Drama Episodes

The rest of us were only too happy to derail Dan's well-thought out hitchhiker themed week in order to produce a hastily assembled and confused tribute of sorts to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, starting with a discussion of the Top 5 Queens. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018) is a biopic of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), charting his journey from talented and ambitious baggage handler Farrokh Bulsara in the 1970's to frontman of arena rock band Queen, culminating in a recreation of their triumphant and...

Train week starts with a discussion of the Top 5 Dinner scenes because of course and because we've compiled a list of Top 5 Trains already. I can't even be bothered to type the various meal based puns I was going to dish up to you in lieu of anything interesting to say to introduce this topic. We're on the record as being fans of the slow shuffle rather than a raging, furious flail - I'm talking zombies just to be clear here - but Yeon Sang-ho might just convince us otherwise with TRAIN TO BUSA...

Produced and directed by prolific Hong Kong auteur Johnnie To, PTU: POLICE TACTICAL UNIT (2003) spawned a multi film franchise about which none of us knew a thing. When Sergeant Lo (Lam Suet) has his service weapon stolen during an altercation with local gangsters putting his dreams of promotion at risk, uncompromising Sergeant Mike Ho (Simon Yam) of the PTU gives him until dawn to recover it, but their situation starts to become more complicated when a local gang leader is murdered. Set in a H...

The word 'myth' refers to a society's collective stories, often involving Gods and the heroes that have offended them and Bad Dad Peter Andre has us thinking all about them and their cinematic representations and influences this week, as we kick things off with the Top 5 Mythical Characters. THE NORTHMAN is the second Robert Eggers film we've reviewed in recent months, after the deranged and often unpleasant THE LIGHTHOUSE and sees the director taking on the Hamlet origin story in what I hope i...

As my work involves sitting at a computer for long stretches and watching films requires even more screen time, what I don't really need in my life is yet another sedentary activity which is a shame because I really enjoy playing video games. This week we celebrate entertainments biggest industry, though you wouldn't know it given how little attention is devoted to video gaming in popular media. And you wouldn't really know it when you listen to us either as we try to avoid any computer game ref...

Would it be fair to describe us as Podcast Royalty? No, probably not. But that didn't stop us trawling our way through the top 5 topic of Kings and Queens. A particular film franchise making its possible top 5 debut this week. Our main feature this week was overshadowed by some Oscar night slap shenanigans. King Richard was Will Smith's ticket to gold statue glory. But have you actually seen the movie? If I recall Mr Smith was somewhat of a certainty for the Oscar nod. We cast our vote on the m...

Sidey was very keen to watch C'mon C'mon, so the 2021 MIKE MILLS family drama was our main feature this week. Did it live up to Sidey's expectation? You'll have to listen in to find out!

It's never easy writing the show notes when you weren't present for the podcast itself and consequently don't have the overall tone of the discussion to guide you. For instance, the guys talked about the Top 5 Hacking or Computers Scenes, but was any of it interesting? Almost certainly not. And what will special guest Rupert have to say about it all? And who is Rupert anyway? THE HISTORY OF FUTURE FOLK (2012) has sat unwatched in my Netflix queue since I first joined the service, so I was delig...

In the spirit of the movie we are reviewing I thought it would be humorous to make the show notes excessively long so that it would take you three hours to read them but it turns out that a) no one reads the show notes anyway and b) that would take me an extremely long time so instead you can recreate that experience by simply looping over these next sections a few thousand times. Frank Darabont had already directed the Stephen King adaptation THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, initially a box office di...

FALLING DOWN (1993) begins innocuously enough when an unnamed white male in his 50's abandons his car in the blazing heat of downtown Los Angeles traffic with the simple and relatable enough desire to get home to his family. Meanwhile Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is having a sh*tty last day on the job, stuck in that same congestion and heading towards a retirement he doesn't want from a police force that doesn't respect him, in order to become a carer for his unstable wife. As reports emer...

This weeks show was masterminded by Bad Dad Sidey who would have pleased the many protective headgear enthusiasts in our audience by nominating the Top 5 Helmets for us to discuss. Will we manage to talk about this subject without a lot of puerility and giggling? I wouldn't have thought so. THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) was director Robert Egger's sophomore effort after debut THE VVITCH polarised the horror community with its emphasis on tone and atmosphere at the expense of shocks and sees Willem Dafo...

When you think about scenes in movies, boiling water never is too far from the screen. Tropes such as demanding that someone grabs hot water and towels when babies are born or directors using the whistling effect of a boiling kettle to signify tension seem ubiquitous and there's always the numerous horror movies where some poor victim receives a splash of the hot stuff to relate. Not to mention FATAL ATTRACTION of course. With that said when we came to discuss the Top 5 Scenes with Boiling Water...

