which need to be rewatched. That looks like a year-long project, when you include keeping up with new films.

Now, if I can become wealthy enough to hire people to do things--not just all the time-consuming aspects of real life, but the more rote elements of running this list -- I may be able to accelerate this timetable significantly. And I actually have a plan for that!

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In the notes, a + is a film appearing for the first time on the watchlist, and ^ is one bumped up a category from the last list, while < is a bump down.

A * indicates a film that direct-to-DVD or VOD release, when movie theaters were open.

The notes also include availability for those that aren't free on Amazon Prime. These are up-to-date only as far V3.1. "NFS" is Netflix Streaming and "DN" is DVD.Netflix. "A$" indicates the Amazon rent or purchase appears to be the best bet. All disks are Blu-Rays unless noted. An @ indicates availability from the Minuteman Library System in Eastern MA.

First, 32 mostly older films for V3.1, in chronological order by U.S. release.