Awesome / Brows Held High

• His cameo appearance at the end of The Nostalgia Chick's Les Misérables. He'd hinted at his capacity as singer in "Perfume," but here, we see him showing what he can really do.
• His summary of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It, all in thirty seconds to the tune of the William Tell Overture in his episode on Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations really needs to be heard to be believed. His little bow at the end is well-deserved.
  The king of all England's Henry Five
  And from all the French he got some jive
  And after that burn he did contrive
  For all of their lands from them deprive.
  Benedick and Beatrice bitch a lot
  But all of their friends decide to plot
  To get them together and tie the knot
  Don John screws it up, but he gets caught.
  Hamlet's dad is dead!
  The son starts seeing red
  So he tries to kill his uncle but the whole thing gets all bungled
  And he ends up killing everybody else instead.
  Four couples all get crossed
  But there's an awful cost
  When a war it comes-a-knockin' and the world starts a rockin' and so all their hard earned
  loves labor's lost.
  A duke he usurps his bro and then
  They flee to the forest of Arden.
  Two girls go and dress up just like men,
  And I think this bit will come to an end.
• Reciting AM's speech at the end of Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio.
• Oancitizen's utter evisceration of Exterminating Angels
  Narrator: "Why does sex lead to such violence and hypocrisy over matters that are no more than a tempest in a teapot?"
  Oancitizen: "Because sex, for human beings, is a high risk, high stakes game that provides not only the problems of physical satisfaction and emotional security, but also the promise that your DNA will be passed on to another generation. It is because of these high stakes that it has become such a competitive enterprise, and the reason society has so many taboos, regulations and passions surrounding it. There, I solved your movie you insensitive asshat."
  • The crowning moment, though, comes at the end.
  Oancitizen: "Jean-Claude Brisseau makes an erotic thriller by asking women to masturbate on camera for him. He gets punished for it. So he decides to make a film exploring his feelings about it. Okay, makes sense, tough time in his life, probably wanted to think it through for a while. But then he makes a movie, full of male fantasy porn for which he definitely harassed even more actresses, to answer questions about why this situation arose. And after all that soft-core soul searching, the answer Brisseau gives boils down to 'It's not my fault they love me so much. I just exude this warm charm that makes them open up and get all emotional and'... gah! You know, I don't know if anyone in this film is meant to be sympathetic, but it's certainly not this man who took his very real and very valid accusations of sexual harassment and turned them into a masturbatory fantasy. Jean-Claude Brisseau... fuck you."
  • And building up to that, when there's a Creator Cameo...
  Oancitizen: "Wait. Stop. Do you see that? See that guy? See him?" (circles a fat, homely man in his mid-50s) "That's the director. Not the suave, sophisticated, handsome man with the Anthony Stewart Head thing going on - that guy. THIS guy cast THIS guy [the actor playing Francoise] to play him. Now... do you understand... my anger?!?"
• The entirety of his The Man Who Fell to Earth review. The whole thing is sung as different David Bowie songs. Put best by Coldguy:
  Coldguy: Guys, I think we've just been served.
  • "Dance Magic, Dance."
    • Extra points for every shot of Kyle in that sequence matching exactly to every angle & pose Jareth had in the original.
• In his review of The Doom Generation, Oancitizen managed to get 90's Kid to shut up/leave by saying THIS:
  Oancitizen: Nirvana is directly responsible for allowing Nickelback to exist!
• His opening speech to his review of 9 Songs. While also a Funny Moment, it is all recited so fast and so nonchalantly, it's impressive. Shocking, but very VERY impressive.
• Angels in America. A serious review done with complete sincerity, only two or three minor jokes thrown in to lighten the mood, all in an effort to honor the victims of AIDS. His closing remarks alone are enough to make you tear up a little:
  "For World's AIDS Day, we have to remember those who have fallen. The world only spins forward, and they will be citizens. The time has come. Bye, now. You are fabulous each and every one of you and I bless you. More life. The great work begins."
• He opens the Holiday Special Greetings with a One-man quartet choir in perfect harmony.
• The Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai review. Oancitizen. Rapping. While The Rap Critic facepalms in the background.
  Eh. Two out of five.
