Top 5 Episodes

If there's one thing Hollywood loves doing it's killing us all and given the current state of our world I think we should let them. The first disaster movie, 1936's SAN FRANCISCO, was about the earthquake which ripped that city apart back in 1908 and that sort of interesting trivia is exactly the kind of thing you won't get any more of as we discuss our Top 5 Disaster movies. What you will get is incredible special effects, Gerard Butler, ham-fisted environmental messages, Roland Emmerich, dubio...

After nearly a month in isolation we celebrate Reegs' return to the pod as he remerges looking even more dishevelled than usual, like a sort of haunted, hairy potato. Is it a mere coincidence that his stomach churning appearance coincides with the dads discussing the Top 5 Vomit Scenes in Movies? Probably. In some people's eyes watching any Adam Sandler movie constitutes a traumatic experience but then again there's always somebody who likes him so that's nice for him isn’t it. For those people...

Ok, I was really hoping that Reegs would have written some notes, but alas that hasn't happened! We opted for a violent theme for this week's content. Nothing brings out ones violent tendencies more effectively than a family get together. That theory forms the basis of our Top 5 for this week - family fights. Earlier on this year we reviewed Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen. As I recall that movie split opinion down the middle of our dad based panel. We've returned to the filmography of Mr Ritchie ...

The Dads continue to reel from the loss of Reegs, with this week’s horrible take on STAND BY ME as well as Dan declining to tell his masturbation story being two particularly low points. Will they redeem themselves this week? I have literally no idea since I'm writing the notes before listening to the pod but I will assume not. Due to the whole being Jewish thing we didn't have a Christmas tree in our house though confusingly we did celebrate Christmas at my grandma's house on the day itself in...

I feel we should apologise in advance dear listener. Our topic of choice for our Top 5 discussion is movie masturbation moments. As feared the Dads regressed into their teenage selves and lots of daft giggling and infantile chat ensued. Our movie choice, inspired by a tweet, is 2018's American Animals. Directed by first timer Bart Layton, the movie shows us the true story of four college students library heist gone wrong. The movie uses some interesting devices to engage the audience, including...

This week sees us paying homage to the montage and though it's really an editing technique if you want to be pedantic about it which I do, they're a useful tool in the screenwriters arsenal too, perhaps being used to propel the plot forward as in the classic ROCKY-style training montage or maybe used to set tone and weave plotlines together as in The Story Of The Apartment sequence in the brilliant Brazilian crime drama CITY OF GOD. Join us as we chat through some of our favourite examples and a...

The mirror is one of the truly great cinematic objects. Their use has fascinated viewers and directors alike and their rich metaphorical potential coupled with the innate visual properties they offer allow possibilities for their employment in many different ways: to add new perspective to a scene, to imply a characters conflicting personalities or to facilitate jump scares to name a few. This weeks Top 5 looks at the films that used mirrors in the most compelling, novel or visually distinctive ...

Watch out diary writers, you're apparently all self-obsessed narcissists with delusions of significance, and for some baffling reason Howie has it in for you this week. The Top 5 movie Brides appears to be what set him off as our resident Ray Mears lover apparently can't think of a single movie featuring a wedding. As unlikely as that seems, we do manage to stay wedded to the idea and finish off this weeks offering. GONE GIRL is David Fincher's 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel of the sa...

Jim Jarmusch's PATERSON is not about legalised corruption at the hands of this disgraceful Tory government but is in fact a tone poem about a bus driver-poet by that name who lives in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson gets up at about the same time every day, eats his breakfast and walks to the bus depot where he works. He drives his shift, listens to the conversations happening around him then at lunch writes poetry in his notebook inspired by the works of his idol William Carlos Willi...

Dan was let loose to nominate this week. Long time listeners may have heard Dan mention this movie a few times down the years. We watched LET IT RIDE (1989). A movie starring a fella whose name we couldn't agree how to pronounce. Dan makes some outrageous claims on the merits of the movie, while the rest of us struggle to reconcile the movie's message against the actual toll that gambling addiction takes on people. It really was a lot of fun!

Howie crawled out of his covid-19 related sick bed to join Sidey and Dan in the Man Cave. It's only fitting that he should face the music for this weeks movie nomination! A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The word name comes from Old English nama; cognate with Old High German (OHG) namo, Sanskrit नामन् (nāman), Latin nomen, Greek ὄνομα (onoma), and Per...

Sidey starts things up by spoiling NO TIME TO DIE so if you are a Bond fan and you don't want that to happen, be warned! Peter is back and being a pain in the neck as we conclude vampire week with a look at the Top 5 TV and Movie Vampires, as reasonable a place as any to start. Peter's abundant free time means he has seen a fair share of classics featuring the fanged antagonists over the last few weeks, will the rest of the Dads be able to match his knowledge, or do we just suck? Whichever way...

