“Mel Brooks will do anything for a laugh,” Roger Ebert once wrote. “Anything. He has no shame.” This was not an attack. It was praise. Ebert described seeing his directorial debut, The Producers, in 1968 as “a bomb going off inside the audience’s sense of propriety.” He saw in the comic-turned-filmmaker someone in the tradition of the Marx Brothers: fellow anarchists who attack everyone and everything, who stand against good taste and pretention but also against prejudice and power. (His comedies are filled with digs at the greedy rich, none more topical than this.) As a movie director, Brooks isn’t often thought of as a major stylist, but his movies are nothing if not stylized. They’re joke machines, and any inch not being used for a gag — or a delightful musical number — is, to him, wasted space.

Though he began his career as a Borscht Belt comic, Brooks was a reluctant performer. He preferred to stay behind-the-scenes or share the stage with his friend Carl Reiner, as in their seminal “2000 Year-Old-Man” act. When Brooks started directing, he stuck to bit parts and supporting turns. He only started taking center stage with Silent Movie, though even there he gladly surrendered the spotlight to other performers. But the main star of a Mel Brooks movie is always Mel Brooks, whose hyperactive, happy-to-shock voice is always loud and clear, even when he’s nowhere to be seen.

Brooks has only directed 11 movies, and though some aren’t all that, the majority remain stone-cold classics. They can be “problematic,” too, especially now — Brooks, like many at the time, rarely passed up a chance to mock mincing gay men — but as gleefully as they are to offend, they are, in their heart of hearts, on the side of the angels. Let’s look at each one and see how they hold up.

The Producers (1967)

The story: A washed-up theater producer (Zero Mostel) and an impossibly anxious accountant (Gene Wilder) team up to scam their way to a fortune by mounting Broadway’s worst-ever show: a pro-Nazi musical extravaganza entitled Springtime for Hitler.

What works: It eventually became Brooks’ single biggest cash cow, spun off into a Broadway musical, a movie version of that musical, and wound up on an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. But try to remember what it was when first released: a movie so dirty no major studio would distribute it, so offensive it had to play on the underground circuit, earning its money — and its two Oscar nominations — gradually. Rough and ramshackle, it shares a lot of its DNA with the era’s campy exploitation movies, from Herschell Gordon Lewis to Russ Meyer to (later) John Waters. But instead of sex and violence, The Producers’ vice is jokes about randy old women, hippie weirdos with finger cymbals, and bird-loving Nazi playwrights.

The Producers is available to rent on Amazon Prime.

The Twelve Chairs (1970)

The story: For his Producers chaser, Brooks turned to an oft-adapted satirical Russian novel set after the Revolution, following a destitute former aristocrat (Ron Moody) and a conman (Frank Langella) who team up to locate a fortune in jewels that had been sewn into one of twelve MIA dining room chairs, located somewhere in the vast, newly communist state.

What works: It’s the least seen or discussed of the Brooks canon, and for good reason: It tells a straightforward story whose humor is mostly character-based. It taught him a valuable lesson: Don’t make movies like this. And yet it’s still pretty good, even if Brooks never makes the story his own. He tries, though. Years before Silent Movie, Brooks was doing (mostly) silent slapstick set pieces. And it’s a fascinating look at the early days of the Soviet Union, proving that sometimes it’s comedies — like the Roman-set A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the Medieval Monty Python and the Holy Grail — that wind up being more accurate depictions of history than serious epics. Brooks could have had a long and healthy career making light, largely anonymous comedies like this. Instead, he thought big.

The Twelve Chairs is not available to rent but it is part of the Mel Brooks Collection on Blu-ray.

Blazing Saddles (1974)

The story: A crooked politician (Harvey Korman) wants to run a train line through a frontier town, so he devises a scheme: Drive its inhabitants to leave by appointing a black man (Cleavon Little) as their new sheriff, assuming that racism will trump self-preservation and common sense. His plan almost works.

What works: When Brooks and team (including co-writer Richard Pryor) lampooned the Western, the once-mighty genre was all but dead. You could even lump Blazing Saddles in with the era’s “revisionist Westerns,” like McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Wild Bunch, which dismantled the myths about America’s past that had graced screens for decades. In some ways it’s the most revisionist Westerns, with no respect for people of the land — or, as Gene Wilder’s Waco Kid put it, “morons.” Anti-PC types love to rally around it as a movie that insults everyone, that could never be made today in our woke times. But there’s one group that proves its biggest target: stupid white people. Its anger, though, is buried deep under endless, silly jokes about farts, about punching horses, about Marlene Dietrich, about authentic frontier gibberish, about a Baskin-Robbins with one flavor. Too bad its best gag never came to be: Brooks offered the role of the Waco Kid to the genre’s mightiest star, 66-year-old John Wayne, who decided he couldn’t appear in a script so dirty. But, he told him, “I’ll be the first one in line to see it.”

Blazing Saddles is available to stream on Hulu.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

The story: Brooks takes on the Universal monster movies of the 1930s, with a never-more-wigged-out Gene Wilder as the son of a mad scientist who steps into his father’s shoes and creates an even more disastrous Prometheus (Peter Boyle).