• Live-Action Fanfic! The Origin of Escargoancitizen
• Making his review of Andy Warhol's "Vinyl" EXACTLY 15 minutes.
• His Between The Lines video analyzing the symbolism of Bruce Wayne taking the bat as his symbol.
• Oancitizen was able to find meaning and theme of Revolutionary Girl Utena and explain in a clear concise way. JesuOtaku was very impressed. Then the film's end pissed him off by its utter insanity and that made JO happy.
  • Actually, behind the scenes reveals that JO wrote the speech for him - but that doesn't diminish it.
• His entire review for Haxan. Not just because it in itself was a silent film, complete with score, but because of how well-researched it was. He goes into great detail as to why the film was so revolutionary and what it predated or laid the groundwork for.
  • And then in the commentary of the show, admits that some spots weren't as well researched as the others. Also how he had to deep throat a banana. Twice. For a joke.
• His in-depth research of cult playwright and architect Robert Wilson - for a punchline - in his review of Gerry. The man puts effort into these reviews.
• His complete thrashing of Thierry Zeno's Freudian Excuse for the pig-f**king protagonist of Vase de Noces as well as his stonefaced, barely contained rage at the fate of the piglets.
• The vlog on Anonymous (2011), taking the movie to task for its multiple violations of the chronology of when Shakespeare's plays were released, and just common sense.
• His ending monologue for Melancholia:
  Depression is a disease; make no mistake. Von Trier can romanticize it all he wants but depression is a stasis. It's a dead end. Succumbing to it is a surrender to death. And you can go on and on about how hollow our culture is and how "shallow" life is but, what of it? I'm alive. And I can experience the new, and share it. Here, now, I'm alive. And what happier thing can be said? We should all keep creating and sharing, because, in the words of a better filmmaker: "Our songs will all be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing."
  • ... which led right into the always-awesome Journey of the Sorcerer.
  • For some, his well-placed Take That! to Lars Von Trier that leads into said monologue, which climaxes with him dismissively calling Orson Welles "a better filmmaker". Whatever your personal feelings towards Von Trier's work, it takes guts to refuse to be disturbed or intimidated by an arthouse darling who made his name on shocking imagery and oppressive misanthropy. It's one of the most satisfying instances of Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers! that you'll ever see from the TGWTG team.
  "What else can I say? I went looking for a silver lining, and I looked in the wrong place. Von Trier set out to tell a story where a depressive mood could come in handy, and the best he could come up with was an outlandish scenario where everyone in the world is just as miserable as he is."
  • His fiftieth episode is a work of art in general, but this line in particular was awesome.
  Fan: I love your stuff.
  Oancitizen: Hey, thanks man!
  Fan: I just don't get why you hang out with those losers all the time.
  Oancitizen: Haha, fuck you, they're my friends.
  • Kyle's Melancholia review resonated so strongly with fans that hundreds of them started posting to Twitter, Tumblr and various other social media sites about it, praising Kyle for doing an outstanding job of reviewing and analyzing films in a genre that he loves and making the films and the reviews accessible. Almost all thanked him for speaking so openly, so realistically and with such depth about depression. Many stated that they had been struggling with depression for years and that they had never seen anyone speak so honestly about their illness. Some said that Kyle had given them hope for the first time in ages because they could see that someone out there really did understand.
• He speaks Klingon, and can actually say 'To be or not to be' in Klingon.
  • In the same review, he also recited several other famous Shakesperean passages in other fictional languages: a line from the witches' speech in Macbeth in Dovah, "What fools these mortals be" in Elvish, "My kingdom for a horse!" in Dothrakin...and to top it all off, the famous last line of Romeo and Juliet in newspeak.
• After Allison Pregler briefly left the internet due to, amongst other things, death threats sent to her home, Kyle told those involved that their behaviour was unacceptable and did not want anyone who had contributed to that behaviour watching his show.
  Everyone read this. This behaviour is not acceptable in any civilised society. Allison has been nothing but a dear friend to me since I started this series. Seeing this kind of abuse going on is heartbreaking. If you're a patron of BHH and you have in any way contributed to this harassment, please, find someone else to follow. I will not tolerate the cruelty that Mr. Antwiler's fans have unfairly heaped upon her. Nor should any sane person.
