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Last Updated: April 22nd

Now that Disney+ has more animated films than we know what to do with, it’s easy for animation buffs to get discouraged flipping through Netflix’s offerings, which skew heavily toward mass-produced kiddie TV programs and dire-looking CGI direct-to-video sequels. But a little digging turns up quite a few unexpected animated gems — and what Netflix’s animated offerings lack in depth, they make up for in breadth. The range of techniques and narrative approaches on display here highlights what makes the animation medium so exciting and fruitful. So here are the best animated movies on Netflix right now.

Related: The Best Adult Animated Shows On Netflix Right Now

Despicable Me (2010)

Run Time: 95 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Steve Carrell voices the criminal mastermind Gru in this animated adventure, which contains a surprising amount of heart. And minions. There are so many minions. Gru adopts a trio of orphans (Margo, Edith, and Agnes) to help pull off his latest scheme but gets more than he bargained for when he begins to form a real family with the girls. Of course, going soft isn’t good for business, so most of the fun in this film comes from watching Gru try to hang onto his hard rep and failing, miserably.

Monster House (2006)

Run Time: 91 min | IMDb: 6.6/10

Dan Harmon helped pen this animated horror-comedy about a house that comes alive to eat children. The story itself is actually quite dark — it involves unhappy spirits and bullying and death — but the hijinks lighten things up a bit as three kids try to get to the bottom of the legends surrounding the place and the man who owns it.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

Run Time: 97 min | IMDb: 7.1/10

Anika Noni Rose and Oprah Winfrey voice this imaginative Disney flick about a waitress in New Orleans with dreams of leaving her small-town life behind. Rose plays Tiana, a young woman who hopes to one day open up her own restaurant who gets entangled in a magical adventure when she makes the mistake of kissing a frog — who’s really a prince named Naveen that’s been cursed by a Voodoo doctor. When Tiana also turns into a frog after the smooch, the two are sent on a journey through the bayou, outrunning demons and hunters in order to find a real princess for Naveen to kiss before midnight.

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The Incredibles 2 (2018)

Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 7.8/10

Our favorite superhero family is back with a new mission that requires a reversal of roles for its patriarch. Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) is forced to stay home and look after the kids — including Baby Jack Jack whose powers continue to grow — while his wife Helen (Elastigirl) saves the world, becoming the new face of the superhero presence. While Elastigirl goes on covert missions aimed at restoring her family’s good name, Mr. Incredible struggles to raise the kids. There’s plenty of humor to be mined from his parental woes, especially when it comes to Jack, who eventually requires a special suit to control his abilities. Unfortunately, Elastigirl’s new employer plans to wreck the reputation of superheroes once and for all, using her family to do it, which means it’s up to the kids to save the day (again).

The Breadwinner (2017)

Run Time: 94 min | IMDb: 7.7/10

Based off a best-selling book by Deborah Ellis, this Angelina Jolie-produced animated drama follows the story of a young girl named Parvana, who’s forced to disguise herself as a man in order to provide for her family when her father is sent to prison by the Taliban. The film is set in war-torn Afghanistan, in a village under Taliban rule where women aren’t permitted to hold jobs or even buy food without the presence of a male relative. When Parvana’s father angers a member of the Taliban, he’s thrown in prison, and she pretends to be a man in order to earn money and food for her mother and sisters. The film is a gripping, honest look at some difficult-to-swallow issues, and it’s done in the most visually-stunning of ways.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Run Time: 107 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, and Jamie Bell lend their talents to this animated adventure about an intrepid reporter named Tintin, who teams up with a rarely-sober sea captain named Archibald Haddock to find some sunken treasure. Tintin and Haddock must battle against other greedy hunters, including the film’s villain (voiced by Craig) to uncover Haddock’s ancestral connection to a sunken ship and the cases of gold still inside it.