What works: Brooks’ directorial debut is barely a movie, but his fourth is a technical marvel. His follow-up to Blazing Saddles — released the same year, insanely — goes one step further in parodying a genre: It meticulously, painstakingly recreates the look and feel of then-40-year-old James Whale pictures. There are fine yuks about whinnying horses and “knockers” and Marty Feldman’s weird eyes. But perhaps the best laugh is that it looks exactly like The Bride of Frankenstein, from the shadowy black-and-white to the gargantuan Gothic sets to the scratchy score. Young Frankenstein has probably done more over the half-century to turn young viewers into lovers of old, black-and-white movies than any crusty professor, while Brooks was an early adopter of the idea that Gene Hackman — serious, Oscar-winning thespian, cast as the lonely, clumsy, espresso-loving blind man — was a comedy gold mine.

Young Frankenstein is available to stream on Starz on Amazon or Roku.

Silent Movie (1976)

The story: Brooks plays a disgraced director named Mel Funn who, along with his associates (Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman), comes up with a brilliant idea for a comeback: make Hollywood’s first silent movie in 40 years — which is what Silent Movie (with one tiny exception) turned out to be.

What works: It’s a stunt, but is it more? Not exactly — Brooks’ comedy has always been more verbal than visual, and the slapstick and sight gags here pale in comparison to the early, funny Woody Allen movies, especially Sleeper. What it is is incredibly lovable. The joy Brooks and team had in making it beams off the screen, and if you’re not laughing, you’re at least smiling. While only a few jokes are all-timers — the famous Marcel Marceau cameo and a first-rate d*ck joke among them— the movie does get funnier as it goes on, with a final stretch that really, finally cooks. It didn’t inspire a rash of imitation silent film comedies, but anytime a movie or show takes the challenge of going wordless — like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” — it’s almost certainly thanks to Mel Brooks.

Silent Movie is not available to rent but it is part of the Mel Brooks Collection on Blu-ray.

High Anxiety (1977)

The story: A new doctor at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous (played by Brooks) is wrongfully accused of a crime he didn’t commit, attacked while taking a shower, and mysteriously besieged upon by angry birds. He also has vertigo.

What works: The key to Brooks’ best spoofs is that they come from love, not derision. He had beef with Westerns in Blazing Saddles, but he also knew the genre inside out from decades of filmgoing. There’s nothing but affection for the subject of High Anxiety, which is the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and while that results, as it did in Silent Movie, in a comedy without much bite, it’s still a mad, gleeful weirdo of a film, with some of its best jokes being about film grammar and clichés. (Any professor who needs to teach the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound can always pull up this gag, which was later stolen by The Simpsons.) Hitchcock, who had made his last film only one year prior, adored it. Brooks, meanwhile, wound up attending his funeral three years later.

High Anxiety is available to rent on Amazon Prime or to stream on Starz on Amazon or on Roku.

History of the World, Part 1 (1980)

The story: It’s five stories, actually, each sending up a different historical time (and historical movie genre). There’s a long parody of Roman epics, a medium-sized one about the French Revolution, plus shorter ones about cavemen, Moses, and the Spanish Inquisition. It ends with a segment called “Jews in Space.”

What works: At what point did Mel Brooks tell Orson Welles that he’d start the movie narrating over masturbating cavemen? The Brooks film with the least focus is also maybe his funniest, possibly because it’s also his bluest. He only went R twice, on Blazing Saddles and even moreso here, which features untold penis jokes, boob jokes, piss jokes, Oedipus jokes, and one of his sauciest sight gags: a sign for a Roman buffet and orgy with the tagline, “First served, first come.” Like Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and John Mulaney after him, Brooks was always a barely closeted song-and-dance man, his movies always stopping dead at least once for some elaborate number. History gives us an 11-minute whopper about the Spanish Inquisition that ends in a leftfield Busby Berkeley-Esther Williams homage featuring horny rabbis. It’s good to be Mel Brooks.

History of the World, Part 1 is not available to rent but it is part of the Mel Brooks Collection on Blu-ray or to purchase on Fandango Now.

Spaceballs (1987)

The story: A shaggy-haired rogue named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his half-dog partner named Barf (John Candy) try to save a feisty princess (Daphne Zuniga) from a tyrannical bad guy with a giant dark helmet, named Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis).

What works: Some critics wondered why Mel Brooks was parodying Star Wars four years after what was then assumed to be the final Star Wars movie. If anything, Brooks was early, not late. Little did everyone know that Star Wars would never disappear. It would live forever. And so has Spaceballs. Brooks clearly doesn’t care about Star Wars the way he adores Westerns or ’30s horror movies or Hitchcock thrillers, making Spaceballs closer to a MAD Magazine lampoon, riffing on a specific movie, not a whole genre. But that also gives him a freedom to go full loopy. There are specific Star Wars gags: the opening crawl, a lightsaber-as-penis yuk, Yoda, plus some airlifted-in digs at Star Trek and Alien. But the best jokes are simply Brooks being dumb (e.g., Lone Star saying he was born in the “Ford Galaxy”). And as in High Anxiety, there are great jokes about film form, from the one about stunt doubles to that mind-melting bit where they bust out the VHS tape of the movie in progress.