Sidey is famed for his sartorial elegance so it should come as no surprise that he picked the Top 5 Suits for us to discuss. By the end of this week’s show, you'll know your two-piece from your three-piece, your tuxedo from your dinner jacket and your shell suit from your tracksuit. SOUND OF METAL is director Darius Marder's 2019 story about Ruben, a drummer in the experimental heavy metal band Blackgammon and the impact of his devastating and sudden hearing loss on his ongoing issues with sobr...

Before your phone rendered the entire idea of literature redundant as it continues to deepen its inexorable grip on your soul, you may well remember reading something called a book. They aren’t novel to noted bibliophile Howie; well he can at least recall seeing a movie which had books in it as he picked the Top 5 Books in Movies for us to discuss, presumably in an ill-fated attempt to convince us he isn't the knuckle dragging simpleton we know he is. We watched BOILING POINT, the astonishing N...

THE MAGICIAN (2005) is an Australian mockumentary written, directed by and starring Scott Ryan as Ray Shoesmith, an amoral hitman who allows film student Max to document his life. Across three disparate stories we come to understand but never sympathise with the calculating, violent and dangerous Ray, but what puts this film head and shoulders above movies treading a similar path is a truly memorable performance from our charismatic lead as well as a 'so black even light can't escape' style sens...

An egg is of course the fertilized ovum of an animal that grows and develops as an embryo inside some kind of organic vessel. And as delicious as that sounds, they are only to be consumed when they are hot, never cold as everyone in their right mind truly understands. Last week you may recall Sidey snorting with derision at the thought of compiling a Top 5 Eggs but it turns out Howie was some kind of egg savant, listing numerous egg or egg related scenes and movies in a matter of seconds. Sadly ...

Whilst you may have laboured under the misapprehension that the pen was a mere writing implement, in the world of movies it can do so much more. Mainly kill people according to our research. Will we find any benevolent biros when we discuss our Top 5 Movie Pens? LOVE & MERCY alternates between two key time periods in the life of The Beach Boys singer songwriter Brian Wilson, the 1960s and late 1980s, showing how he got into and out of a period of prolonged mental illness which occurred during t...

MULHOLLAND DRIVE is director David Lynch's 2001 surrealist Hollywood noir masterpiece. Made as a pilot for a tv show that never happened, is it more than a series of barely connected parts with extra bits of weirdness thrown in for weirds sake? Multiple think pieces and online theories would vehemently disagree with that assessment but even if that disconnected peculiarity is all there is, that's still a lot to enjoy. Funny and violent and creepy but without conventional story-telling, this is p...

Can you really call yourself a fan of cinema if you haven't seen the 1962 David Lean classic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA? Yes of course you can, but at least one of the dads hadn't seen it before, so the question is has that mistake been rectified? This sprawling near 4 hour epic sees up and comer Peter O'Toole star as T.E. Lawrence in a story based on his life. Stationed in Cairo during World War I, a stranger in a strange land, Lawrence successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab trib...

Ed Harris's passion project POLLOCK (2000) chronicles the life of the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. Underneath the fascinating character study of an alcoholic, bi-polar artistic genius, this is a love story at its core. Pollock's wife, an influential artist in her own right Lee Krasner, was instrumental in establishing his genius motivated by a recognition of his dazzling talent but more importantly because she knows that is when Pollock is at his most fulfilled. At times vibra...

Skyscrapers are of course symbols of male domination and authority, immense metal and concrete phalluses penetrating the sky itself so of course Hollywood loves to gaze adoringly at them. This week sees us discussing the Top 5 Skyscrapers and whether we're leaping out of them, smashing through them, climbing across them or using them to stage elaborate scenes of public affection we have many stories to discuss. DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE. ROOM is a 2015 drama about abuse, suffering and rape wh...

Since all attempts to capture proof of ghosts on film consist of grainy night-vision footage more like an amateur Pornhub channel than indisputable proof of life after death and your guaranteed never to encounter a ghost in real life unless you're completely insane, the cinema is where the idea of the spirit of a dead person or animal who refuses to depart the physical world has played out to greatest effect. From discussing masterpieces like THE SHINING or CASPER through to more lightweight ent...

GHOST was a smash-hit 1990 supernatural romantic thriller that created an iconic and often parodied pottery scene which holds up surprisingly well. The story sees Patrick Swayze's Sam Wheat, an investment banker, struggling to articulate his feelings to his very much adored girlfriend artist Molly (Demi Moore). When Sam is murdered in a mugging gone wrong his spirit stays behind to help protect and warn Molly that this act of violence was not as random as it first seems. Bruce Joel Rubin's excel...

I'm sorry to have to disappoint you but the idea that snowflakes are unique is not entirely true, there being eight main types of shapes at the molecular level, with 39 sub-categories which then order themselves via weak hydrogen bonds to each other, resulting in the symmetrical hexagonal shape of the snowflake. At the atomic level they are indistinguishable, being comprised of the same oxygen and hydrogen atoms and in that sense of course we're all interchangeable and alike but a part of the sa...