• In his Between the Lines review of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, he doesn't point out the silliness of the show or the people in it, but rather blasting the people that watch it, pointing out that more than anything else, it resembles a freakshow, marginalizing an individual and marking them as different from normal people. This culminates in him commenting on how the freakshow has more or less died out nowadays:
  The sideshow is not gone, but it's unlikely to make a huge comeback, mostly due to a disposition called "political correctness", which is a florid way of saying BASIC HUMAN F**KING DECENCY.
  • Oh, and that last part is delivered in a deadly cold (albeit echoed and paired with huge captions) Tranquil Fury at the fact that Honey Boo Boo is essentially a freakshow centered around a six year old.
• Kyle utterly deflating Peter Greenaway's claims of the deep satirical symbolism hidden within Rembrandt's The Night Watch (and his comment that anyone who does not recognize it as such is "visually illiterate") by constructing his own elaborate conspiracy theory about Illuminati lizard-men and Al Franken training an army of child soldiers under Graceland.
• Ven kicking Kyle off the chair in the review of Room In Rome after pointing out that he can only give a straight man's perspective of the film, and then giving an opinion of the movie that is most definitely not that of a straight cis-man.
• Kyle's Between The Lines episode on The Beatles is an incredibly well done, informative and educational look at poetry and language. It could easily be mistaken for a short film you'd see on the subject in a high school English class.
  • Kyle also deserves props for reciting/singing nearly every example he uses himself, with the exception being sung in a language he doesn't speak.
• Yeelen:
  • The entirety of the review, in which a West African fantasy film serves as a springboard for an impeccably researched, intellectual discussion of Mali's culture and history, the concept of the "Hero's Journey", and how the unifying concept of nationalism can be very exclusionary in practice, the latter covering nearly a half of the review's runtime. What makes it all the more impressive is how he provides a balanced take on a topic as sensitive as nationalism (when he could have just as easily resorted to using Godwin's Law to discredit it) while also admitting that the paradox it presents offers no simple or quick answers. It's a thing of sheer beauty on par with Melancholia.
  • Much like in his review of Blue (discussed below), Kyle's analysis of Yeelen is made all the more fascinating by the fact that he starts out seemingly mocking the movie for being a predictable, by-the-numbers West African retelling of the Hero's Journey (even using the soundtrack from Star Wars: A New Hope to point out each stage of the journey in turn). But as he goes on, he gradually draws on seemingly insignificant details to point out that the movie is actually a treasure trove of information on West African culture, giving Westerners a rare look at a region that is all too often flanderized, appropriated or outright ignored by the popular media. ^note  Those "wizards"? They're skilled artisans and craftsmen rather than well-read scholars, because traditional Malian culture is oral rather than literate—which is why many West African cultures see physical craftsmanship as inherently powerful, whereas Western culture see words as inherently powerful. Those talking animals? West African cultures believe in animal hierarchy, which is why it's fitting that the movie starts with a meeting with a lowly hyena and ends with the hero becoming a mighty lion. That Cain and Abel conflict between the two brothers? It's a veiled Take That! to Mali's corrupt authoritarian government, as the conflict is essentially between one man selfishly abusing his power while another uses it responsibly. That nonsense about the hero randomly impregnating another man's wife? It's a metaphor for the union of Mali's three primary cultures (Bambara, Fulani and Dogon), hinting at the hero's son growing up to become the ideal Malian leader. The shift happens absolutely seamlessly, and it's mesmerizing to watch.
• His quick and informative summation of the intricate plot threads within the novel Cloud Atlas, editing in appropriate visual and musical cues to distinguish the shifts in tone and subject matter.
  • His dissection of the film's use of yellowface, including rebutting the common argument from the film's defenders that the film also had plenty of whiteface. He even shares how he came up with a quite convincing argument for what the filmmakers were going for that justifies it... only for the whole thing to be invalidated when he found out Tom Tykwer and The Wachowskis' first choice to play Sonmi-451 was the very white Natalie Portman.
