Rowan Recommends: Reviewing The 2022 Sight and Sound Top 100

Recently, Sight and Sound released their most recent 'greatest films of all time' list. Every ten years, they ask "critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics" their top ten favourite films and aggregate the results. Putting aside the thorny issue of whether this list is tracking anything real (I think it surely is), this list is a great guide for getting into great cinema. I highly recommend leafing through the results for a film you like the sound of and watching it. For myself, I think the list is a mix of some of the greatest movies of all time and, to be honest, some overrated ones as well. 

In this post, I do four things. First, I list my 25 favourite picks from the list, which will be my own recommendations if you dive into it. Second, I list picks that I think are overrated. Third, I briefly mention some notable omissions. Finally, I list my top 10 favourite movies of all time, and some honourable mentions. Note that I have not quite seen all of them and that any omissions from my list do not mean I do not love them as well, just that I do not love them enough to be in the top 25.

My Philosophical Views (Answering the 2020 PhilPapers Survey)

In 2020, PhilPapers ran a survey. Here is a description of this survey:

...the 2020 PhilPapers Survey...surveyed the philosophical views of 1785 English-speaking philosophers from around the world on 100 philosophical questions.

The 2020 PhilPapers Survey was a follow-up to the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. The 2020 survey increased the number of the questions from 30 to 100 and expanded the target population.

And here are its results. In this post, I will be writing my own answers to the survey. I will only answer those questions I feel strongly enough about answering. Thus, some will be missing. Given my unorthodox metaphysical views, some of the positions/questions are technically nonsense to me, but I will answer each of those as if they were not. Also, I will include the percentage ratio of people that agree with me (including 'accept' and 'lean toward') in brackets after each answer. It goes without saying that I think some of the questions are badly posed, insufficiently precise, and don't allow for unorthodox views, etc. I am just going to pick what seems right for me. And finally, I am much more confident here than I would be in actually answering it, so I do not have a fully worked-out view of many of these questions. I will post any changes to my views next year! Here goes: