Episodes

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 Ho...

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 anc...

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 typ...

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!

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 w...

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 ...

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 co...

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...

In the spirit of the movie we are reviewing I thought it would be humorous to make the show notes excessively long so that it would take you three hours to read them but it turns out that a) no one reads the show notes anyway and b) that would take me an extremely long time so instead you can recreate that experience by simply looping over these next sections a few thousand times. Frank Darabont had already directed the Stephen King adaptation THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, initially a box office dis...

We have been subjecting ourselves to THE PENTAVERATE for reasons it is hard to explain so when Johnny Utah responded to our call for suggestions of movies that listeners think are worth revisiting, Mike Myers 1993 follow up to the pop culture smash hit WAYNE'S WORLD seemed like a good fit with our viewing trends. It was a surprise to me though that this week’s movie, SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER, would reference the recent Netflix's series central conceit, proving the Canadian has had the idea i...

Dan nominated the brutal and violent 1953 Fritz Lang film noir THE BIG HEAT starring Glenn Ford for us to watch and I’ll admit to being slightly less than enthusiastic when he did. How wrong I was. When Police Chief Tom Duncan dies by suicide, hardboiled Sergeant Bannion finds himself waging a one-man war with gangsters Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) as well as the corrupt political establishment in this searing pulpy revenge thriller. As better reviewers than us ha...

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’s...

With the Bad Dads on the brink of implosion and Dan utterly oblivious the best way to lighten up the mood is for a quick trip to that happiest of places: the graveyard. Not for sex but for the Top 5 Movie Graves and whilst it might seem a bit gruesome at first we hope we manage to generate as many laughs as we do tears. Which is to say, probably none of either. I,TONYA is a movie that we had all wanted to see but somehow managed to skip, making this 2017 biographical drama of infamous tabloid vi...

75% of the Bad Dads wear glasses which it turns out is a decent representation of the general public according to The Vision Council who I've never heard of. That seems like an awful lot if you compare that to the number of characters in movies who wear spectacles; usually it's as much a personality trope as it is a wardrobe choice, eye wear bestowing nerdiness, intelligence or cunning depending upon the style of frames chosen. We're talking about the Top 5 Movie Spectacles and that means sungla...

Stop the press! Who is Peter André? Well, you're about to find out as this week’s show is brought to you from the mind of the fanatical turophile himself. The second Indochina war waged from 1955 to 1975 with U.S. Marines landing on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam for the first time in March 1965. The war was politically and ideologically divisive on home soil in Washington and utterly devastating for the troops on the ground as they were largely outmanoeuvred, both sides sustaining terrible...

As the Europeans deify another bunch of hopelessly overpaid man-children so too the Bad Dads cash in with an episode devoted to that most infantile of sports, football. Bad Dad Dan is something of a football fanatic and has a touch of pedigree himself having played football under West Ham's very first attacking full-back/Manager, Syd King in 1902. The beautiful game lit a spark in Dan that could not be extinguished, which is how we end up here almost 120 years later with The Top 5 Movie With Bal...

Staircases have always played a vital role in cinema; any time our hero or villain needs to ascend or descend a level, the humble stair is there to allow it to happen. Ripe for injecting symbolism into a scene or used metaphorically to show our protagonists character development, the stairs are also a place where fights, chases and sometimes comedy can occur. So join us and go stair-crazy with this weeks Top 5 Set On A Staircase. The legendary 2000 A.D. is a British sci-fi comic which has been a...

Pussy is the undeniably obvious and deliberately provocative first word that's perfect to use if you have limited time to engage your reader and you'd like them to get to at the least the end of the first sentence of your description. In this part of the overview there originally was a story that ended up with Cats in the plot of Inception but then I realised there was a South Park episode where they did something with sheep and the plot of that movie so, time completely wasted and desperate for...

The subject of todays Top 5 is one of the great American actors; his collaborations with Martin Scorsese alone have created some of the most celebrated moments and characters in film history. A firm favourite of all of the Bad Dads, it's time we sat down to talk about Robert De Niro. 2016's MOONLIGHT directed by Barry Jenkins and based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's unpublished semi-autobiographical play "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" is this weeks main feature. An indie drama charting the life...

If you have a car and a child, you will be painfully aware that even with the very best intentions it won't be long before the interior of your vehicle is a hoarder’s paradise. Assuming of course that the hoarder in question's idea of paradise includes odd socks, miscellaneous toys, hairbands, half eaten dried fruit and flakes of excrement. I've long worried/fantasised that some of this detritus, a stray water bottle or plastic horse toy say, will somehow become lodged under the brake pedal as I...

Did you know that the origins of frozen desserts are considered obscure? That there are several accounts of their history: some sources even describe ice cream-like foods as originating in Persia as far back as 550 BCE! No? Well why the fuck not? I'm embarrassed for us both. It's right there in the origin section of ice-cream on wikipedia should you ever be desperately short of ideas on how to introduce the Top 5 Ice-Creams in movies. I've eaten at McDonalds before as will have many of you. For ...

Mad Mums takeover this week as Reegs's long-suffering wife makes the nominations. Most of us yearn to travel if only just to spend a few precious nights away from the little ones, to see strange new places and experience different cultures and we attempt to scratch that itch by discussing our top 5 film travel destinations. BOYHOOD is director Richard Linklater's 2014 epic literal coming-of-age drama starring Ellar - son of Robbie - Coltrane as the boy to whom said boyhood belongs. Academy Award...

It's pure serendipity that this week sees the Bad Dads celebrating the top 5 British movies just as our Island prepares for war with France over post-brexit fishing rights that we had no vote in and were little more than a footnote in the overall deal until the reality of actually implementing changes affected professional fisherman in both the Channel Islands and France. What a ridiculous mess all this is, from the naive reassurances from local government that we would be unaffected by the deal...