Episodes

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week we’re embracing all things angular, round, and abstract with our Top 5 Shapes in Movies & TV, diving into Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, and finishing up with a charming kids' pick: Shape Island. It’s geometry, but make it cinematic. 🟦 Top 5 Shapes in Movies & TV 1. The Monolith – 2001: A Space Odyssey A perfect black rectangle that sparked humanity’s evolution and a thousand late-night debates. Kubrick gave us a shape that’s as mysteri...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we’re descending into the mind-bending, minimalist sci-fi thriller that is Cube (1997). A cult favourite from Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, this low-budget psychological puzzle box is as disorienting and claustrophobic as it is thought-provoking. Cube begins in medias res: a group of strangers wakes up in a strange, sterile room with hatches on all six sides. Each door leads to another nearly identical room—some are safe, others are lethal...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week we’re spinning in circles—in the best possible way—with our Top 5 Loops in film and television. Whether they’re time loops, narrative loops, or just delightfully circular plot structures, these stories keep us guessing and coming back for more. We’re also checking out Armando Iannucci’s razor-sharp satire In The Loop and revisiting the chronologically chaotic world of Power Rangers Time Force. 🔁 Top 5 Loops in Film & TV 1. Groundhog Day (1993...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we’re bending time, smashing starships, and looping through one of the most mind-bending episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 5, Episode 18 – "Cause and Effect". It’s a perfect example of how sci-fi can take a deceptively simple concept—what if you’re stuck in a time loop?—and turn it into a suspenseful, clever, and surprisingly rewatchable piece of television. 🌀 The Premise: Déjà Vu in Deep Space The episode opens with an expl...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week’s episode is all about singularity, identity, and what it means to be “the one.” We kick things off with our Top 5 'Ones' in film and TV, followed by a look at the emotionally complex Murderbot Diaries adaptation, and we round things out with the plucky preschool heroine Ridley Jones. 🎯 Top 5 'Ones' in Movies and TV Neo – The Matrix The definitive “One.” Chosen by prophecy, forged by code. Neo’s journey from hacker to messiah redefined sci-fi c...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we're jumping into the gritty, morally murky corner of the galaxy far, far away with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), the first of Disney’s standalone Star Wars films and one that dares to tell a story where the Force doesn’t offer easy answers—and not everyone gets out alive. Directed by Gareth Edwards, Rogue One is set just before the events of A New Hope and follows Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of Imperial scientist Galen Erso...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we’re sinking into the beautifully awkward and emotionally layered world of The Graduate (1967), a landmark in American cinema that captured the confusion and alienation of a generation—and still resonates today. Directed by Mike Nichols and based on Charles Webb’s novel, The Graduate stars a breakout Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock , a recent college graduate adrift in a sea of expectations, ennui, and passive-aggressive dinner parties. Re...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we're diving headfirst into the chaotic, outrageous, and undeniably quotable world of Wedding Crashers (2005), a film that helped define mid-2000s comedy with its mix of raunch, romance, and relentless party energy. Directed by David Dobkin , the film stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as John and Jeremy—divorce mediators by day and professional wedding crashers by night. Their philosophy? Weddings are the perfect place to score free food, drin...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review ! This week we’re dusting off our ruffled shirts and setting our time machines to the 1980s as we revisit The Wedding Singer (1998), a rom-com that’s equal parts sweet, silly, and synth-soaked. Directed by Frank Coraci and starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore , this nostalgic crowd-pleaser finds Sandler in perhaps his most charming role as Robbie Hart, a down-on-his-luck wedding singer trying to recover from heartbreak. After being jilted at the altar,...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review , where this week we’re going full rom-com with a film that brings swagger, charm, and a surprisingly heartfelt message to the genre: Hitch (2005). Directed by Andy Tennant and starring Will Smith in peak smooth-talking form, Hitch follows Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, a professional dating consultant known as the “Date Doctor.” His job? Helping awkward men win over the women of their dreams. His golden rule? No tricks, just helping guys be the best version of th...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review , where things get a little surreal this week as we juggle fire-eaters, human oddities, and digital freakshows in our Top 5 Circuses in Film and TV . We also run away to the big top with Guillermo del Toro’s noir thriller Nightmare Alley , and finish with the technicolour brain-melt that is The Amazing Digital Circus . 🎪 Top 5 Circuses in Film and TV: 1. The Circus (1928) – Charlie Chaplin’s silent-era classic features The Tramp joining a circus by acci...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review ! This week, we travel back to the shadowy underworld of post-revolutionary France with The Emperor of Paris (2018), a gritty historical crime drama that combines lavish period detail with pulpy intrigue and one of France’s most infamous figures—Eugène-François Vidocq. Directed by Jean-François Richet ( Mesrine ), The Emperor of Paris stars Vincent Cassel as Vidocq, a real-life criminal turned detective who forged a remarkable path from the depths of priso...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review , where this week we slither into our Top 5 Snakes in movies and TV, and shed our skins with two slinky features: the gritty 2023 Hong Kong action flick The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon , and a far more family-friendly offering in Patchwork Pals . Top 5 Snakes in Film & TV Kaa – The Jungle Book (1967/2016) Hypnotic eyes, silky voice, and a penchant for wrapping himself around unsuspecting jungle creatures—Kaa is the ultimate slithering villain. Whether v...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review , where this week we tackle one of the more provocative and unexpected Southern dramas of the 2000s: Black Snake Moan . Directed by Craig Brewer (coming off the back of Hustle & Flow ), this 2006 film is a steamy, blues-soaked morality tale that’s equal parts sweaty melodrama, redemption story, and twisted fairy tale. Set in the heat-hazed Deep South, the film centres around Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson), a recently heartbroken, God-fearing bluesman trying t...