High Anxiety is available to rent on Amazon Prime or to stream on Starz on Amazon or on Roku.

Life Stinks (1991)

The Story: Brooks plays a greedy, environment-hating CEO who makes a bet with a rival: He has to be homeless for 30 days, or else he loses out on a project to raze the Los Angeles slums.

What works: There are two gambles Brooks made here: Could he successfully make his first non-parody movie since The Twelve Chairs, and could he give it a kick-me title without any critics actually kicking. He failed on both counts. He also bet that he could make a movie in which a billionaire would have a change of heart after living amongst the poor, which is maybe the only thing funny in the film. The Producers aside, straight narrative and Brooks don’t mix, and despite the good intentions he struggles to say anything meaningful, or at the least offer some solid gags. The only highlight is a charming musical number, and maybe a musical is what Life Stinks should have been. Indeed, as recently as last year Brooks was suggesting it should be the next one of his films to invade Broadway. Why not! Surely now’s the time for a big-budget show about class warfare.

Life Stinks is available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

The story: Brooks takes on the Kevin Costner-starring Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, this time with a real Brit, Carey Elwes, at the helm.

What works: Credit where it’s due on one of the low points on Brooks’ resume: He was ahead of the curve on Dave Chappelle. When he appeared in Men in Tights, the future comedy god was only 19. He’d never done a movie, and he was still cutting his teeth on the late-night TV circuit. But Brooks knew. He cast him as the rough equivalent of Morgan Freeman’s Thieves character, even giving him a Blazing Saddles joke to close out the film. It’s one of the only inspiring choices Brooks made on this, a not terribly inventive parody that doesn’t find much to lampoon in a film that hasn’t stood the test of time either. But no Mel Brooks film is worthless, and at the very least you have to respect that, in 1995, he gave the plum role of Prince John to no less than Richard Lewis.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)

The story: Three years after Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Brooks paired with another parody royalty, Leslie Nielsen, to take on the vampire genre.

What works: When released, the film that will almost certainly turn out to be Brooks’ swan song seemed like a feeble last gasp by a once-great talent. Now it plays more like a major auteur’s eccentric final work — a man out of step with the day’s trends stubbornly doing his thing by hook or crook. Like Robin Hood: Men in Tights, it stays too close to the source to be truly inventive, and Nielsen’s straight-faced shtick had by then long gone out of whack. But approach it with low expectations and there are enough small, incredibly dumb yuks here — “He’s a doctor of rare diseases as well as theology and philosophy.” “And gynecology.” “Oh, I didn’t know you had your hand in that, too” — that it qualifies as underrated. Think of it as spending time with an old Borscht Belt cut-up still flinging out corny jokes. In other words, it’s like spending time with Mel Brooks.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It is available to stream on Vudu or rent on AppleTV, Redbox, Google Play, and Fandango Now.

What makes a bourbon smooth? Is it the exact right amount of corn sweetness in the mash bill? The aging process in charred white oak barrels (with maybe a second-run barrel for finishing)? Perhaps it’s the time spent in the barrel itself? Yes, yes, and yes. It’s all of those elements (plus a few other intangibles) coming together in symphony — culminating in the sort of cruisy, easy-drinking bourbons you can savor without any of the “bite” that spirits served neat so often have.

These smooth sippers might not always be “the best” in how they challenge us and expand our palates, but they certainly make for a pleasant drinking experience. The kind of bottles that you’re bound to return to again and again. The type of bourbon that you reach for on a slow evening spent on the back porch.

We asked some of our most beloved bartenders to shout out their favorite bourbons on the basis of smoothness. If you’re looking for that defining characteristic, any of these bottles will give you just what you need.

Angel’s Envy

Piero Procida, bartender at The London West Hollywood in Los Angeles

Angel’s Envy. Many bourbons are just too strong and spicy to drink by themselves and burn your throat on the way down. Angel’s Envy is that exception. Its smooth, sweet and creamy vanilla flavor is amazing and speak to its incredible character. The unique finishing of the bourbon in port wine barrels is what makes the flavors so easy to enjoy and the spirit so easy to drink by itself. It’s actually what makes this bourbon so smooth. At first, you couldn’t find it everywhere, but it’s become so popular now I would be willing to bet it can be found at almost every bar now.

Basil Hayden’s

James Arensault, director of food and beverage at Harbor View Hotel on Martha’s Vineyard

My go-to smooth bourbon is Basil Hayden’s. It’d the most underrated brand in my opinion. They produce quality and consistent product and it’s very smooth from start to finish.

Jim Beam Black

Everson Rawlings, mixologist at Scrub Island Resort Spa and Marina in the British Virgin Islands

Smoothest bourbon I ever had was Woodbridge Knock. But to answer your question, Jim Beam is the smoothest bourbon you can find all over. There are not many high-end bars here in the BVI. This brand is a nice affordable product and is carried all over. Jim Beam Black is another very smooth option.

