Best of the Best Movies of 2026 So Far...So Far...
Let's take a look at nationwide Best of 2026 So Far lists in comparison to the Played in Madison in 2026 So Far list.
This past Friday, I posted a list of all of the films that played in Madison’s theaters (AMC Fitchburg, Flix Brewhouse, and Marcus Theatres) so far in 2026.
Today, I present an aggregate list of titles drawn from the widely seen mid-year articles usually named something like “The Best Movies of 2026 So Far.”
I’m not going to discuss the lists in any detail. I’m posting the aggregated list to set the stage for upcoming discussions about Madison’s theatrical film market.
My sample Best of 2026 So Far lists came from the following 17 sources: Collider, Complex, Consequence of Sound, Esquire, The Film Stage, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Letterboxd, Mashable, Metacritic, RogerEbert.com, Rolling Stone, Rotten Tomatoes, Screen Crush, Variety, and World of Reel.
I chose to use neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post, mainly because they would present paywall obstacles if you wanted to follow through and look at their lists.
I linked the sources to Google Notebook LM (so I chose and limited the sources), provided a prompt, and Notebook LM devised the following methodology to rank the films:
To calculate the top 20 films from the lists in the sources, a standardized scoring system was applied: films in ranked lists received points based on their exact position (e.g., 20 points for 1st place, scaling down accordingly), while films in unranked lists received the mathematical average score for that list’s length. This accounts for both how high a film ranked and how often it appeared.
In terms of methodology, there are all kinds of problems with all of this. But for my purposes here, I don’t really care.
All I wanted was a broad overview of what film titles came up on Best of 2026 So Far lists, so that we could discuss them in relation to the Films that Played at Madison Theaters list. Here’s what Google Notebook LM spat out, followed by the number of weeks the films appeared on the Now Playing lists in Moving Image Madison:
1. Project Hail Mary - 155.5 points (10 lists).
Played in Madison 14 weeks so far.
2. Obsession - 124.0 points (8 lists).
Played in Madison 7 weeks so far.
3. Blue Heron - 116.5 points (9 lists).
Screened twice at Wisconsin Film Festival. Has not returned for a theatrical run.
4. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - 109.5 points (8 lists).
Played in Madison 3 weeks so far. (I need to double check that.)
5. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie - 94.5 points (7 lists).
Local premiere at UW-Cinematheque. Then played in Madison 3 weeks.
6. Is God Is - 88.0 points (7 lists).
Played in Madison 3 weeks so far.
7. I Love Boosters - 86.0 points (6 lists).
Played in Madison 4 weeks so far.
8. Send Help - 78.0 points (6 lists).
Played in Madison 7 weeks so far.
9. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert - 68.5 points (6 lists).
Played in Madison 5 weeks so far.
10. The Christophers - 65.5 points (5 lists).
Local premiere at Wisconsin Film Festival. Then played in Madison 2 weeks.
11. The Sheep Detectives - 62.5 points (4 lists).
Played in Madison 8 weeks so far.
12. The Drama - 59.0 points (5 lists).
Played in Madison 7 weeks so far.
13. Backrooms - 57.0 points (4 lists).
Played in Madison 5 weeks so far.
14. Disclosure Day - 53.5 points (4 lists).
Played in Madison 3 weeks so far (opened June 12).
15. Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) - 52.5 points (5 lists).
Has not played theatrically in Madison. Latest film, a documentary, from Lucrecia Martel (Zama, 2017).
16. Yes - 52.5 points (5 lists).
Local premiere at Wisconsin Film Festival. Has not returned for a theatrical run.
17. Pillion - 52.5 points (5 lists).
Played in Madison 2 weeks.
18. Silent Friend - 48.0 points (3 lists).
Has not played theatrically in Madison.
19. Rose of Nevada - 47.0 points (5 lists).
Has not played theatrically in Madison
20. Exit 8 - 47.0 points (4 lists).
Played in Madison 3 weeks.
Coming in at #3 on the aggregated list, Blue Heron is the big missing piece in the theatrical puzzle in Madison so far this year. Yes, Blue Heron screened twice at the Wisconsin Film Festival (including a Thursday mid-day screening). And yes, that is great that it did. And yes, it is great that some films that played at either the Wisconsin Film Festival or UW-Cinematheque came back for short runs in Madison’s commercial theaters (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie at #5; The Christophers at #10). But it is probably the time, after 25+ years of the UW-Cinematheque and the Wisconsin Film Festival (as well as other alternative venues like WUD Film and MMoCA), to come to terms to what impact they do or don’t have on the film market in Madison (not just on subjective impressions of Madison’s film culture).
I attempted, with admittedly mixed results, to write about this topic in Isthmus over 10 years ago (maybe it’s more like 14 years ago, I’ll have to look it up!). I ended up making a few people angry with me at the time. So this time around, I’m going to very gingerly approach the topic and slowly lay down the groundwork so that it doesn’t appear like I’m attacking anyone or being a Negative Nelly (Jaundiced Jimbo?). But the upshot of my point will be: There’s very little incentive for local theaters to play films like Blue Heron, and there’s very little incentive for independent film distributors to place films in Madison within an ever narrowing theatrical window.
It makes sense that Blue Heron hasn’t had a theatrical run in Madison, despite being #3 on the aggregated Best Films of 2026 So Far list. Discussion forthcoming. Meanwhile…