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out! 🎬 Miracle Mile (1988) Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week we’re taking a trip back to the late ’80s for a cult favourite that defies expectations and genre conventions: Miracle Mile. Written and directed by Steve De Jarnatt, this 1988 thriller starts like a quirky romantic comedy before turning into a full-...

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out! Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review, where this week we’re dusting off the golf clubs and heading to the green for one of Adam Sandler’s most beloved and chaotic comedies: Happy Gilmore. Directed by Dennis Dugan and released in 1996, this sports-comedy cult classic swings hard with juvenile gags, unexpected heart, and...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week we’re heading west—way west—with a striking little indie feature that punches well above its weight: Missouri Breaks: The Ballad of Missouri Bill. Directed by Jarrod Christman and Weston Grillo, this 2024 low-budget Western was filmed entirely in the Idaho wilderness and tells a stripped-back, gritty story of one man’s battle with his past and the unforgiving land around him. Set in the Idaho Territory in 1880, we follow the quiet, haunted figur...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review, where this week we take the red pill and tumble down the rabbit hole into the genre-defining cyberpunk classic that is The Matrix (1999). Prepare for slow-mo shootouts, existential dread, and the most influential sunglasses in cinema history. Written and directed by the Wachowskis, The Matrix dropped like a black-leather-clad bomb on the sci-fi landscape in 1999 and changed the game forever. Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, a disillusioned computer hacker who l...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review, where this week we lock, stock, and double-tap our way into the gloriously over-the-top world of Hot Fuzz (2007), the second film in Edgar Wright’s beloved Cornetto Trilogy. With an outrageous body count and a razor-sharp script, it’s a love letter to action movies — by way of twee English village life. Directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, Hot Fuzz stars Simon Pegg as Nicholas Angel, a no-nonsense London supercop who’s so good at...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review, where this week we take a look at the explosive and controversial biopic Machine Gun Preacher (2011), directed by Marc Forster and starring Gerard Butler. It’s the story of one man’s radical transformation from violent criminal to war-zone humanitarian — and yes, it’s exactly as subtle as it sounds. 🎬 Main Feature: Machine Gun Preacher (2011) Gerard Butler stars as Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing biker who finds religion, cleans up his act, and the...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review, where this week we’re taking a neon-lit, blood-soaked trip through the moody underworld of Bangkok with Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives (2013). If you thought Drive was a stylish slow burn, this one cranks up the stillness, strips back the dialogue, and drops you into a hallucinatory revenge opera that’s equal parts mesmerizing and maddening. Ryan Gosling stars as Julian, a quiet, emotionally blank drug smuggler running a Muay Thai gym as a front...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we're diving whiskers-first into the utterly bonkers, wildly inventive indie oddity that is Hundreds of Beavers — a film that may be about trapping furry woodland critters but ends up capturing something much rarer: pure, anarchic cinematic joy. Directed by Mike Cheslik and starring frequent collaborator Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Hundreds of Beavers is a near-silent, black-and-white slapstick adventure set in a surreal 19th-century frontier. I...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This episode swings open some metaphorical and literal portals as we explore our Top 5 Gates in film and TV, take aim with the tense WWII drama Enemy at the Gates, and finish off with an animated sci-fi detour through Stargate Infinity. 🎯 Top 5 Gates The Gate (1987) – A cult horror favourite where kids accidentally open a portal to a hellish dimension in their backyard. Lesson learned: don’t play records backwards. Stargate (1994) – The OG interste...

Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we’re paging through the murky corridors of mystery, rare books, and Satanic secrets with Roman Polanski’s atmospheric thriller The Ninth Gate (1999). Adapted from Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel The Club Dumas, the film stars Johnny Depp as Dean Corso, a rare book dealer whose latest assignment drags him deep into a web of occult intrigue. Setting the Scene: Leather Bindings and Hidden Symbols Dean Corso is a sleazy but skilled rare book exper...