Buffalo Trace

Zac Johnson, general manager of JJ’s Wine, Spirits, and Cigars in Sioux Falls, South Dakota

It’s tough to beat Buffalo Trace. It might seem like a cop-out, but there’s a reason they have won so many awards, and you can’t beat standard Buffalo Trace on quality versus price ratio. For something that retails around $25, you won’t ever be disappointed with its quality, and at 90 proof, it’s easy to have a second pour. If you’re lucky enough to find a single barrel of it, snag it and make it your everyday dram. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Hudson Baby Bourbon

Sebastien Derbomez, brand advocacy manager of William Grant & Sons

Hudson Baby Bourbon is truly awesome, the team at Tuthilltown Distillery created something unique. It is made from 100% New York corn and aged in tiny barrels, this bourbon can be enjoyed neat or mixed in a delicious cocktail. It’s smooth as silk and the story behind its creation is remarkable

Bulleit Bourbon

Jon Joseph, bartender at JL Bar Ranch, Resort & Spa in Sonora, Texas

Have you had Bulleit Bourbon yet? Did I even need to ask? This is a well-constructed bourbon with tons of layers of flavors, yet simple smooth enough to just pour on the rocks. We carry all of their whiskeys and they’re a crowd favorite.

Eagle Rare

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Buffalo Trace is a go-to for me, but I’m also partial to Eagle Rare (from the same distillery) when it comes to a smooth and accessible whiskey. Produced alongside Weller and Pappy, amongst others, it is always a safe bet to have something from this distillery on hand.

Hillrock Estate

Colin Stevens, bartender at Thyme Bar in New York City

When it comes to smooth bourbons, look no further than Hillrock Solera Aged Bourbon. They are applying unusual techniques, both innovative and traditional, to their whiskey-making process and the result is a very special spirit.

Knob Creek

Patrick Dennis, director at BALEENkitchen in Miami

I have to go with Knob Creek. It’s great in cocktails, as well as for sipping. Strong backbone with enough sweetness that you can still sip it at 100 proof. Even with the high alcohol content, it remains smooth.

Blanton’s

Leah Stumbo, bartender at Bar Moxy in Nashville

I always go with Blanton’s when I’m looking for smooth whiskey. It is the first whiskey of its kind and offers the flavors of vanilla, honey and caramel making it extremely smooth and perfect to sip on.

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Game of Thrones’ Gemma Whelan has just traded out one bloody, prestige cable drama for another. Whelan is a newcomer to AMC’s Killing Eve, playing Geraldine, daughter of MI6 boss Carolyn Martens who slid into her mother’s DMs this week after the tragic loss of her brother, Kenny.

Despite mingling with secret agents and Russian spies, Geraldine is refreshingly normal — a lonely young woman in mourning hoping to reconnect with an estranged parental figure — and Whelan is using the character to showcase her range, trading the merciless seafaring pirate personality of Yara Greyjoy for a comically oblivious, woefully unequipped 30-something with serious mommy issues. We chatted with Whelan about joining Killing Eve in its third season, her character’s darker arc, and if she’d ever return to the Seven Kingdoms.

Going from Game of Thrones to something like Killing Eve, are there similarities between these shows?

There is a lot of murder, a lot of people who appear to be one thing and turn out to be another. Duplicity. Deceit. Very beautifully shot. Yeah, there are similarities for sure.

Your character, Geraldine, kind of pops up out of nowhere this season. Why haven’t we heard anything about her before now?

I really don’t know. I guess that’s interesting in a way. Like, what? She’s got a daughter? Hold on. And everyone’s got their own conspiracy theories about it all. Carolyn is such a dark horse. She’s the sort of person that, if it’s not important to the moment, why mention it?

What’s her journey with her mother this season?

My feeling is that Geraldine has been away for a while. They don’t really have a relationship. It’s a very difficult dynamic between them, because they are so different. Geraldine is so emotionally available and keen to talk about things and fix things and if it’s all out in the open, then we can heal together. You know? Carolyn is all about squashing it down. It’s not necessary and it’s not part of who she is. That juxtaposition, the difference in their approaches to life is obviously going to start fractures in a home environment, particularly when Geraldine doesn’t really have a life established with Carolyn. She just wants to have a relationship with her, to grieve together and heal. I think that’s quite difficult for Carolyn, who just wants to get back to work and forget about things.

Does being around her mother change Geraldine as the season goes on?

Yes, absolutely. I think we see that Geraldine begins to harden towards later episodes. She tries so hard with her mother, and makes some mistakes as well and gets involved inadvertently with certain things that she had no business getting involved in. She sort of inadvertently makes things worse for Carolyn at work. Geraldine tries so hard many, many times to connect with her mother. I think you can only try so many times before it gets difficult for the person trying to connect. Something’s got to give.

What can you say about Geraldine’s relationship with Konstantin? Is something going on there?

I guess it’s good that you’re not sure is all I can say, but it’s interesting that you’ve picked up on something.

What’s that like for you to come on to a show in its third season and carve out your own character, who’s really unaware of what a bizarre world she’s living in?

Yeah, she takes the tuning fork at a different pitch from everyone else. She doesn’t really quite fit. I hope that’s interesting [for fans]. It’s quite fun to come in as a bit of a clueless character, getting things a little bit wrong.

Is Geraldine going to get her hands dirty at some point this season?

Let’s hope so. There’s definitely a latent part of Carolyn in there somewhere. It just needs drawing out perhaps.

