Lindsay's Top 11 Favorite Films (Detailed Version)

"So this movie and I go back a long, long way. And it was I found, in my uncle's chest, a movie called Father Goose. And it starred Cary Grant and Leslie Caron and nobody remembers it. But I loved it when I was like 11 or however old I was. And I loved it so much I wanted to dig through my uncle's video collection again to see what else he had. And uh... he didn't have any other Cary Grant movies but he said like, 'Well... maybe you'll like this one'."

Blazing Saddles

"Oh my god! I didn't get it! There's so like-Okay, you're 12, white, female, living in the South. There is so much in this movie that I didn't get. But I think that's the great, great, wonderful thing about this movie."

Lili von Shtüpp: They're always coming and going and going and coming. And always too soon.

"There's so many layers that you can just be complete ignorant child and still think it's funny. And grow up and get all the subtext and all the satire and all the criticism. Like damn, where do you even begin with this? There's so many just lines in here."

Charlie: They said you was hung.
Sheriff Bart: And they was right.

"Honestly, I think this might be my favorite straight-up comedy ever."

Taggart: Does anybody got a dime?
(Cowboys look for dimes)
Taggart: Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes.

"Like satire and you know comedy that has this really heavy social element to it is the hardest, hardest thing to do. And it's so remarkable that this movie has like stayed in people's minds for so long and that. Even though, like there's no way this movie would get made today. There's just no way."

Gov. Le Petomane: I gotta talk to you. Come here. Have you gone berserk? Can't you see that that man is a n-?

"A lot of the jokes do fall flat because I feel like Mel Brooks just put a gag in there just for the sake of having a gag."

Gov. Le Petomane: Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Hello boys, have a good night's rest. I missed you.

"It's still really strong on the strength of the characters are so likable. At the same time, the satire is so poignant. The only reason this movie kind of falls low on this list for me is because... the ending. Even when I as a kid and even now, it's just whenever it got towards the end. I would always lose interest because all of a sudden, you know they literally broke through the fourth wall. Like-ah, fuck it whatever, pie fight, let's go!"

Pie Chef: Get your pies for the great pie fight.

"The media that you consume when you're young really does shape a lot of who you become. And this movie shaped me a lot. For better or worse."

Sheriff Bart: Excuse me while I whip this out.
(Crowd panics. Bart reveals the speech. Crowd has sigh of relief)

"Alright, this one's kind of weird."

Sita Sings the Blues

"It's an animated musical released under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, created on a shoe-string budget which uses the music of Annette Hanshaw to tell the story of both the Ramayana and the woman who made this movie's divorce. And it does so with shadow puppets talking extemporaneous about their memory of learning about the Ramayana in high school, I guess."

Shadow Puppet 3: And Ayodhya is in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It's right there. Therefore, the story has to be true.
Shadow Puppet 1: It's roughly based on Israel as event as the Bible is based on.

"It is a great introduction to Hinduism."

Shadow Puppet 1: Vishnu said that he was going to be born on Earth as Ram.
Shadow Puppet 3: But he was born as Krishna. So this is very confusing now.
Shadow Puppet 1: That's a fact. Ten incarnations.

"It's just the time and effort that went into making this thing. Even though, it's about such a deeply emotional subject and about such a holy thing in India. It still remains this really accessible, funny thing. It's definitely not for everyone. But it's for anyone who's interested in mythology, in history, in Indian culture. Unless you're like one of the Indian conservatives that really, really got angry and tried to ban the movie in India and left-wing academics that said that this was neo-colonialism."

(Lindsay mimes a blowjob.)

"Eat me. It's just a really cool, really different movie. And it's free, so check it out. Literally nothing to lose. Except time."

Sita: (Singing) Who's that knocking at my door? That's all.

"Ah man, okay. So some of the movies on this list like I feel a lot of my favorite movies. They are my favorite movies cause it's one thing to have a movie that you like. But a movie that legitimately changes you. That doesn't happen often. So prepare for cliché! Ta-da!"

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Queen Galadriel: (Narrating) One ring to rule them all.

"Lord of the Rings changed my life. In that, it was what we made seriously be like 'That's it. I'm going into film. That's it. I'm going to school for film.' That was it. And it was the movies. But more than that, it was..."