April And The Extraordinary World (2015)

Run Time: 105 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

In an alternate version of 1941 where France has been led by a line of Napoleons and leading scientists mysteriously disappear, young April, her talking cat Darwin, and the shady Julius go searching for April’s missing parents. It’s an interesting take on a history where technological advancement isn’t a thing, where “steampunk” is reality and TVs and cars don’t exist. April’s journey starts in the dreary, stuck-out-of-time France but leads her to fantastical advancements that still make sense in the world we’re presented with. The heart of the film lies in the love that plucky, stubborn April has for those she cares about, and the film’s driven by charming animation and a genuinely interesting concept. It’s a fun trip that’s just out-there enough for adults while being accessible for the young and young at heart.

Space Jam (1996)

Run Time: 88 min | IMDb: 6.4/10

We’re not here to defend the merits of this ’90s sports flick. Some consider it good cinema, others not so much. But the fact remains it’s a fun watch, one that defined many a childhood. It’s also got a weird as hell premise — the Looney Tunes must win a basketball match to earn their freedom and to do that, they need Michael Jordan — a guest cameo by Bill Murray, and some great, nostalgia-inducing animation.

My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea (2016)

Run Time: 75 min | IMDb: 6.1/10

This animated drama feels like it belongs on Adult Swim, not Netflix, but it’s a refreshing change-up from the rest of the family-centric options on this list. With a voice cast that includes Jason Schwartzman, Reggie Watts, Maya Rudolph, and Lena Dunham, the film follows a group of students whose seaside high school falls off a cliff, forcing everyone trapped inside to go into survival mode. Think Lord of the Flies but stranded at sea. Schwartzman plays Dash, a young kid forced to reconcile with his ex-best friend to save a group of students, and Susan Sarandon pops up as a lunch lady named Lorraine who displays some heroics of her own. It’s quirky and crudely-drawn, but that’s part of the charm.

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Tarzan (1999)

Run Time: 88 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

The most memorable thing about Tarzan is probably the Phil Collins-led soundtrack. That’s not a dig, because every song in this movie is a banger, but the story is fun too. It follows a man named Tarzan who was raised by gorillas in the jungle when his family was killed. As a man, he encounters a new set of colonizers, one of whom he falls in love with, that threaten his family, his home, and his way of life.

The Croods (2013)

Run Time: 98 min | IMDb: 7.2/10

Prehistoric times were rough, you guys and this film is proof. Ryan Reynolds, Nic Cage, and Emma Stone lead an impressive voice cast for this Dreamworks movie about a family of cavemen (and women) whose home, errr cave, is destroyed. They’re forced to trek through a fantastical land to find shelter with the help of a strange newcomer. It’s silly, though beautifully animated, but the comedic chops of Reynolds and Stone keep things afloat.

The Little Prince (2015)

Run Time: 108 min | IMDb: 7.8/10

Pulled from its theatrical release mere weeks before it was supposed to hit theaters, this adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved children’s book combines several different types of animation to mixed but ultimately winning results. One’s a charming stop-motion retelling of the original book. The other’s a more familiar Pixar-ish tale of a young girl pushed too hard to succeed who meets an aged Aviator. The film’s not entirely successful, but ambition and lovely visuals go a long way.

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Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8.5/10

The Oscar-winning animated film quickly made its way to Netflix last year, which means if you didn’t get a chance to see it in theaters, you no longer have to wonder what all the hype is about. The story follows a young kid named Miles, who becomes the web-slinging hero of his reality, only to cross paths with other iterations of Spider-Man across different dimensions who help him defeat a threat posed to all realities. Mahershala Ali, John Mulaney, and Jake Johnson make up the film’s talented voice cast, but it’s the striking visuals and daring story-telling technique that really serves the film well.

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I Lost My Body (2019)

Run Time: 81 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

This beautifully animated French fantasy film follows the story of a young man named Naoufel, or rather, his hand which has been severed from his body and spends most of the film escaping labs and trying to get back to its owner. The film flits between the past and present, watching Naoufel’s life unfold from a young orphan to an accidental carpenter’s apprentice — which is how he lost his appendage — all while exploring themes of love, loss, and destiny.

Look, if you have a better cure for those “I’ve been inside for about a month” blues than zooming with Will Forte, well I’d sure like to hear it. A few minutes before this interview was set to begin, Forte was having some phone problems, so, instead, we did it over Zoom. And when we connected, there was Will Forte, sitting in front of a giant painting of the 29th President of the United States, Warren Harding.

