Top 5 Episodes

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads mark England week with a suitably subtle and tasteful main feature: Louis Leterrier’s Grimsby / The Brothers Grimsby, Sacha Baron Cohen’s aggressively filthy spy-comedy about a football hooligan reunited with his long-lost MI6 agent brother. The episode opens with Reegs introducing a show “to entertainment as VAR is to…” before promising misplaced national pride, confident incompetence, and enough disrepute to trouble the FA. Pete makes his triumphant return, Dan is absent for dinner with his mum, and the dads are already half-focused on England playing later — which gives the whole episode a lovely atmosphere of heat, football, lager, and people trying to finish before kick-off. The Top 5 England section takes the brief very loosely, which is usually where the best nonsense lives. Pete starts with English stereotypes in film — bad teeth, bad food, villains, tea, class, accents, and the baffling sandwich ubiquity of mayonnaise. Reegs n…

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Reegs, Dan and Cris get on the road for Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries, the warm, humane, politically charged travel drama about young Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Alberto Granado crossing South America on a rapidly dying motorcycle. The episode opens with the usual Bad Dads detours — football, podcast housekeeping, dubious intros, David Walliams antipathy, and some listener follow-up — before the Dads rev into a Top 5 Motorcycles discussion. The nominations range from the iconic to the ridiculous: Arnie’s Harley-Davidson Fat Boy in Terminator 2, Tom Cruise’s Kawasaki in Top Gun and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, the Easy Rider Captain America chopper, Indy and Henry Jones Sr. in the Last Crusade sidecar, Tron’s light cycles, Dumb and Dumber’s scooter, John Wick’s katana bike fight, Fonzie’s Harley, Judge Dredd-style sci-fi bikes, and Dan’s heartfelt case for Burt Munro and The World’s Fastest Indian. That motorcycle theme lead…

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads begin with a very on-brand Top 5 Holidays segment — cancelled flights, Malta dread, mogging relatives, childhood package holidays, karaoke trauma, and the usual British-abroad horror — before moving into Charlotte Wells’ devastating debut feature, Aftersun (2022). The main review focuses on Sophie, an adult looking back through camcorder footage of a holiday she took in Turkey with her young father Calum when she was 11. The dads discuss how the film works less as a conventional plot and more as an emotional reconstruction: memories, fragments, gestures, half-understood moments and the adult Sophie trying to understand what her child self could not see. Reegs leads the breakdown of the film’s structure: the camcorder opening, the recurring rave imagery, the cheap holiday resort, the single-bed room, Calum hiding cigarettes and pain, the expensive scuba mask, the rug, the karaoke scene, the beach/sea imagery, Under Pressure, and the fin…

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the lads record outside in the Jersey heat, chat Lego and TV catch-ups, run a Top 5 Travellers/Gypsies segment, then head into Netflix survival thriller Apex (2026). The review follows Charlize Theron’s lead character through an outback nightmare that starts as a hiking trip and turns into a predator-vs-prey cat-and-mouse game with Taron Egerton’s deeply unsettling Ben. The dads discuss the shift from survival thriller to full horror-adjacent territory (including the cannibal twist), standout tension sequences, and the physicality of the stunts. They also cover the film’s pacing, atmosphere, and realism beats (weather, terrain, isolation), with consensus that while you can guess the broad direction, the journey is gripping and nasty in all the right ways. Verdict: Unanimous strong recommend.

This week the dads dive into SPL: Kill Zone (aka Sha Po Lang), Wilson Yip’s 2005 Hong Kong crime-action bruiser starring Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung and Simon Yam. It starts as a murky cops-vs-triads thriller and gradually mutates into one of the most punishingly physical final acts of 2000s action cinema. Before any elbows start flying, the show opens with a chaotic and very Bad Dads Top Five Dons segment: gangland patriarchs, TV antiheroes, cartoon icons, football references, and at least one deeply questionable tangent. Standard service resumed.

This week the Bad Dads take on Song Sung Blue, a true-story music biopic starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as a couple whose Neil Diamond tribute act brings fame, chaos, near-tragedy, and heartbreak.