We’ve had some distance from GoT’s final season. How do you look back on how things ended with the show and the fans’ reaction to it? Would you be open to coming back?

A Greyjoy spinoff would be wonderful. Yeah, I feel really proud to have been part of it. They’re my second family. We’re all in touch on a WhatsApp group. I don’t feel any real personal loss, because they’re still all in my life. But of course, if the show had carried on, that would’ve been wrong as well. Everything has to come to an end, and to draw it out wouldn’t have been fair either. I really liked the ending of the show. I know some people had a problem with it, but you can’t make everyone happy.

BBC America’s ‘Killing Eve’ airs on Sundays at 9:00 PM EST with simulcasting on AMC.

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Donald “Just A Threat” Glover recently released a surprise album, but that hasn’t quelled the excitement for Atlanta‘s long-awaited third and fourth seasons. In addition to being a great depiction of the music industry, the show’s filled with uncomfortably funny moments that crash into harsh depictions of reality. This subversive approach often leans into surreal scenes that viewers can rattle off by memory. Atlanta is an alternate universe where an alligator struts out of a house to The Delfonics, a Black “Justin Bieber” exists, and a celebrity runs over people in an invisible car. It’s a place where a character harvests diaper urine for a drug test after fielding pressure to prove her “Value” as a woman. It’s fired off an unexplained cutaway (now known as The Tobias GIF) of a kid wearing whiteface. The show brings its tumultuous absurdity to a frequent simmer, and most of all, Atlanta is never afraid to mine difficult truths for dark humor.

A dazzling series, Glover’s brainchild confronts the world’s harshness by finding humor in it. From the very first episode, the show knew exactly how to interweave the surreal within the real. And it tried to warn us, repeatedly, of what was to come in terms of those blurred lines between reality and the absurd, which somehow helps the show feel more authentic and hyper-real. It’d be impossible to adequately pay tribute to all examples of this brilliant (and frequently blatant) toeing of that line, but some notable instances do invite discussion.

Take Nutella sandwich man, for example, who introduced us to the Atlanta version of surreal-reality right out of the gate. We didn’t know what was coming when we first met Ahmad White (and didn’t even know his name). Through Ahmad, the show told us to question what we see before confirming that, in fact, sh*t is real. At first, yes, it only seemed trippy when Donald Glover’s Earn encountered Ahmad, who evaporated in a dreamlike way, though his sandwich lingered in the bus as evidence of his presence. However, Ahmad re-surfaced (as a probable snake-oil salesman with a revealing 1-800 number) weeks later in the groundbreaking “B.A.N.” episode while popping into a commercial to declare, “You may know me from your dreams.”

This moment gives pause, as if to further blur the lines between dreams and waking life, but Atlanta viewers learned that surreal sh*t is merely a part of life for Earn, Paper Boi, and Darius. On any given day, the trio might bear witness to a disturbingly casual instance of jail-based violence against the mentally ill, or worse (as we’ll discuss soon). Well, the rest of the experimental “B.A.N” kept rolling with the concept, with a faux-talk show spiraling into fake commercials laced with razor-sharp commentary. It culminated with a taped segment (about a man who’s undergoing a “full racial transition”) that oozed shades of Rachel Dolezal from our own world. Like many Atlanta episodes, this one was largely devoid of plot but still managed to push the show forth into new territory.

The Seinfeld-esque abandonment of plot works well in Atlanta, but this will never be a show about nothing. It’s often really about trying to tread water — a substantial quest, especially when it comes to Glover’s Earn. After all, “Jacket” wasn’t simply about the superficial chase for an unspectacular item of clothing but revealed a sad truth about Earn’s desperation. The jacket, we learn, might contain the key to his living quarters — a storage unit — a brutal underscoring that that mirrors our fear of homelessness and hunger. One surreal image after another plagued this episode, including a real doozy.

I’m not talking about the cows, man, although the cows were definitely a thing. As Earn troubled over his situation, folks did assemble for a certain fast-food chain’s Free Chicken Sandwich Day. But that’s not even the most insane thing coming down this path. Rather, we watched SWAT team members act utterly oblivious after riddling a man to death with bullets for no apparent reason. And they could. not. believe. that Earn would want to check the man’s jacket pocket (the nerve!) after they’d coldly taken him out. In the aftermath, the trio couldn’t even muster up shock at what they witnessed, which Paper Boi offhandedly labels as “crazy” but Darius admits, was kind of “cool.”

Their weary reaction to a messed-up situation is perhaps the best way that they could process the brutality they had witnessed. Yet as we often see during Atlanta, the guys witness these things all the time. Their muted reactions point toward reality, and that’s part of the genius of Atlanta. It manages to throw down loads of harsh truths without the characters breaking out trumpets about them. These people know the toughness of life, where there’s no room for dreams or make-believe. That’s why labeling Season 2 as “Robbin’ Season” (after the pre-holiday time in real-life Atlanta where folks increasingly turn to crime) made perfect sense. The show’s sophomore year rightfully stands as one of the best seasons of TV from the past decade. There are so many genuine nuggets of humor cloaked in scary truths, all tiredly regarded by the characters, that the results can take one’s breath away.