• Kyle's furious rebuttal to the critics of Perfume who suggested that the mass orgy near the end is the sort-of-protagonist's way of redeeming himself, by turning a would-be execution into a place of mass love. He points out that at the time, the execution would most likely have been attended by entire families, including children, and that the people were just fucking the first person within reach, so in fact, the mass orgy is nothing short of utterly horrifying.
• His horrified summary of the ending of Spring Breakers, which comes off as very problematic in the wake of Trayvon Martin's death, and how the film itself otherizes black culture in an almost crypto-racist way, before launching into a critique on the extensive use of Male Gaze and "strong female characters" as a horny douche's conception of feminist empowerment.
  Kyle: "Spring Breakers" is an STD, bred in the petri dish of American pop culture, and it infects everyone and everything... [...] He could be appropriating that culture to critique it, or to do it ironically, but... I don't see critique here. I don't see irony. [...] His arrangements of the pop items here... are indulgence. Harmony Korine wanted a Spring Break fantasy, and so he made a Spring Break fantasy."
• His Between the Lines video on Game of Thrones has been featured on Roger Ebert's website.
• His introduction to Shakespeare month, which was done entirely in iambic pentameter.
• During his Romeo + Juliet review, he demonstrates that Shakespearean verse is in fact not hard but barely different than modern English.
  Kyle: But Old English is haaaarrrd!! ... said the obviously strawman commentator. Okay, Old English sounds like this:

  Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
  þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
  Middle English sounds like this:

  Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
  The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
  And English, the language that I am speaking, sounds like this:

  Two households, both alike in dignity,
  In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
• Kyle's recitation of Act 2, Scene 1, lines 155-169 of A Midsummer Night's Dream is absolutely beautiful.
• To close out Shakespeare Month, Kyle, once more, covers ''Anonymous (2011)', and reduces it to ashes in piece-by-piece detail.
  • Applying the same Insane Troll Logic that an artist's work must reflect his own life to Roland Emmerich's own Independence Day.
  • Neatly dissecting the Unfortunate Implications of anti-democratic thought in the hawked Anti-Stratfordian theory in the film, which states the Tudor line could have continued... due to incest. And just to drive the point home, he shows a clip of Joffrey as he sarcastically intones "All hail Prince Tudor."
  • Pointing out that although many are willing to invoke Death of the Author for such luminaries as Edgar Degas (a venomously anti-Semitic, anti-Protestant bigot), John Lennon (a mercurial wife-beater), and Woody Allen (an incestuous pedophile), to accuse Shakespeare of plagiarism and fraud - simply because he was middle-class and somewhat uneducated - is monstrously elitist.
  • "Our Shakespeare": taking a line originally said in a sneering tone and using it to explain just why Shakespeare's work has survived and stayed revered for so many centuries.
• He tops his Man Who Fell to Earth review with another musical review, which examines Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et La Bete." Guest starring Some Jerk with a Camera, shot on location primarily at Disneyland (with additional scenes at Universal Studios and Magfest), and featuring reviewer cameos (from Channel Awesome and beyond) who provide a lot of humor and snark. Complete with musical numbers parodying the more well-known adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.
  • The sheer volume of cameos in the opening number is astounding (though it helps that it was filmed at a convention). Aside from Jerk, there's Pushing Up Roses, Bennett the Sage, Todd in the Shadows, The Last Angry Geek, The Nostalgia Critic, Linkara, The Rap Critic, Film Brain, Nash, Obscurus Lupa, Phelous, Mikey Insanity, RL King, Diamanda Hagan, The Omega, Paw Dugan, Rantasmo, That SciFi Guy, Maven of the Eventide, Arthur Knowledge, Masqued Slaher, Horror Guru, Critical Marine, Viga, Kitty Marie, The Hardcore Kid, The Philosofan, Spazz, Il Neige, and The Wire.
    • And Ven breaking out an absolutely stunning pastiche of the title song of Disney's film over the ending credits, paying tribute to all the different versions of the story.
• The first section of his review of Blue. He initially presents the idea of a movie as nothing but a single color as ridiculous and comedic. Slowly, he shows how much the color has cultural and emotional significance before the sobering reveal of why the movie was made. ^note  Derek Jarman made the movie when he was dying of AIDS, which caused him to temporarily lose his eyesight. He became obsessed with the color blue while grasping at his memories of seeing color. He goes from comedic to insightful to sobering so smoothly, that it's mesmerizing to watch.