Forte can be heard next this week in the Netflix animated film, The Willoughbys, which features surprisingly trippy animation and, as Forte suggests, would have been a good movie for 4/20. (You know, it’s never too late.) But it is weird doing an interview over Zoom, where most of us have become used to work meetings and more lackadaisical conversations with friends. So, yes, this sort of turned into that, too, as we got off on tangents like Good Will Hunting, the Star Wars Radio Drama and how to pronounce John Lithgow’s name.

And it’s been ten years since MacGruber, which Forte notes is one of the first times the two of us met, back when face to face human contact was still “a thing.” Forte give us an update on the MacGruber Peacock series that was still being written and waiting for a greenlight before production was shut down across the board. But, Forte reminds us there are more important things right now than if MacGruber comes back or not. And, yes, that’s true, but it’s still somewhere on the list of “important things.”

Why do you have that painting?

It’s a Last Man on Earth prop. I think it was the first episode in season two when we’re cruising around the White House and we need to cut to an unhappy president portrait. So we, for some reason, did Warren Harding. And then we had a second one made because either it was too severe of a frown or not enough of a frown. The second one made was a slightly different face. So I have a second one in my house here.

I don’t have a background set up. This is just where my computer is. Those Star Wars toys behind me, this isn’t me going, “Hey, check this out.”

Okay. I still get to check it out though.

It’s borderline embarrassing. I wish I had Harding behind me.

You can for a price.

For The Willoughbys, this movie no one’s seen yet, we should just get really esoteric, a frame by frame analysis. Just all the theories…

I will answer whatever you throw at me. You are my captain. You are my Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.

Wait, that’s…

No, Dead Poet’s Society!

Yes. But he’s also in a teaching role of sorts in Good Will Hunting. What’s Robin Williams character’s name in that movie?

Oh, God. I have no idea.

It’s going to drive me nuts.

I don’t know. I have such a bad memory for all details. I can’t remember half of the MacGruber stuff.

Well, that’s my first question of this interview. And you don’t know.

Oh, that’s your first question?

Yes. What was Robin Williams name in Good Will Hunting, and you don’t know.

What’s his name?

Sean Maguire.

I would never have guessed that.

The scene where Sean Maguire is saying, “it’s not your fault,” over and over. Matt Damon says “Sean, come on, come on. Sean. Sean, not you, Sean.” Will Hunting does say Sean’s name a lot.

If you gave me a choice of five names, I still might’ve guessed that one last.

So if I had said like Murray Stedman, you might have thought it was Murray Stedman?

I’d be way more apt to pick Murray Stedman and then Sean Maguire.

This should be an entire interview — quizzing you on character names from Robin Williams movies.

Oh, I’m going to do very badly.

I don’t have anymore though.

Probably for the best.

Well, you’re the one who brought up Good Will Hunting.

I meant to do Dead Poets Society, and I don’t even know his name in Dead Poets Society. I just know he was, “Oh, captain, my captain.”

Well, strangely, that is my second question. What is Robin Williams character’s name in Dead Poets Society?

I bet his name is Robert something. I just saw Sudeikis in a production of Dead Poets Society.

Really? Was this like a live read?

Yeah, he did it for the theater.

I have the character name. It’s not Robert.

Oh, you do? What is it?

Do you want me to present it to you as a quiz or just tell you?

Give me three choices and I’ll tell you.

Perry King, Frank Nelson, or John Keating.

Oh, John Keating.

Yeah, I didn’t do a good job with those names. Perry King is a real person. I think he was in Riptide.

Yeah, Riptide. He’s handsome! Perry King.

Yeah. He’s a handsome man. Oh, Perry King, in the radio production of Star Wars he played Han Solo. And the same for The Empire Strikes Back.

Wait, really? Oh, I didn’t even know they did that. That’s cool.

Yoda was voiced by John Lithgow.

Oh really?

I think they did Star Wars in like ’81 then they did ‘Empire in 83. And then they didn’t do Return of the Jedi until the ’90s.

By the way, just so you know, it’s pronounced “Lith-go.”