Consider also how “Robbin’ Season” began, with the “Alligator Man” episode, wherein Katt Williams embodies Earn’s Uncle Willy to pile surreal touches upon a fictionalized embodiment of the Florida Man meme. The shot of the alligator strutting out of the home both boils down and mythologizes a real-life construction, which is already, in and of itself, a hyper-surreal version of humanity. Is Florida Man or Alligator Man more bizarre? It’s unclear, and that’s to Atlanta‘s credit. The show manages to nimbly glide between the real and the dream-and-nightmare-like, while suggesting commentary upon objective reality. Again, Earn and Darius are still not too shocked by what transpires.

The show’s so adept at making these turns that the second season’s final half felt almost natural with its jarring nature. By the time the “North Of The Border” episode rolled around, the Atlanta audience had been prepared to absorb the stark juxtaposition of what happened in the racist frat house. So when Earn, Darius, and Paper Boi found themselves sitting in front of a Confederate flag (an unquestionably horrible development) in front of a bunch of naked, kneeling frat pledges (an undeniably hilarious one), we knew this scenario was a joke, but one that’s grounded in reality. The sheer absurdity of this situation is underscored by the fraternity president waxing rhapsodic about his love for Southern rap, as Atlanta continued to pull no punches.

Part of the preparation for this straight-up bonkers display took place with “Teddy Perkins.” Through that painstakingly carved, gothic-horror-filled bottle episode — which was as majestic in its execution (with a haunting performance by Donald Glover in prosthetic whiteface) as it was tragic — the show fully committed to its mission. And like much of what transpires in Atlanta, it was an unsettling episode, chock full of sensually grotesque, layered humor, and Glover’s portrayal of a Michael Jackson-esque figure was counterbalanced by the laid-back Lakeith Stanfield gently guiding us through the eeriest moments.

The Atlanta audience, while waiting for more of the show, is now much like Darius during his encounter with Teddy Perkins. We, through these characters, have seen a lot of sh*t, and we damn well realize that more awful things will unfold. These things are often potentially deadly, and they might not seem real, especially when laced with surreal visuals, but Atlanta isn’t about to let us forget about reality. Season three, when it arrives, faces an almost insurmountable task of measuring up to what the show’s accomplished already, but whatever happens, it’s sure to be bleakly funny as hell.

The first two seasons of FX’s ‘Atlanta’ can be streamed on Hulu.

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Last Updated: April 22nd

The true crime genre has never been more popular, but what about the false crime genre? Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good crime flick, from rooting for that grey area anti-hero to sitting on the edge of your seat as the lovable ruffians pull off the ultimate heist. Netflix has a wide variety of flicks that deal in law, order, and justice, so here are the 10 best crime movies on Netflix right now.

Related: The Best Heist Movies On Netflix Right Now

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Run Time: 109 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Lethal Weapon practically invented the buddy cop comedy movie and though it’s spawned plenty of copy cats – a few worthy ones land on this list – it’s still one of the best action comedies around. The humor comes thanks to the chemistry between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover who play mismatched partners (one’s crazy, the other’s aging out). They must learn to work together to stop a ring of drug smugglers but the endgame isn’t as important as their budding friendship – ridiculous hijinks and all.

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Good Time (2017)

Run Time: 101 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

This gritty crime drama hailing from the Safdie brothers transforms star Robert Pattinson into a bleach-blonde sh*t-stirrer from Queens who’s desperate to break his developmentally disabled brother out of prison. Pattinson plays Connie, a street hustler and bank robber with grand plans to break out of his urban hood while Benny Safdie plays his brother Nick, who gets roped into his schemes. When Nick is sent to Rikers Island for a job gone wrong, Connie goes on a downward spiral to get him back. Pattinson’s manic energy carries this thing, and there’s plenty of police run-ins, shootouts, and heists (however botched) to keep the adrenaline pumping.

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The Irishman (2019)

Run Time: 209 min | IMDb: 8.7/10

Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama based on actual events. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion-project to be.

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Inception (2010)

Run Time: 148 min | IMDb: 8.8/10

Christopher Nolan’s imaginative sci-fi adventure will most likely be remembered as one of the best genre films in cinematic history, and for good reason. The movie — which stars everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy to Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine — is the ultimate heist flick, following a group of thieves who must repurpose dream-sharing technology to plant an idea into the mind of a young CEO. DiCaprio pulls focus as Cobb, a troubled architect with a tragic past who attempts to pull off the impossible so that he can return to his family.

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Road To Perdition (2002)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 7.7/10

Tom Hanks stars in this mafia drama about a mob enforcer whose son witnesses a terrible crime. Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a loyal employee of mob boss John Rooney. When Michael’s son witnesses a hit that Rooney had instructed his henchmen to carry out, the two go on the run, seeking redemption and revenge for the violence they’ve helped to cause.

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Sin City (2005)

Run Time: 124 min | IMDb: 8/10

Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez team up for this stylish crime thriller drowning in corruption, comic book references, and A-list actors playing varying degrees of anti-hero. Based on the first, third, and fourth books in Miller’s original series, the film jumps between three different stories all set in the seedy underworld of Basin City. Bruce Willis plays an aging police officer framed for crimes he didn’t commit who must protect a young woman he’s come to love. Clive Owen plays a vigilante protecting prostitutes from bad guys and preventing a war between the women and the police. And Mickey Rourke plays a man seeking revenge for the death of his lover. It’s a lot of action and bloodshed, all done in Miller’s signature tone and Rodriguez recognizable flair.