(Lindsay grabs a DVD set from the rack.)

"This. The Extended DVD with the hours and hours and hours of footage about how the movie was made. It really just opened my eyes to how elaborate filmmaking was but how interesting and innovative like every level was. Especially the sound step. And the reason I went with Fellowship of the Ring was because honestly like while I did love the hell out of The Two Towers and it has my favorite character. Maybe not ever but I loved the hell out of Gollum. Ask any of my friends in high school. It was weird. Those two movies didn't really change my attitude on what filmmaking was. And they were more flawed I think. In my opinion. Others might disagree with me. The Fellowship of the Ring was just so complete in itself except for the fact where it didn't have an ending. But as a beginning to that giant-ass story, it was like..."

(Lindsay gives two thumbs up.)

"Thank you, Peter Jackson. You're the reason I'm $60,000 in debt from film school."

(Lindsay gives another thumbs up.)

"Oh man, here we go. Spike Lee. So Spike Lee is one of my favorite people to talk about. One of my favorite directors period. Because even when I don't like his movies, they still make you think and they still engender discussion. Not like enraged 'Oh my god! I hate the world.' discussion but like 'He had a point but I think...'"

(Lindsay goes into gibberish)

"Like for instance, Bamboozled. Didn't like that movie cause I don't think he's very good at satire. And that was such a mean, hateful movie that hated its characters and hated the medium of television. At least, that's what I got out of it. But then, you look at a movie like Do the Right Thing where you got all this pathos and all these really evocative characters. And even the kind-of douchey characters like John Turturro. Like he's still genuinely human. My absolute favorite Spike Lee movie is one of the ones that's farthest away from his usual oeuvre. And that is the 25th Hour."

25th Hour

"And it's really weird that I loved this movie so much because it's kinda like. I don't normally like character pieces that don't have plots which it's kinda that. It's mostly a character piece. And I don't normally like movies that are mostly about drugs which it is."

Frank Slaugherty: Yeah, he got caught. But hello, Monty's a fucking drug dealer.

"Whenever you would read about a character like this, like Edward Norton's character. You'd on paper say 'Ah, who cares? He deserves everything. Every horrible thing that he gets.' But as you watch the movie and it's just like all of the characters that surround him. All his buddies who are going to be affected by the fact that he's gonna go to jail for seven years. And some of the scenes are filmed in a very bizarre way but they just work. Like they get across what the character is feeling just through the cinematography or the way it's edited. Especially some of the montages where you have these characters like yelling into the camera or staring into the camera. Especially the infamous 'Fuck You, New York!' scene."

Monty Brogan: Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

"It's so kind of-Yeah! So yeah, I'm not always crazy about Spike Lee but I do seriously love this movie. I dare you commenters not to go into racist diatribes in the comments. No, I dare you... Not to."

"So in the early 2000s, Robert Downey Jr. was you know cleaning up his life. And he decided along with the writer of Lethal Weapon, Shane Black, to make a movie. And this was gonna be like their big movie. Robert Downey Jr. he's back and better than ever. And everyone's gonna love this movie because it's so tight and so well-written. And everyone is just so confident about it. And it's just so excellent. And... nobody saw it!"

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"Yeah, people see it now. I didn't see it until years after it came out. It is a murder mystery technically which is another genre of movie that I'm not normally wild about."

Harry Lockhart: Is she dead?
Gay Perry: No, she's just resting her eyes for a minute. Of course, she's fucking dead. Her neck's broken.

"Since it's based on these old pulpy novels, it really gets that the mystery itself like the archetypal McGuffin doesn't really matter. What matters is the characters and especially in this case, the writing and the dialogue."

(Harry turns the chambers of the revolver)
Harry Lockhart: Where. Is. The Girl?
(Shoots the criminal in the head)
Gay Perry: What did you just do?
Harry Lockhart: I just. I put in one bullet, didn't I?
Gay Perry: You put a live round in that gun.
Harry Lockhart: Well, yeah. There was like a eight percent chance.
Gay Perry: Eight percent? Eight?
Harry Lockhart: Yeah.
Gay Perry: Who taught you math?!

