Love "Arrival" but I won't nominate it for this list. It's for "physics lovers" and "Arrival" is more for linguistics nerds; the central plot of the film hinges on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, after all.

In the same note of "sci-fi but not exclusively physics", I want to recommend "Another Earth"---very indie production, for better and for worse. Also, if you are a physics nerd, a certain plot point might irritate you. But, on behalf of the film, I ask you to grant it a bit more patience and suspension of disbelief. For me it hits the same dramatic notes as "Interstellar". Good quality intellectual entertainment.

> Love "Arrival" but I won't nominate it for this list. It's for "physics lovers" and "Arrival" is more for linguistics nerds

Honestly I wouldn't hesitate to put it on the list (if you liked it of course). Both physics and linguistics play a part.

Another Earth is what I would call "fake sci-fi". The other Earth in the movie has almost no impact whatsoever on the story. It doesn't affect anything, the characters don't really react to it in any way, and the movie ends before anything actually happens.

It's actually a pretty decent movie, but it's a drama, not sci-fi. It uses "science" purely as an aesthetic device without actually exploring any scientific effects. If the film didn't have the other Earth in the sky the script would be identical. It would just be forgettable indie drama instead of on people's great sci-fi lists.

> It's actually a pretty decent movie, but it's a drama, not sci-fi. It uses "science" purely as an aesthetic device without actually exploring any scientific effects.

Fair assessment, but I beg to differ on your definition of "sci-fi"; I find it quite restrictive. You can say the same for Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles". Mars might as well be Narnia as he just uses the notion of it being an alien planet to set-up tension and make a point about human behavior. It's more philosophical/psychological than scientific but I'd still call it sci-fi.

I guess you are entitled to expect a harder integration of science from a 2011 sci-fi film but I think "Another Earth" definitely takes from established, if outdated, cues in the genre.

But potaytos and potahtos. We can differ in opinion.

+1 for Arrival.

Also, Tenet was quite good. Antiparticles being time-reversed particles, jinn particles... with humans.

+ 1 for Tenet. And the score is amazing.

The score is probably my favorite part of that movie. Weird reverse notes during the temporal pincher scenes is a genius way to mix the theme and ideas in the movie with the score.

Do people really like modern Zimmer scores? They are typically over the top loud, obnoxious, and just very gaudy, in my opinion.

Ludwig Goransson did the score for Tenet. Zimmer opted to score Dune.

Thanks for the correction. It felt like a Zimmer score, so maybe that’s a bit of Nolan’s direction.

I found out from a colleague today that I’m not the only person who has no idea what happened in Tenet... and loved it anyway. Seen it a few times now.

Arrival: The short story its based on it amazing and explains things not just using linguistics but also physics. I love the movie, but it's sadly not as good, especially how it ends.