Blade Runner (1982)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8.1/10

Harrison Ford’s lived long enough to see quite a few of his sci-fi franchises get the reboot treatment but this futuristic 80s flick still ranks as one of his best genre outings. Ford plays Rick Deckard, a blade runner charged with terminating four replicants — synthetic humans — who have escaped captivity and are plotting rebellion. Deckard treks across a dystopian Los Angeles, confronting ideas about humanity and morality while fighting off bioengineered humanoids and his fellow man.

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Drive (2014)

Run Time: 100 min | IMDb: 7.8/10

A stone-faced Ryan Gosling steers us through the criminal underworld created by director Nicolas Winding Refn in this high-speed thriller. Gosling plays a near-silent stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man. When he gets involved with his next-door neighbor and her young son, his carefully cultivated life is thrown into chaos, forcing him to align with criminals and take on risky jobs to protect the pair and keep a firm grip on the wheel.

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Goodfellas (1990)

Run Time: 146 min | IMDb: 8.7/10

Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta star in this crime drama from the always reliable Martin Scorcese. Liotta plays Henry Hill, a young kid enamored with the life of crime who eventually works his way up the ranks to become a certified bad guy. He reaps the rewards: money, cars, women, a ton of nose candy, but his life soon spirals out of control when his friends turn on him, the authorities close in on his business, and his drug addiction begins to feed his paranoia.

Hell or High Water (2016)

Run Time: 102 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges star in this neo-Western crime thriller about a pair of brothers who go on a bank-robbing spree to save their family’s ranch. Pine plays Toby, a down-on-his-luck father struggling to live right under mountains of inherited debt while Foster plays Tanner, his ex-con brother who has a wild streak that often endangers the two men on their jobs. Bridges is the aging sheriff tasked with bringing them to justice, but his job is made harder by the locals, who have no love for the bank chain the boys are stealing from. It’s a gritty, unapologetic tale of a forgotten America brought to life by some brilliant performances and an impressive script from Taylor Sheridan.

This past week I received a press release informing me that 1983’s Valley Girl would be available on digital platforms for the first time ever! It was a move I’m sure had nothing to do with 2020’s musical Valley Girl remake opening May 8th. Synergy aside, Valley Girl was one of those cult pseudo-classics I’d always meant to revisit.

Some Valley Girl points of interest, in brief:

– It was Nicolas Cage’s first big role (after a supporting role as “Brad’s Bud” in Fast Times At Ridgemont High). He played, improbably, a teen heartthrob.

– It seemed to spawn, or at least was part of, the peculiar eighties phenomenon of the “Valley Girl,” despite itself being much less well-remembered than the aforementioned Fast Times. Frank Zappa’s song, “Valley Girl” featuring his daughter Moon Unit doing a nearly unlistenably obnoxious Valspeak monologue, had been released a year early. Zappa actually sued to stop production, that’s how hot the concept was at the time.

– A clip from Valley Girl famously (at least to me) opened The Bouncing Souls’ aptly-titled song, “These Are The Quotes From Our Favorite 80s Movies.”

This was a bit like my generation’s conception of “punk” (The Bouncing Souls) shouting out the previous ones (The Plimsouls, Modern English, The Psychedelic Furs).

One of the things that piqued my interest about Valley Girl is that almost everything in it feels almost impenetrably strange to anyone too young to remember the early 80s. Valspeak. Mall culture. “Punk” music as represented by Modern English’s “Melt With You.” Nic Cage as a sex symbol. High school as a time of freewheeling sexual permissiveness. The entire concept of the “valley girl.” Valley Girl exists almost entirely as a time capsule of extinct and aborted cultural trends.

On top of all that, there was, intrinsic to its plot, the idea that the girl who was from Valley was the cool one. The suburbs being cooler than the city is, again, a bizarro world concept to anyone too young for Valley Girl. But apparently, that was acknowledged as a trope reversal even then. As director Martha Coolidge said in an interview in 2011, “I knew the un-hip image the Valley had for both Hollywood dudes and movie people.”

Was the suburbs-as-setting such an irresistibly novel concept in the eighties that it actually became cool? Between Fast Times, Valley Girl, Back To The Future, Karate Kid, Bill and Ted and basically every John Hughes movie, the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley and Chicago were to eighties teen movies what Seattle was to grunge music. This was the pop culture era produced by the descendants of white flight. These days everything seems to be set in a gentrifying Brooklyn/LA/San Francisco/Oakland.

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The movie opens (where else?) in a mall — specifically the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The girls are talking about sex and boys and saying words like “grody” and “gnarly” and “totally,” and it all feels very stylized and try-hard. Yet both Coolidge and screenwriters Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford claim it was meticulously researched. Lane and Crawford said they “hid behind palm trees” at the Galleria to eavesdrop on real teens, and Coolidge said they hung out at Valley schools to get it just right, to the point that Coolidge could argue that the phrase “gag me with a spoon” from the Zappa song was actually an elaboration and that “gag me” was the phrase teens were actually using.