"Rarely do movies where like 'actor goes to LA and we're gonna shit on LA for a movie'. Rarely do those work because they tend to be so self-indulgent. And dare I say, student-filmy. But it's so funny and accessible and maybe was a little too smart for its own good."

Hollywood Girl: So what do you do for a living?
Harry Lockhart: Ah, I'm retired. I invented dice when I was a kid.

"The fact that Shane Black is the guy directing Iron Man 3."

(Lindsay squees in delight)

"Don't let me down."

"This is another movie that I grew up with and watched a million times as a kid. But I didn't really appreciate until I was in college. And I was in Film Studies. And I wrote this essay about how it was about like social stratification and Robert Moses smashing down houses in the ghetto to build his horrible freeways that go down to Coney Island. Uh... yeah."

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

"It was so innovative at the time. Just the way they use the technology for such an original story. In a film noir. That was something we never really seen before and never saw again. Which thank god. The characters. First off, Jessica Rabbit. I kind of joked in the Top 10 Animated Guys list that she was a very nuanced character. And I think she is. I really, really like the hell out of her character. And then, you have Roger who was like a potentially Jar-Jar Binksy annoying-as-hell."

Roger Rabbit: Eddie Valiant, you're under arrest. (Stutters)

"And yet somehow he works. Like as someone who's lived in LA, the public transportation sucks because this movie actually happened."

Poor Kid: Hey, Mister. Ain't you had a car.
Eddie Valiant: Who needs a car in LA? We got the best public transportation system in the world.

"But in real life, the bad guys won and built freeways like that actually happened. And in this movie, the good guys win and the cartoons are hooray! But in real life, no. And LA has this godawful subway system of like five lines and a billion buses."

(Lindsay simulates shooting a gun in her mouth)

"LA public transportation sucks. If only Roger Rabbit and Eddie Valiant were real."

"One of my favorite plot archetypes is the 'A Boy and his X' or girl as we'll in a minute. It's probably a result of watching ET like 500 times between the ages of 5 and 11. Uh, this movie. I don't know if I would say it's a more sophisticated version of ET but it's definitely one that's more tied in with its history. And it's also the movie that sunk Warner-Bros Animation."

(Lindsay sarcastically claps)

The Iron Giant

"I've seen criticism against the political undertones where they use our '50s anti-communist xenophobia as like 'Awww but he's an Iron Giant'."

Kent Mansley: You think this metal man is fun but who built it? The Russians? The Chinese? The Martians? Canadians? I don't care!

"And then, there are the people who don't like the line that Hogarth gives at the end."

Hogarth: I love you.

"Psssh, whatever. You know you get this giant emotion. And this movie like has one of my favorite characters ever in the form of Harry Connick Jr.'s Dean whose just such a cool fun character to you know spend part of your movie with. And also, the perfect role ever for Vin Diesel. He never has to say more than three words."

Iron Giant: Rock. Tree.

"Good use of your Vin. By the way, if you don't follow him on Facebook. You should. You'll get like all these daily Vin Diesel inspiration postcards. I read this book by David Mamet once where he talked about the perfect screenplay and how it's usually quite simple. To me, this is that. It's a very simple movie but very, very well-done. And one of my favorites."

(Lindsay starts to tear up)

"He's Superman."

Iron Giant: I am Superman.

"Really strange original script and a really strange original filmmaker coming together to make something that's just bizarre but works."

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

"And this came out at the time where Jim Carrey was trying so hard not to be like 'DURR!' anymore. And it really took me by surprise. Because you look at it on paper and you think-"

(Disapproving grunts)

"I think part of the reason why it affected so many people was it was such an intimate story about something that most people completely take for granted. That being your memories, even the bad ones. That's such a simple but excellent score. And I don't know how else to describe it without spoiling it for the people who haven't seen it but do."

Clementine: Get out of my face, f*ggot!
Joel: Look at it out here! It's all falling apart! I'm erasing you and I'm happy! You did it to me first!

"This is one of my favorite directing jobs, marriage of director and screenwriter ever. Just vive la France!"

"So when I saw this movie, I was pretty virulently anti-Japanese animation because I had never seen any of it that I did not loathe. Granted most of this had been in the form of like Pokémon and Digimon. But I had a friend in high school that was 'Nononono. It's not all bad.' And I was like "Yeah-huh!" But I took her DVD that she gave me and I watched it anyway. It turns out she was right."

