Episodes

AI week starts with a look back at the 1984 James Cameron classic THE TERMINATOR. Set in a dystopian future where machines have taken over the world, and the remnants of humanity are fighting for their survival, the film follows a cyborg assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back in time by rogue defence network Skynet in order to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the mother of a future resistance leader and key to humanity's victory. Along the way, Sarah is protected by Kyle Reese (Michael Bi...

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, or MACTFSOTW, as it prefers to be known, is a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas where the English Navy chase down and capture some Frenchies. A sure fire hit as far as the Bad Dads are concerned. The movie casts Russell Crowe as our hero, Jack Aubrey. This was just just a few years after Gladiator, so Mr Crowe is still in full on dashing hunk hero mode! This feels like a throwback to a huge Hollywood production of old and one dad is parti...

Kicking off a bit of a musical theme this week, Dan nominated GOOD VIBRATIONS (2012). The movie is based on the life of Terri Hooley, a record-store owner instrumental in developing Belfast's punk rock scene. The film has an excellent soundtrack, which I guess you'd expect given the subject material! David Holmes also co-wrote the soundtrack score, and I'm sure we're waxed lyrical about him in the past. A bit of background, Dan and Sidey are both vinyl nerds, so don't expect an impartial insig...

The sixth collaboration between British action film legends Jesse V. Johnson and Scott Adkins sees the actor in unfamiliar territory as antihero Cain Burgess, escaping from H.M.P. Belmarsh after the death of his mother and seeking vengeance on the gang who made him a hardened criminal in the 2019 action movie AVENGEMENT. Former stuntman Johnson together with co-writer Stu Small conjure up that rare thing; a film that doesn't portray revenge as glorious but acknowledges what a destructive and ugl...

In Bruges is a movie I've heard so much about and never had anyone say a bad word in its general direction. And yet despite that that I've still never found the time to see it. This week it's another double bill, basically because this is now a Colin Farell stan account * Part one of the double bill sees Dan and Sidey touch down In Bruges and talk about how endlessly quotable this movie is. Chemistry, performance, comedy, tragedy and violence. This movie has it all. We loved it, but Sidey stil...

Henry Cavill has been in the news a bit recently. First up he gunned The Witcher. Presumably as he was donning the cape again as Superman. Then all of a sudden that wasn't the case. How quickly things change. Anyhow, Mr Cavill is from sunny Jersey. Just like your Bad Dads. Feels like the time is right to take about some of his filmography. First up this week we're taking a look at the 2015 entry - The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Dan and Sidey love a bit of espionage, so hopes are high for the adaptat...

Here is another entry in the "movies that did quite well, but no of the Dads no it exists" category. REAL STEEL is the story of Hugh Jackson and the tender story of the rekindling of the broken father & son relationship through their mutual love of boxing robots. Jackman plays the absolutely appalling human being Charlie Kenton. He's a down on his luck gambling ex boxer who sells his son for US$50,000 (not adjusted for inflation). Despite not displaying a single redemptive characteristic throug...

We thought it might be fun to laugh at Pete's dentistry related misfortune. First up for this week was MARATHON MAN. Dustin Hoffman undertakes some pretty extreme dental surgery which was all to relatable for poor Pete. Featuring some great performances from Hoffman and Olivier, this is in the sweet spot of espionage thriller movies that really do it for me. Howie didn't enjoy Hoffman's running technique. So a mixed response all in all. We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we t...

This weeks Midweek Mention is a glorious mishmash of ultra low-budget niche-interest film-making and Sidey trolling as we start our winter celebrations with a look at The Asylum's HOME ALONE with dogs clone, BONE ALONE (aka ALONE FOR CHRISTMAS). When Dad (David Deluise) and family mistakenly accuse talking German Shepherd Bone of almost ruining Christmas, he is packed off to the worlds worst kennel rather than taken to Grandma's house to enjoy the festivities. Realising that their house will be...

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a biographical parody film directed by Eric Appel, who co-wrote the screenplay with "Weird Al" Yankovic. The film is a satire of biopics and wildly exaggerates Yankovic's life and career as an accordionist and parody songwriter. Sidey recently watched this one and you now listen to his sales pitch! We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebo...

ZERO EFFECT takes the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" and updates it in a 1998 comedy slash mystery from Jake Kasdan which Sidey loves and I had never seen before. Bill Pullman is tortured soul Daryl Zero; the world's greatest private investigator and a recluse who will only be represented in public by his long-suffering assistant Arlo (Ben Stiller). Together, Zero and Arlo have solved some of the world's most bewildering criminal cases, including The Case Of The Man Wi...

We've been stanning for Colin Farrell for some time now and following his portrayal of quiet and modest heroism in THIRTEEN LIVES. I thought we should take a look at his back catalogue to work out whether there were early signs of his promise. It turns out there were. PHONE BOOTH (2002) is Joel Schumacher's expertly-paced, gimmicky thriller set in real time and virtually a single-location which sees Farrell captivating as the sleazy and obnoxious New York yuppie who finds himself engaged in a ca...

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...

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...

Sidey joined up with the guys from 8bit popcorn. We reviewed Pixar's Inside Out, but also felt compelled to critique their entire back catalogue.

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 ...

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...

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...