Top 5 Episodes

One of the best things about podcasting apart from the fun of the actual recording, the really cool people we’ve been able to meet as a result of doing this, the chance we’ve had to indulge our passions, the unity and commitment it takes from 5 different people to spaff this nonsense out into the ether each week and the dedication to refinement of a craft even one as insignificant as this is the fact that you can in some small way reduce your self-worth to a number if you like, the number of dow...

Just three Bad Dads this week and since that's three for the price of none, only you can judge whether that represents value for money. With all of us having equine obsessed daughters it seems suprising that it has taken us this long to discuss the Top 5 Horses, especially as reviewing our back catalog demonstrates that we've held a stable interest in them. We’ve reviewed a couple of Steven Soderbergh movies on the pod already – MAGIC MIKE, BEHIND THE CANDELABRA - but after the latter's release...

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...

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...

This week’s show sees us discussing The Razzies, the annual award ceremony dedicated to celebrating the very worst that Hollywood has to offer. Publicist John J.B. Wilson held a reverse Oscars party at his house in 1981 in which Stanley Kubrick and Brian De Palma were nominated for Worst Director, Shelley Duvall was proposed for Worst Actress and FRIDAY THE 13TH was on the shortlist for Worst Picture which neatly sums up just how credible the awards have been since their inception. Harmless fun ...

We begin this week’s show with a chat about the Top 5 Pre or Post Kill or Injury one-liners, a topic which baffled poor Dan with its complexity and caused one Bad Dad to lament that an interesting looking topic on paper does not always correspond to an interesting topic to talk about. Still, if terrible puns and worse impressions are your jam you might get a kick out of this week’s chat. Our main feature is the 2017 Luca Guadagnino film CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, a coming-of-age story following 17-y...

When it comes to onscreen violence there's nothing quite like a beheading to get the blood pumping. Whether it be in service of the story or the audiences blood lust, screenwriters have chosen time after time to lop off a character’s head, so this week sees us discussing the Top 5 Decapitations. Perhaps we missed one out, if so head on over to Twitter or any one of our channels to let us know. BABY DRIVER (2017) is Edgar Wright's thrilling heist caper, set to a propulsive soundtrack which weave...

THE THING is John Carpenter's 1982 horror masterpiece, combining a simple but sensational premise with some of the most incredible special effects ever devised from legendary prosthetic makeup designer Rob Bottin. Crash landing on earth over 100,000 years ago, an unknowable alien entity has lain dormant in Antarctica until unfrozen by a doomed scientific team. It's unique ability is to precisely mimic any life it comes in contact with and this ingeniously paranoid idea sees the audience in the ...

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...

As impossible as it is to imagine if all you ever do is listen to his razor sharp mental gymnastics and displays of intellectual acuity on the podcast, but Bad Dad Dan can from time to time be forgetful so it wasn't completely clear to me at first whether this week’s Top 5 Ice was chosen despite having the similarly themed Snow selection by Dan himself only a few weeks back. And hopefully whilst you ruminate on that shock revelation about the reliability or otherwise of Dan's memory, it will dis...

The Dads are on holiday but will be back as usual from 20th April. In the meantime enjoy this special rereleased episode where we discuss LARS AND THE REAL GIRL... Original show notes below. ______________ “The lack of women directors in the industry is no joke. The top 100 films of 2019 were helmed by a total of 113 directors, 89.4 percent of whom were male and 10.6 percent of whom were female.” So said Women and Hollywood’s Melissa Silverstein after the 2020 Golden Globes once again feature...

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...

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...

What makes a great title for a film? Should it encapsulate the essence of the story, tell us something via symbolism about the characters or locations involved, be instantly familiar and memorable or generate intrigue? No, like everything important in life, size is the most important quality which is why this week we're looking at the Top 5 Movies With Long Titles. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018) is a scorching satire-cum-fantasy comedy in which the skint Cassius "Cash" Green (LaKeith Stanfield) get...

"I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." There's more than a grain of truth in what Anakin Skywalker says in one of cinemas most cherished and beloved moments, during the universally acknowledged high point of the entire Star Wars franchise, STAR WARS: EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES. This week we're discussing Sand and yes that really is the title of this week’s Top 5. Top 5 Sand. Carlos Kaiser was a professional footballer for more than a decade, pla...

We were delighted to have the ART NINJA Ricky Martin join us this week to talk about craft storage solutions, the responsibility of being a beloved childhood icon, cardboard horror movies, his experiences with ADHD and much more. Ricky presented an art themed sitcom for CBBC between 2015 and 2019, making 55 episodes and reaching and inspiring thousands of children to create their own works, including all of the Dads kids (whether they knew it or not). We review 'Day Of The Baby' and 'Day Of The ...

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...

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...

There have been some great movies and scenes set in hotels; I'm thinking of course of the likes of THE SHINING, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, LOST IN TRANSLATION and video after video of heavy-eyed, heroin ingesting porn stars being thundered into next week and uploaded to Pornhub. But what can the dads come up with when they discuss the Top 5 Hotels? I'm upset to have missed this weeks main feature. English Director Ben Wheatley did the incredible KILL LIST back in 2011 which smashed horror and cr...

"Should men cry?" is a question that literally no one asks anymore because we all know that the correct answer is "of course, as long as it's done in the right way", that is to say that it's expressed in a manner which continues to conform to society's expectations and understanding of masculinity and male vulnerability. Shedding tears from extreme physical pain is permitted as is using it as part of a cheap seduction routine, exactly as Sidey’s friend did during a screening of TITANIC which he ...

With Reegs cruelly stuck down and isolating once again, the rest of the loons muddled their way through this weeks (mostly) robotic content. First up we mulled over our favourite movie robots. Without Reegs to enforce the rules we went rogue and included just about kind of sentient machinery we could think of. T-800s, Borg, Star Wars droids, you name it, we talked about em. Our main feature this week was the 2012 indie caper, ROBOT AND FRANK. A comment on the perils of growing old, or a charmi...