This week the Bad Dads lace up for The Bleeder (2016), the chaotic true-life story of Chuck Wepner — the New Jersey heavyweight who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali, inspired Rocky, and then nearly imploded under fame, booze, coke, and bad choices.

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we are completely out of our depth ranking the "Top 5 Evils" in cinema, leading into our review of the painfully tense thriller, Speak No Evil. Expect more mustache twirling than a Victorian villain convention. We break down James McAvoy's terrifyingly charismatic performance hosting a weekend from hell. Is it basically a horror version of Curb Your Enthusiasm where every cringe gets you closer to being stabbed? Yes. The Dads debate middle-class politeness, red flags, and why you should never stay at a stranger's country house.

In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the crew is completely out of their depth covering the "Top 5 Floods" in cinema history, before diving into the 2025 Latvian animated masterpiece, Flow. After navigating the high waters of cinematic floods (including a nod to the flipped cruise ship of The Poseidon Adventure), the main feature takes center stage. Flow follows a cat surviving a catastrophic flood alongside a capybara, a lemur, and a large dog. With no humans, no explanation, and zero dialogue, it still managed to beat out Inside Out 2 for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. The Dads break down why this quiet film earned their absolute strongest recommendation.

In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the crew (minus Dan) takes on Christian Gudegast's 2018 heist thriller *Den of Thieves*. Reegs and Cris break down the high-testosterone showdown between an elite crew of ex-military bank robbers and a morally bankrupt Sheriff's unit led by a swaggering Gerard Butler. Described as *Heat* on protein shakes and tribal tattoos, the film delivers intense action and a surprising amount of fun. Despite Sidey not having seen it yet, the glowing review and strong recommend from Reegs and Cris (who gave it "Five tens outta five") have convinced him to add it to his watchlist.

This week the dads work late for Steven Shainberg's Secretary (2002) — one of the more unusual love stories in American independent cinema, and almost certainly the most interesting thing James Spader has ever worn a tie for. But first: a very thorough Top Five Secretaries list. Dolly Parton, Mad Men, Ghostbusters, Batman Returns, The Simpsons, Beetlejuice, Moneypenny through all her iterations, and the West Wing. It's a good one. Top Five highlights: Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton) from 9 to 5...

This week the Bad Dads go full corporate: Top 5 Corporate & Tech Jargon — the phrases designed to sound like progress while delivering absolutely nothing. Circle back. Take it offline. Pivot. Blue-sky thinking. Tachyon pulse. If you've ever sat in a meeting thinking "what the actual f does that mean" — this one's for you. Then: Thunderbolts* — Marvel's Phase 5 closer. The Breakfast Club meets the Suicide Squad, if the Breakfast Club had government assassins and instead of Saturday detention, there's a sentient void of existential depression. It's actually quite good.

Bad Dads Film Review heads to the Italian Riviera this week for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) — a sun-drenched, jazz-soaked psychological thriller where gorgeous people do terrible things, and the worst person in the room still somehow isn’t the guy committing the murders. We follow Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a small-time grifter with big social ambitions, who’s handed a golden ticket: travel to Italy and convince trust-fund prince Dickie Greenleaf (prime Jude Law, unfairly beautiful) to come ...

Isle of Dogs (2018) – Trash Island, pandemics, and very good boys In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, we head to Wes Anderson’s stop-motion Japan for Isle of Dogs, a film where man’s best friend is dumped on a toxic wasteland by a fascist cat-loving dynasty, and the only person who gives a toss is a 12-year-old boy in a stolen plane. We follow Atari and his pack of exiled hounds – Chief, Rex, King, Duke and Boss – as they trek across Trash Island in search of Spots, the missing bodyguard...

The Duellists (1977) & Top 5 Jewels – honour, obsession, and very stupid men with swords In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, we kick things off with our Top 5 Jewels – a glittering mix of cursed stones, crime magnets and wildly impractical accessories. From the Pink Panther diamond and Uncut Gems’ black opal to Titanic’s Heart of the Ocean, Baz Luhrmann’s blinged-out Great Gatsby, Moana’s glowing heart of Te Fiti, and even that doomed chandelier in Only Fools and Horses, we rummage t...