Watching the film, it’s wild to believe that the dialogue was accurate in 1983. The overuse of “like” seems to be the only part of it retained in broader California vernacular, but even there the Valley Girl version seems off. “Like” survives as a bridge word, like “uh” or “um,” but in Valley Girl, characters constantly use it at the beginning of sentences (“Like I’m totally not in love with you anymore, Tommy. It’s so boring!”). Even as a born-and-bred Californian who has been chastised more than once for saying “like” too much, this usage makes no sense to me.

Valley Girl‘s second scene introduces us to Nic Cage and his bizarre chest hair. Cage as the love interest actually makes more sense than you’d think, especially considering the actor cast as his love rival here is best known for playing Buck the rapist in Kill Bill. It’s Cage’s bizarrely well-defined chest patch that’s jarring, much more so than the girls gushing about how cute he looks (Nic Cage actually was reasonably cute in 1983, albeit in an odd, alien baby kind of way). Apparently Coolidge thought Cage’s chest hair made him look too old to play a high schooler, and wanted Cage, who actually was 18 during filming, to shave his chest. This Y-shaped hair island was their bizarre compromise.

It was not especially successful. The reaction it produces is less “yep, that’s a teenager” than “was manicured chest hair a thing in 1983?” Cage, meanwhile, apparently went method for this role, choosing to live in his car in Hollywood at the time, despite how dangerous that was for an 18-year-old Coppola heir in the pre-cell phone era.

In general, the male actors in Valley Girl all look kind of old (Buck was 29) and the moms very young. The actress playing Julie’s mom was only four years older than her screen daughter, and the one playing Beth Brent was only 15 years older than the one playing her daughter, Suzi. Was the “young mom who parties with the kids” another lost cultural comment? See also: “Missy, I mean mom,” from Bill and Ted.

The beach scene leads to the fateful house party, where the actors are dressed in a way that you imagine must’ve been highly stylized. Honestly, if characters showed up looking like this in an 80s-themed period piece in 2020, you’d think the costume designer was overdoing it.

No one even addresses the fact that this guy appears to be wearing a neon ski jacket to a Summer house party:

Yet this was, again, apparently accurate. Many of the actors allegedly even wore their own clothes.

Cage and his “punk” buddy (complete with Teddy Boy haircut) get thrown out of the Valley party before Cage sneaks back in and hides in the shower — the first of many examples of Randy’s stalker-ish behavior. Unable to deny their raw sexual attraction, Julie and Randy eventually kiss, and he takes her to a Hollywood party. They fall in love and share a few more kisses in which Randy creepily cradles Julie’s face with both hands. Influenced by her “shallow” friends (everyone in this is actually pretty shallow), eventually Julie dumps Randy in order to remain popular and goes back to her ex.

Coolidge described the story as a funny take on Romeo and Juliette (which also gave the love interests their names, Julie and Randy). But then, isn’t every teen love story movie basically a take on Romeo and Juliette? Much more noticeable are Valley Girl‘s homages to The Graduate. “I’ve got a little tip for you, Skip,” hot mom Beth Brent says to her daughter’s crush. “Plastics?”

This was either Beth’s veiled reference to condoms or to The Graduate itself — “get it? I’m trying to seduce you just like in that movie.”

Speeches about the emptiness of fashion and the fleeting nature of popularity inevitably ensue, and when Randy kidnaps Julie from the prom at the end of the film, their last shot together in the limo is an obvious homage to Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross fleeing their wedding in The Graduate.

It’s one of the film’s repeated attempts to draw parallels between Julie’s Summer of Love hippie parents and her own generation. At such a remove it’s hard to appreciate this much as cultural commentary. But with another step back there is a timelessness to Valley Girl‘s unabashed melodrama. Why bored ’80s mall teens would so identify with bored ’60s bridge party youths seems less important than the simple fact of teens tendency to see themselves as the protagonists of classic love stories. The clothes and music don’t translate, but thinking the question of whether to go out with a punk or a jock is a life-or-death decision does.

Valley Girl, which was intended as a boobs and sun B-movie (Coolidge once said she even had a handshake agreement with the producers that it would include at least four scenes of exposed breasts), ends up being slightly more, thanks to the humanity it affords its characters (who at first glance don’t seem like they warrant it). As Roger Ebert put it in his review at the time, “The teenagers in all those Porky‘s rip-offs seem to be the fantasies of Dirty Old Men, but the kids in Valley Girl could plausibly exist in the San Fernando Valley — or even, I suppose, in the Land Beyond O’Hare.”

If Valley Girl has a legacy beyond the future stardom of Nic Cage, it’s probably that — of female directors taking male producers’ proposed teen sex romps and turning them into sneaky deep slices of teen life. My own generation’s Valley Girl was undoubtedly Clueless, an overtly loud and satirical take on vapid SoCal characters that was quietly a clever and memorable riff on Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Amy Heckerling (who also directed Fast Times At Ridgemont High).

Valley Girl isn’t quite on Clueless‘s level, but without it Clueless probably wouldn’t exist. In the end, every generation gets the Nic Cage movie it deserves.

‘Valley Girl’ is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more retrospectives here.

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