Brows Held High / YMMV

Aluminum Christmas Trees: He mentions that the fox from Antichrist was nominated for the Palm Dog, given out at Cannes to the best canine in a film, but lost to the dog from Up. The Palm Dog isn't simply a pun on Palme d'Or, but is an actual award, albeit one given out by an independent entity, and that was the 2009 line-up.
Anvilicious: While never one to shy away from sharing his socio-political opinions and plenty capable of being unsubtle in a way that helps his point, most of Kyle's post-2016 videos ramp up his vocalizations on social injustice, feminism, bigotry and political corruption, to the point that he'll sometimes outright stop his videos to passive-aggressively state his opinions on something.
Broken Base: Some support Kyle's current "Video Essay" format. Others preferred him back when he sat in front of the camera, had a more linear format and was more involved with the expanded Reviewerverse. Kyle has often made clear his embarrassment towards his less professional Channel Awesome-era work, but about any time he makes the point, it's not hard to find comments claiming he's too hard on himself.
Crosses the Line Twice:
- Kyle's conversation with the NATO representative at the end of his review of A Serbian Film. Hearing Kyle demand that NATO wipe out Serbia is a little uncomfortable at first... until you get to the "fictional bombs" part.
- From the same review, his stickman representations of some of the more graphic scenes.
- Lupa's cameo in the Melancholia review. Just... Christ... (Although it's worth noting Kyle and Lupa are good friends in real life.)
- At the end of Mister Lonely, the Marilyn Monroe impersonator kills herself. Ven promptly pops up and starts singing 'Candle In The Wind', while Kyle is promptly horrified. The whole scene is hilarious.
- His crossover with Diamanda in Eat the Schoolgirl features a lot of this, being more in line with Hagan's dark comedy. In particular, Hagan starting the review having castrated him, his inappropriate use of the Jem theme song, and him having a breakdown and attempting to turn Hagan into a snail because of an Insane Troll Logic rant where he condemned her for having a god-complex.
Genius Bonus: Many of the jokes are references to non-mainstream plays, figures, and organizations.
- During his review of the 2006 movie The Exterminating Angels, he congratulates everyone who thought this would be a review of the Luis Bunuel movie.
- During the Exterminating Angels review, Kyle mocks the incomprehensible radio messages by replying with what sounds like trucker slang; one of these phrases refers to "an Andalusian doggie".
- The way he called Goldmember out in Dutch is offensive enough translated literally, but he also calls him a cancer victim. "Kanker" (the Dutch word for "cancer") is the worst expletive in the language, worse than the English "fuck."
- In the Antichrist review, he made a reference to Farinelli, a castrato singer.
Growing the Beard:
- While his early reviews did plenty of analysis, they still owed much to the TGWTG style of recapping a movie's plot while riffing jokes along the way. Melancholia marked a shift in that the analysis of the film's themes began to take priority over the recapping, which subsequent episodes have been following since. Consequently there have been less BHH episodes, only 7 in 2013, but they tend to be longer and have a lot of research put into them, while still plenty funny.
- Kyle himself claimed that his review of A Serbian Film was a major turning point in his reviewing style, as he really did his research on the history & culture of Serbia, and managed to make a review that was equal parts entertaining and educational.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- The Vinyl review concludes its analysis by stating that the actors were probably tired, stoned, and without direction or rehearsal time. Kyle then adds: "By the way, the fourth year shoot was fun." After the public leaks in 2018 concerning Channel Awesome's numerous misconducts, this sounds much less like Biting-the-Hand Humor and much more like a cry for help.
- In his video on Omkara, he mentions India moving past the caste system is really nothing more than superficially burying it and that it still inspires violence, unfavorably comparing it to the idea of "postracial" America and how caste it "no longer a problem in India in the same way that race is no longer a problem in America." Eleven days later, his point was unfortunately proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when a white supremacist murdered nine black people, including the minister and a state senator, at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church after explicit declaration of wanting to kill black people.
- Among other topics in the "Kill The Mouse" song number in the Beauty and the Beast review, he criticizes Disney for getting its hands on everything, including "even Maker Studios and Blip". Later on, he adds a plea to "let producers back on Blip". Just under a year later, Disney and Maker closed the doors on Blip forever, leaving many TGWTG and former TGWTG producers (including both Kyle and Tony) searching for a viable alternative.