Princess Mononoke

"Yeah, again, we got our social-political themes and our fantastical elements. We're seeing a theme here. Me and Nella always kind of like to say that if Pocahontas was really, really good and really, really smart, this would be it. Because there's a lot of similarities in these two movies. With the bad guy who's trying to tear up the land and the natives being all persecuted. And the native princess that falls in love with the dude who's with the-You know. I really like most of Miyazaki's movies. I do. I even like the sometimes controversial Howl's Moving Castle. Did not like Ponyo. I feel like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind was like the first draft of this. This one just works so much better because all of the characters were so much more complex and the fact that there were no easy answers. You know I won't spoil it for people who haven't seen it. But I guess it like most Miyazaki movies feels no need to explain themselves. Sometimes that doesn't work for me. But in this case, oh-oh, it works so well!"

"I saw it when I was in college. I had seen the trailer and the only thing I knew about it was. It's in Spanish. It had a faun in it."

Pan's Labyrinth

"Part of the reason I enjoy this movie so much was because I had no idea, going in, what it was about. I just knew it looked cool and it was in Spanish and there was a faun in it. For one thing, all the character work really well. Even the potentially cliched villain as a probably realistic depiction of a really ruthless ranking officer during Franco Spain. He also went on to play a very similar character in Dirty Pretty Things, which is another movie I really like. The score. I love the score. It also has one of the better badass female characters in form of Mercedes. And yes, I'm being intentionally vague cause I don't wanna spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. But if you haven't, do. It's, if nothing, a gorgeous movie. Beautiful to look at. It has some of the interesting visuals that you never really get to see in Hollywood movies. Yep, take me, Guillermo. And by that, of course, I mean hire me as an intern. Here's my email."

(Shows her now-defunct email, "Lindsay-at-ChannelAwesome-dot-com")

(Sings) "Put on your Sunday clothes/There's lots of world out there."

Song In Movie: Get out the brilliantine and dime cigars.

"This was one of those rare movies that I had such high hopes for. Like my expectations were like-"

(Lindsay gives a "very-high" arm gesture)

"Could not be higher. And it actually met them. That never happens. You know that's why I don't get excited for movies anymore. Like if it's good, good. If not, then you know I don't have my expectations dashed. But this. This was everything I wanted it to be. And obviously, I got a thing for science-fiction and really got a thing for robots. Especially cute robots. When you look at the genesis of the movie, the whole social-political thing really didn't come in until the eleventh hour. He was only really interested in this robot love story. And I think that's why the movie works so well. Cause, at its core, it really is a love story with environmental themes. And I've seen so many people say like 'Well, I like the first half hour but then, we get into the people and you know it gets all like-' Ah mmm No, I-No sorry. I like that. Although, there is this one scene right here that I think is a little too on the nose."

Captain: Out there is our home! Home, Auto! And it's in trouble. I can't just sit here and do nothing. That's all I ever done.

"And we can start by reducing our carbon footprint. Like yeah, it's a little-But other than that, it's just that one line. That one line is the only thing that's a little too much for me. But you know everybody has a different threshold, obviously. It just has one of the most beautiful scenes ever, in the form of this little dance scene. Just the marriage of the music and the visuals."



"It's not a sad scene. But it always kind of makes me tear up. It's just like so pretty. I think the reason I would count that as my favorite movie this week right now is just because it's such a good example of the medium. Like what filmmaking can do. Especially without words. And sometimes I really like dialogue like with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang where it's all dialogue. But in this case, it's just visuals. Cause that's what film is. It's a visual medium. And I think it's just such an excellent example of that. And it gives me hope that the future is not all Battleships and Transformerses and G.I. Joeses. That there are movies in the wings that just really use their medium well for story."

(Shows clip of "Transformers 2") "Not for whatever."

"And if you're me, you get to have your social-political stuff tied in with some fantastical element. Which are the ones I really like. We've all got our vices. Now you know mine."

("Down to Earth" by Peter Gabriel plays over the credits)"

Honorable Mention:
The Incredibles
(because it is incredible)