  • Pointing out the innovative genius that led Yves Klein to develop his trademark gorgeous, rich, uniform shade of blue, in an era before digital processing made it as easy as tapping a few keys (complete with showing the hex value needed to create a perfect I.K.B.).
  Kyle: It's the sort of modern art shenanigans that would cause Strawman A to yell "My kid could do that!", and cause Strawman B to yell "Well your kid didn't think of it first!" And... actually, they would both be wrong. Klein didn't think of it first: the Russian Suprematist movement experimented with the beauty of solid color in simple geometric shapes fifty years before Klein made his mark. And your kid actually could not do that, because your kid can't invent colors. This guy did.
• In his "redux" of Gerry, Kyle once again sings a medley of different songs in rhythm to the noises of crunching gravel, this time performing over a dozen tunes without breaking his stride. The man has chops.
  • Kyle's amazing and heartwarming analysis/speech about the relationship between not only Gerry and Tomb Raider, but videogames and movies. How both of the mediums compliment and have a strong influence on one another, culminating in how videogames truly are art. It really needs to be seen in full to appreciate.
• After watching his "Between the Lines" analysis of Inception—an eleven-minute crash course on the history of Surrealist film—you'll never see the movie the same way again. It ends with one of the most intelligent and unexpected answers to the infamous "Spinning Top" question that you'll ever see.
  Kyle: Of course it was all a dream. It's a movie, isn't it?
• His "Between The Lines" episode on Marvel's The Avengers. In this day and age, it's very easy to just knock the modern superhero film as an endlessly rehashed money-making formula. Kyle doesn't take the easy route; instead, he expertly dissects the ethical, philosophical and political systems behind each of the Avengers ^note  Captain America represents the self-sacrifice of Nationalism, Iron Man represents the self-interest of Objectivism, Thor represents the ideal monarch (i.e. mastery of others), the Hulk represents spiritual self-discipline (i.e. mastery of the self), and S.H.I.E.L.D. represents the heroic potential of antiheroism and explores their disparate literary and pop cultural influences ^note  Classic World War II films for Cap, the novels of Ayn Rand for Tony, Shakespearean historical epics for Thor, Victorian science-fiction for Hulk, and 20th century Spy Fiction for S.H.I.E.L.D. to make an argument for the movie being a post-modern character study about people with conflicting philosophies reaching consensus for the greater good. In the end, he even manages to come up with a convincing defense for the superhero genre as art: of course we're flooded with superheroes today—because there can be as many superheroes as there are ways to be heroic. Superheroes aren't defined by their superpowers, they're defined by how they use them.
• His recital of an ancient Japanese legend while reviewing Throne of Blood, starting with a slow, droning style before abruptly jumping into a loud and exciting reading of the climax, complete with quite vivid imagery and sound effects. The guy's really become a master storyteller in his own right.
• His analysis of Klingon Hamlet, of the play's Klingon view of it as a Dystopian drama... then leads into a pretty good discussion of how Translation Convention works with the more common languages in the world.
• The Bait-and-Switch in "The Lion King, or the History of King Simba I". Kyle successfully fools the audience into believing that he's going for the simple conclusion by pointing out the many famous parallels between The Lion King and Hamlet. But as fans of this series should know by now, Kyle doesn't do simple. Instead the review is a complex blow-by-blow examination of Shakespearean history plays, the Bible, the Disney animated canon, Japanese anime, and the West African epic of King Sundiata, pointing out how all of them subtly influenced the very universal story of an exiled hero growing to manhood and learning to come to terms with his past. The conclusion? A surprisingly powerful message about why it's important to become conversant in the great stories of the world, and how stories reveal the common threads that bind humanity together. Damn.
  • In the same video: his masterful retelling of the Malian epic of Sundiata Keita, complete with animated effects, music, and appropriately used photographs of Malian ceremonial masks for all of the characters. Kyle already gets a lot of love from the fandom for his storytelling skills, but this one is—without a doubt—his most ambitious yet. Visual Effects of Awesome and a masterful voice-acting performance in one awesome sequence.