Inspired by this week’s main feature, Reegs took the easy way out and nominated the Top 5 Prisoners for our discussion. As it happens this was pretty fruitful territory as there has been one or two movies made featuring prisoners over the years. With the release of Denis Villeneuve's DUNE imminent we decided to look back at his 2013 English language debut PRISONERS. A kidnapping thriller exploiting parents worst fears, with incredibly intense performances from leads Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllen...

With the Bad Dads reduced to a mere duo through a combination of illness and stupidity on behalf of the rest of the team, it's up to Sidey and Dan to steady the ship and bring us this week’s show. Trees. Bloody magnificent aren't they. You can climb them, put a tree house in them - hell build an entire city in one if you like - marvel at their beauty, rescue a cat from them, eat their fruits or use them as a metaphor for an abusive relationship as in Shel Silverstein's haunting children's book ...

There's a mere trio of Bad Dads for you this week with both Howie and Peter Andre absent for various trivial and unimportant reasons. The Top 5 Movies with a French Connection is quite possibly one of the least well-defined or most open to interpretation topics we've ever had on the podcast and each of us brings something different to the table to chat through, with the conversation steering mercifully, and perhaps surprisingly, clear of berets, baguettes and promiscuous hairy women. PERFUME: T...

10 years ago my wife and I got married in a small, intimate ceremony at a local hotel and today we celebrated a decade married by packing the kids off to school and going to play crazy golf, so yeah, that's a realistic portrayal of what marriage looks like for the uninitiated. I bring this up because it's late and I'm drunk and I don't have an interesting, funny or relevant way to introduce this weeks Top 5, which was the Top 5 Box Office Bombs. Not the explosive kind, more the kind that lose hi...

This week’s show is brought to you from the mind of everyone's favourite sea defecator, Howie. There's been a notable rise in diversity on screen over the last few years as evidenced by the increasing number of LGBTQ+ characters so we thought we would celebrate them with this week’s Top 5. We did our very best not to offend anyone! The McConaissance attempted to continue with 2016's drama GOLD, starring the Texan alongside Edgar Ramirez in director Stephen Gaghan's inspired by true events story...

Just like most of the world’s population I'm hopelessly addicted to my smartphone, whether it be used to avoid talking to my family by playing a pointless grindy mobile game or to earn a small fortune by selling my exclusive Only Fans vegetable videos. But all talk of iPhones and Androids is off the table this week as we look back at the Top 5 Telephones in movies. If you’re a fan of the corded landline telephone like we are you'll enjoy reminiscing about those cabled beauties as they graced the...

With Reegs having been thrashed by a golf ball wielded by his youngest and Sidey committing avicide earlier in the day, the stage is set for another perfect episode of Bad Dads Film Review. This week’s show sees us shamelessly cashing in on the worlds coronavirus cycling boom as we discuss the Top 5 Movie Bicycles, and as only one of us is a self-confessed MAMIL (Middle Age Man In Lycra) we did actually find this wheelie hard. Bryan Fogel's Oscar winning 2017 movie ICARUS begins life as an expl...

Alternative facts, post truth, yes it really is the age of bullshit as far as reality is concerned but movies that are based on real events have always captured the cinemagoer's imagination. Our Top 5 Movies Based On A True Story includes incredible feats of heroism and villainy, and provides a window to the past to allow us to evaluate people or places in a different context. That extra frisson of truth to a story can elevate the stakes as reality truly can be stranger than fiction. Our main f...

The train was invented by Englishman Dr Glenjamin Train back in the summer of 1997 when he realised what an incredible name he had for a new form of transportation. No of course, I'm being facetious: the truth is that no one knows how the locomotive was invented nor indeed how they work and those things will continue to remain a mystery as you tune in to listen to us discuss the Top 5 Movie Trains. Some incredible railway facts are only moments away courtesy of Peter Andre, a dedicated and enthu...

Sidey pointed out to me this week that our podcast is not for film experts but film enthusiasts which is obvious really because there's little of insight to be had in this weeks show. The distinction that our favourite tattooed and bearded mother-fancier highlighted has never been so clear than when we are discussing a genre for which I self-admittedly have neither expertise nor enthusiasm. This weeks harmoniously themed episode sees the Bad Dads discussing the Top 5 Musical Numbers and with som...

It may not be obvious to our listeners but we do usually put quite a lot of thought into our choices for each weeks podcast, whether it's to link the main feature and kids tv programme thematically or to ensure we have an even distribution of the types and genres of movies we review. That same level of planning is often true of the Top 5 category, although this week I heard Sidey say something in the midweek mention and thought 'that will make a great top 5' so here we are with the Top 5 Title D...

Ah the humble hat: giver of shade, cooler of neck, warmer of head, is there anything they can't do to aid the cranial region? Loads probably, but that's not important right now. What is important is the Top 5 Movie Hats and it's quite the fascinating collection, from bowlers, stetsons and flat caps through to berets, fez's and baseball caps, your favourite hat is bound to be represented. Suffolk, England was the site of an incredible historical find back in 1939, as Dan fondly recalls. Netflix’...