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Movie Nerd Discussion Group Top 10

Numbers in parentheses represent the previous week’s placement. Links are to trailers.

01. Starless Dreams (Mehrdad Oskouei) (1)
02. After the Storm (Kore-eda Hirokazu) (2)
03. Get Out (Jordan Peele) (4)
04. Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie) (5)
05. The Big Sick (Michael Showalter) (2)
06. Your Name. (Makoto Shinkai) (6)
07. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) (7)
08. John Wick Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski) (8)
09. Graduation (Cristian Mungiu) (9)
10. The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi) (10)

And just for fun, the ten worst-rated films—though, again, bear in mind that films receiving fewer than ten votes (which would likely include most of the truly terrible ones) aren’t tallied.

(Total number of films ranked: 40)

39. (tie) The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour)
39. (tie) Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon)
38. Free Fire (Ben Wheatley)
37. Song to Song (Terrence Malick)
36. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (Dash Shaw)
35. Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)
33. (tie) Life (Daniel Espinosa)
33. (tie) Slack Bay (Bruno Dumont)
32. T2 Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
31. The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou)

As a public service for readers seeking out excellent films—specifically, for those readers who put more trust in the Skandies than in the aggregate results compiled by Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes—I’m going to start keeping a tally of the top ten films released so far this year as judged by members of the Movie Nerd Discussion Group you may have seen mentioned here now and again. Basically, we stole and slightly modified Variety’s “crix pix” survey, with its pro/mixed/con structure; the only difference is that voters can strengthen their votes at either end with an all-caps PRO or CON.

This project began as a labor-intensive deal whereby everyone e-mailed their votes to poor Scott Tobias; eventually, Greg Dunlap created an automated version that also maintains stats, updated weekly. Since the Movie Nerd Discussion Group has 100+ members, and the Skandies only about 40, the results aren’t precisely congruent, but they’re pretty close; of the Skandies top 20 for 2007, for example, 14 were in the crix pix top 20. (The six that weren’t: Exiled (#27), Into the Wild (#32), Grindhouse (#34), Once (#38), Atonement (#46), and Joshua (#51).)

Films without at least ten votes aren’t counted, and folks don’t always send in their votes (or even see the films) the week they’re released, so don’t conclude that a given title wasn’t well-received simply because it doesn’t show up on the list right away.