• Successfully condensing the basic tenets of existentialist theory in Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness with, of all things, a Skyrim analogy.
• "Star Wars Minus Star Wars" might be his greatest work of editing yet: an epic 15-minute condensation and re-telling of the original 1977 movie, using no sound, music or images from any Star Wars media whatsoever, to illustrate both the many sources that it drew from and the countless others it inspired.
• "From Caligari to Hitler", where Kyle uses the theorems of Kracauer and the Frankfurt School to postulate that — much like Weimar German cinema thematically foreshadowing the rise of Hitler — forms of modern pop culture mass entertainment ("divorced" from politics or not) can be seen to at least broadly reflect the will and desires of the masses, as well as which form of authoritarian leader can gain traction in that era. Both the theorems he references and the video itself deliver a very important message: in the face of tyrants, "staying out of it" is complacency.
  In the guise of neutrality, it's all propaganda.
• His video on The Birth of a Nation (1915). Kyle (of course) shows contempt for the film's overt racism, but he goes one step further. The main reason this film is still shown in film classes is because it's credited with "creating" modern filmmaking. However, as Kyle points out... it really didn't. It popularized a lot of filmmaking techniques that are still used today, but it didn't create them, and it shouldn't get the credit for doing so. So, what is one reason to watch this "three hour hate crime," as Kyle puts it? Because it is a perfect reflection of what most white Americans believed at the time, and that shouldn't be forgotten. Ever.
  Kyle: It should be remembered, because generations of Americans actually believed its hateful message. And, on some level... many still do. And that, as ugly as it sounds, is why you should watch it.
• His video on For All Mankind posits a very compelling, non-science based argument against the Conspiracy Theory that the moon landings were filmed on a sound stage by Stanley Kubrick: Kubrick would never have allowed the landing footage to be so badly framed, or for Neil Armstrong to flub his iconic line, or let it be garbled in the transmission.
  Kyle as Kubrick: What the hell was that Neil? The hell was that?! Spit the moon dust outta ya mouth, get back on the ladder, take 128!
• The entire three part essay on the book and movie of Starship Troopers, going out of his way to show every aspect of how both Heinlein and Verhoeven brought their own cultures into it and how that turned into the two readings of the same source material, while relating it to his own experiences as Military Brat and expat in Holland himself. The third part, however, is the pinnacle, as Kyle spends the entire time deconstructing fascism and xenophobia itself, admitting his own fears and shock at seeing the rising anti-immigrant views in both nations, and struggling to understand what to do with it. The ending itself is deeply personal as he admits his own rage at the xenophobes and fascists of the world, at the people who have harassed him and his friends, how it is so easy to take fear and anger and pain and turn it into a hatred of the Other...and how important it is to resist that, to embrace the Other for what it can teach us, and to seek a better way.
  Kyle: The world is myth. The most heroic thing anyone can do is imagine a better one. Better than this.
  Johnny Rico: Come on you apes, you want to live forever?
  Kyle: Yes! Because I would like to know more!
• Kyle goes into a nearly two-hour-long self-proclaimed "book report" of not just all issues of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and its spinoffs, but cites every single reference shown in the series. Every. Single. ONE.
• His Sins. Cinema. video, easily overtaking his "Nostalghia Critique" as one of the best takedowns of another online film review show.
  • First, he savagely parodies the popular movie review series CinemaSins for the first quarter of the video, using various movies he has covered throughout his own career and many others.
  • He then partially abandons the format of a CinemaSins video to further explore the very concept of critiquing a film during the second quarter, juxtaposing "sins" against legendary film critic Susan Sontag's thoughts on various films and how they can be interpreted.
  • He spends the third quarter arguing that CinemaSins not only does not provide any interpretation, but by reducing the value of a film to the binary addition or removal of perceived "sins", it vastly reduces the qualitative experience to a quantifiable, entirely arbitrary, value.
  • Finally, he breaks down why the CinemaSins format works during the final quarter, including how it exploits quirks in human psychology to destroy the very concept of a film critique through the Pavlovian training of the bell signifying the ticking up of the "sin" counter to mean to the audience that they don't have to think about the thought that was just expressed.