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...

Garth Jennings's adaptation of THE HITCHHIKERS'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY starts much like the source material, when the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, before veering off on a contrived and underwritten love triangle which makes this 2005 sci-fi comedy only moderately successful. Hapless Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) and his friend, the experienced galactic journalist Ford Prefect (Mos Def), find themselves aboard a stolen spaceship piloted by two-headed Galactic...

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...

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III picks up immediately after the cliff-hanger ending of the second movie, with Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) receiving a letter from a stranded but happy Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), after a freak burst of lightning struck the DeLorean. Discovering that Doc was killed a week after writing the letter, Marty travels back to The Old West in 1885 to rescue his eccentric friend... For such a beloved franchise, the BACK TO THE FUTURE series has always carried some ideas tha...

A frequent highlight of putting the podcast together is reading Reegs' episode notes. He really does have a gift fir that kind of thing. Anyhow, he's off on holiday for a few days a left the notes to me. I can only apologise. The topic for discussion for our top 5 is INSECTS. Reegs has a particular dislike of wasps, but I think we can all agree that the real idiots of the insect world are mosquitoes. Sadly none of those feature in the segment, but we do find room for spiders, praying mantis and...

Wouldn't it have been fun to review THE FLY (1986) and also the 1958 original version? I guess we'll never know, having only found time to cast our critical eye at the DAVID CRONENBERG remake. There's no messing about as the movie immediately throws the two main characters together at some kind of nerd convention. I'm a fan immediately getting on with the story and not wasting precious time with wearisome world building. We've got a podcast to make and efficient story telling such as this is a ...

Dan had at least three different attempts to define a Top 5 this week proving just how desperately in need of rebooting this part of the show is, finally settling on the Top 5 Bands for us to discuss. DAY SHIFT is Netflix's latest exclusive and is produced by the 87Eleven team, creators of the JOHN WICK franchise and the recently reviewed on this very podcast NOBODY. Stunt coordinator JJ Perry makes his debut with this action comedy in which pool cleaning vampire hunter Bud Jablonski (Jamie Fox...

Steve Martin apparently worked on the script for L.A. STORY for seven years before he and director Mick Jackson brought this romantic fantasy comedy to the big screen in 1991. Martin plays Harris K. Telemacher, a depressed weather presenter, trapped in an unfulfilling relationship with his socialite girlfriend and disheartened by the superficiality of the Los Angeles scene. After being dumped by his girlfriend and receiving cryptic relationship advice from a freeway sign he begins to fall for Sa...

This week’s themed content sees us discussing those people whose job it is to enforce the law as we start things off with a rigorous interrogation of the Top 5 Police Officers. Will a thorough application of the rules prevent us from hearing about one dad's favourite Traffic Warden? Sidey chose Hannes Halldórsson's 2021 gay buddy action spoof COP SECRET for us to review this week and we are awfully glad he did. Whilst investigating a mysterious criminal organisation which has been breaking into...

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...

Based on a 1998 Frank Miller comic book which in turn was inspired by the 1962 Rudolph Maté sword and sandals epic THE 300 SPARTANS, 300 (2006) is Zack Snyder's very loose retelling of the events of the Battle of Thermopylae taking place circa 480 BC and I don't really think I can reasonably cram 1 more number into this sentence before it loses any semblance of aardvark. Gerard Butler plays Leonidas, master chocolatier and King of the Spartans, the most feared and formidable of all forces in an...

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...

The late 90's saw a run of films which deconstructed the idea that reality was an illusion; THE TRUMAN SHOW, THE MATRIX, DARK CITY all explored this theme in some way but David Fincher's 1997 THE GAME is the most paranoid of all of them. Michael Douglas is superb as affluent control freak Nicholas van Orton who finds himself involved in a conspiracy when brother Conrad gives him a gift certificate for the blandly-named Consumer Recreation Services promising a "profound life experience". Some ty...

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...

SWINGERS was released in 1996 and Sidey in particular has loved it ever since. Dan joined in the conversation as the guys try to pin down exactly why this film is such a hit with the fellas. Is it the eminently quotable dialogue, the brilliant soundtrack or the gents style? Possibly all of those things. This movie launched the careers of Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn and Doug Liman. Not to give too much away, but we love this movie!

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!

Having frittered away this weeks budget on extravagances like cheese and pickled chillies, the Dads were forced to choose a movie available to them at no extra costs. Step forward TRANSPORTER 3 starring the very excellent Jason Statham. A strange choice by Sidey, as he hadn't seen either Le Transporteur 1 or 2! Mr Statham plays Frank Martin, a man whose name confused your hosts a lot more than it should have. Frank is the Transporter in question. A courier of dubious goods, who has a code, but...

This week sees us celebrating the work of Oscar-winning-action-B-movie-mega-actor Nic Cage by completely avoiding talking about his films when we discuss the Top 5 Cages. Dan's lost his notes, Sidey's lost his mind and no one is 100% sure exactly what a "cage" is so it could be an interesting discussion. In THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT Nic Cage plays Nick Cage, tormented by visions of his younger more successful self after losing out on his dream role as a Boston tough guy in directo...

6 years after an assassination attempt goes horribly wrong, resulting in the death of his young son, FBI Agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) finally captures and subdues international terrorist Castor Troy (Nic Cage) however with time running out to defuse a bomb that will destroy the entire city of Los Angeles, Archer decides to undergo experimental face transplant surgery in order to pose as his nemesis and infiltrate a secret underwater prison where he can meet Troy's brother Pollox, the only o...

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...

This week's notes were written before all the technical flummoxing that occurred, scuppering our collaboration. They are however too good to delete so please enjoy, whilst pretending there's finally someone interesting on this show to listen to! __________________________________________________________________ Charlie Bingham, host of the Mountain Conversations podcast and archaeologist with a specialist interest in the common ancestor between humans, chimps and bonobos may well see her work ...

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...

Of course, it seems obvious now to reimagine the iconic video game characters for 1993's SUPER MARIO BROS. movie as being captives in an alternate dimension steampunk police state where people evolved from dinosaurs, which has been infected by a sentient testicle fungus and opponents of the fascist regime are de-evolved into barely conscious lumbering abominations but it took the largely untried husband and wife team Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, writers for MAX HEADROOM, to bring this creati...