In this week’s episode we dive into Better Man, Michael Gracey’s glossy Robbie Williams biopic — the one where Robbie is portrayed as a CGI chimp. Yes, really. It’s a bold swing that reframes a familiar music-biopic arc with unexpected bite: boy-band manufacture, burnout, reinvention, and the messy business of becoming “Robbie” when “Robert” is still in the room. What we cover The Big Swing: Why the CGI chimp isn’t a gimmick for giggles but a visual metaphor for the “performing monkey” pe...

This week, the dads swapped blockbusters for something quieter, sadder, and sneakily hilarious: The Ballad of Wallis Island, the melancholic comedy starring Tim Key, Tom Basden, and Carey Mulligan. In a remote Welsh idyll, a lonely lottery winner (Key) invites his favourite long-lost folk duo to reunite and perform a private gig just for him. What follows is a beautifully awkward, bittersweet exploration of nostalgia, grief, and the impossibility of recapturing the past — with an emotional gu...

The dads return to their spiritual home — the grimy, neon-lit world of A24 — for Love Lies Bleeding, a wild, sweaty, steroid-soaked crime-romance from director Rose Glass (Saint Maud). Kristen Stewart plays Lou, a gym manager in a desert backwater who falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brien), a drifter and aspiring bodybuilder built like a Marvel origin story. Their chemistry is instant, their passion feral — and before long, they’re injecting more than just steroids together. But this love story’s la...

This week, the dads head down under for Chopper — the semi-biographical crime film that introduced the world to Eric Bana’s raw, terrifying range. Directed by Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), it tells the story of Mark “Chopper” Read, Australia’s most notorious criminal, self-mythologising psychopath and folk hero rolled into one. Part prison horror, part dark comedy, Chopper opens with its antihero stabbing a rival inmate 15 times for crossing a li...

This week, the dads head into the mosh pit with Jeremy Saulnier’s brutal, claustrophobic thriller Green Room — where a struggling punk band finds themselves trapped in a neo-Nazi club after witnessing a murder. It’s one part siege movie, one part social horror, and all parts grim. When the Ain’t Rights take a last-minute gig deep in Oregon’s backwoods, they expect low pay and bad beer — not blood, dogs, machetes and Patrick Stewart as a terrifying skinhead ringleader. What follows is a night ...

Jennifer Lawrence goes full-send comedy in No Hard Feelings, playing Maddie — a broke Montauk local hired by uptight parents to “de-awkward” their 19-year-old son before college. The setup’s spicy, the execution’s funnier than it has any right to be, and yes, we talk about that beach fight. What we dig into J-Law in chaos mode: fearless physical comedy, tight timing, and why this role works because it’s her. Awkward vs. raunchy: does the film land its sweet/icky tightrope walk? Age-...

This week the dads take a look at Copycat (1995), a mid-90s thriller that wants to be Silence of the Lambs but often ends up more made-for-TV movie. Sigourney Weaver stars as an agoraphobic psychologist dragged into a game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer imitating history’s most infamous murderers. Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney round out the cast, while Harry Connick Jr. chews the scenery as a crooning creep. In true Bad Dads style, we pull the film apart and ask: Does Copycat ea...

South Korea. 1979. Forty days to an assassination. We dive into Woo Min-ho’s icy political thriller The Man Standing Next — a gripping, true-events drama about KCIA director Kim Gyu-pyeong (played by Squid Game’s Front Man, Lee Byung-hun) as he weighs loyalty, country, and a bullet. What the film’s about After years in President Park Chung-hee’s inner circle, Kim watches the regime harden: political purges, wiretaps, street crackdowns, and a rival enforcer (Chief Kwak) pushing for blood. W...

This week’s episode is positively huge (and Hugh-filled). 👼 Heretic We dive into Heretic (2024), the claustrophobic new thriller from A24 in which two young missionaries find themselves trapped in the home of Hugh Grant — who’s swapped his floppy-haired rom-com persona for a sinister host obsessed with theology, control, and blueberry pie. It’s equal parts scripture, serial killer, and Monopoly rules lawyer. We get into: Hugh Grant’s unnervingly charming turn as a religious sadist. ...