  - Also, when they were talking about the upcoming Beauty and the Beast (2017), they mentioned the project with Emma Watson and Guillermo del Toro was supposed to direct, then said that Disney was "doing some bullshit." Turns out, the version with Emma Watson was Disney's. How good that one was though is up for debate.
- His own changing opinions about racism and social injustice, as well as judging others for their taste in art and entertainment, made the title of the show awkward once he discovered that the term "highbrow" has racist origins.^note
- In his review of A Serbian Film, Kyle closes with a joke scene of him demanding Serbia be bombed for the film (to the horror and refusal of the NATO official hearing his order.) In his review for Starship Troopers, when expressing regret for that joke, Kyle revealed that his father was a military engineer for NATO and was involved in their 1999 campaign bombing Serbia (then-part of Yugoslavia.)
He Really Can Act: Melancholia. For both Kyle and his emotional turmoil and Ven as his Foil at the end.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In the Between the Lines video on Batman, Kyle ends it by concluding that Bruce is forever doomed to be Batman or die. A clip of The Dark Knight Rises is the final shot in the video. When the film came out, Bruce actually retires as Batman without any incident (besides faking his death).
- His review of The Devils has him test if Oliver Reed is really so enticing to women by testing it on JesuOtaku. In 2015, JO came out as a trans man.
  - He also tried the same thing on Psycho Butch Lesbian Diamanda Hagan and got the same reaction, so it might be a case of Even The Guys Want Oliver Reed.
  - The most interesting thing about the gag? He asks Obscurus Lupa and Hagan if they're really women (Lupa glares at him while Diamanda wonders why people keep asking her that), but doesn't ask JO the same question.
  - This may have been a reference to the then common Running Gag of JO being considered one of the (if not THE) most attractive women on the site, whom most of the straight male creators had a crush on (some for real)...which arguably makes it even funnier now.
- His decision to review The Man Who Fell to Earth as a Musical Episode is funny in light of the play Lazarus, a sequel to the movie that's an actual David Bowie Jukebox Musical.
- In his first take on Gerry, Kyle refers to Casey Affleck as "in a relationship to an Academy Award-winning actor". Years later, Casey would get his own Best Actor win for Manchester by the Sea.
- In his reviews of Sebastiane he claims that the homoerotic content bores him because he doesn't feel attracted to men. Flashforward to 2018 and he came out as bisexual.
- His video "From Caligari to Hitler: Imagining the Tyrant" ends with a lengthy montage of popular works from contemporary American pop culture, demonstrating that authoritarian themes and imagery are surprisingly common in popular American works. One of the many characters shown in the montage is Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. After the infamous ending of the final season, it now looks like she was a more fitting choice than most fans would have imagined.
Memetic Mutation: Escargoancitizen. Part of a weird minific series on Tumblr, Kyle is a snail, and other people on the site are other woodland animals (or plants, or inanimate objects). Eventually he and his title card artist Ven filmed a live action version of the Origin Story of Escargoancitizen; a pastiche of Uzumaki. Escargoancitizen fanart is also popular on Tumblr.
Moe: The drawn title cards has his character as rather "moe"-like, particularly in the Sebastiane review.
Never Live It Down: His IMDb page erroneously naming him as "Ralph Oancitizen", which Phelous, Obscurus Lupa and Sad Panda turned into a Running Gag.
Nightmare Fuel:
- Many of the films Kyle has reviewed are immensely disturbing, even if he doesn't show most of the more graphic scenes. The fact that Kyle provides more insight and far fewer jokes in his reviews compared to other TGWTG contributors doesn't help.
- His video From Caligari to Hitler, released within a month of the 2016 US election result, discusses how popular Weimar-era cinema may have accidentally laid the groundwork for the fascists, and ends in a venomously ironic monologue about how us modern audiences will never let it happen again... played out over clips of popular Western blockbusters and shows. The final shot is of Gozer choosing an avatar and Venkmann angrily demanding who imagined something, used to surprisingly chilling effect.
  Stantz: ... I couldn't help it! It just popped in there...
Special Effect Failure: The lip-syncing during the musical portions of his Beauty and the Beast reviews are done excellently. During the talking interludes? Not so much.
Squick: A vast majority of the films he's reviewed tend to be full of this. And he endures all of it... up to a point.

YMMV / Brows Held High

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