I’m pronouncing it wrong.

Because I wrote for him for Third Rock From the Sun. I was a writer on that show and I think I used to say Lith-gow also. So, you’ve asked me so many questions that I didn’t have an answer for. I thought I would throw out some piece of knowledge that I have. So I don’t seem like a complete know-nothing. So, I’m a know-something.

So since Footloose I’ve been pronouncing his name wrong?

Yep. If that’s the way you’ve been pronouncing it. Sure.

I interviewed Colin Trevorrow and he told me his last name rhymes with “tomorrow.” Blew my mind.

Ryan Phillippe, it still takes me a little while to remember. Because, I mean, for years I just knew him as Ryan Phil-eepe. And then finally through knowing him through MacGruber, obviously, drilled it into my head. But it still takes just a second where it’s not as easy as just coming out. I have to remember what it is because for years and years I did say Phil-eepe.

Did he have to correct you? How did that come about? Or did you just hear him say his name?

No. I think somebody told me the correct pronunciation. I probably fact-checked it with them. I just want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Were there times you’d have to say his last name to him? I guess in interviews you wouldn’t want to say it wrong.

Probably more like that. But it’s also you just want to know.

I’m going to look back now because I remember I interviewed you for MacGruber. That might’ve been the first time we met.

Probably the first time we had met. Do you know what that means? This is our ten-year anniversary.

Really? MacGruber came out ten years ago?

Yeah, in May.

And here we are ten years later, on Zoom.

Ten years later.

So I watched The Willoughbys…

Oh, you watched it? I haven’t seen it yet.

You haven’t seen it?

Certainly, I’ve gotten to see throughout, as you come in to record the voice, they’ll show you different stages of the animation and say, “Oh, this is what this is looking like.” It was so fun to see it all put together. And then what blew me away was the final couple of times that they would show me stuff. And just the visual aspect of this on its own is memorizing and beautiful and just super interesting and cool. Kris Pearn, the director, I had worked with him on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. And he’s just awesome.

The animation style, you’re right, it’s kind of a trippy movie. If there are kids still reading this, and you’ve made it through the pronunciations of John Lithgow’s name and Colin Trevorrow’s name and you’re still here, maybe ignore this part…

If you’re reading this and not hearing it, it’s just going to be the exact spellings of their names. They’re not going to know.

Okay, that’s true.

We’re saving it for tonight, which is 4/20. So you enjoyed it?

I did enjoy it. But, then again, there’s nothing bad right now. Anything anyone sends to me at this point, I’m just like, thank God. There’s no such thing as bad content, but I did enjoy it.

I think the first time that I read the script must have been two years ago, maybe even longer. So at this point, there’s so much stuff that I don’t remember about the plot, about the characters, about my own character.

You’re in for a treat.

Yeah, it’s going to be really fun to watch it because the process is so interesting and you’re dealing with everything on a real micro level that after a while you forget about the bigger picture of it.

We were talking about MacGruber earlier, with the Peacock show, did you get to film anything or did the pandemic hit before you even got to filming? I have no idea.

We’re still finishing the scripts. We’re still waiting for the official green light. But, we’re moving forward as if that’s going to happen. And you know, obviously what has happened to the world puts everything on hold, and rightly so. The most important thing is to make sure everybody is safe. We’re going to stop this virus from spreading even any more. But that just means that all this stuff, there’s a lot of uncertainty as to what happens when you come back. Hopefully, we still have a shot, but it’s just there are so many unanswered questions and way more important questions then if MadGruber is going to get done or not.

Well, you’re right. It’s not my number one question right now, but it might be in my top 10.

Okay, well thank you. Well, yeah, I mean we are really excited about the stuff that we have written so far. I think it’s stuff that if people are fans of the MacGruber movie, I think it will be something they will enjoy. If you weren’t a fan of the MacGruber movie, you’re probably not going to like this either. Who knows?

Well, it was good to see you. Also, I really need a haircut.

You have a wonderful overhead light that’s coming over you, giving a nice halo effect.

Yeah. I need to redo this setup…

It almost makes you look like you have frosted tips.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

“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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