Bad Dads Film Review

Horns, Hostages, and Human Trafficking Santa – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) This week on Bad Dads Film Review , we go full Finland and unwrap a Christmas movie that answers the question nobody asked: what if Santa Claus wasn’t a jolly gift-giver, but an ancient, horned, child-snatching nightmare buried under a mountain? Our main feature is Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (dir. Jalmari Hela...

Sugar, Cheer, and Corporate Trauma – Elf (2003) This week on Bad Dads Film Review , we crack open a modern Christmas classic and ask the hard questions: how much maple syrup is too much maple syrup, and is Christmas cheer a viable alternative energy source? Our main feature is Elf (dir. Jon Favreau), the 2003 festive juggernaut that turned Will Ferrell into a full-blown Christmas institution. Ferr...

Fairs, Fixed Games, and Failed Backhands – Islands (2024) This week on Bad Dads Film Review , we’re off to the fair and then straight to the Canaries for a slow-burn midlife crisis with added camel corpse. We kick off with our Top 5 Fairs – everything from sinister funfairs and pleasure islands that definitely aren’t safeguarding-approved, to world expos, tunnel-of-love metaphors, and the sheer ho...

Isle of Dogs (2018) – Trash Island, pandemics, and very good boys In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, we head to Wes Anderson’s stop-motion Japan for Isle of Dogs , a film where man’s best friend is dumped on a toxic wasteland by a fascist cat-loving dynasty, and the only person who gives a toss is a 12-year-old boy in a stolen plane. We follow Atari and his pack of exiled hounds – Chief, Rex...

The Duellists (1977) & Top 5 Jewels – honour, obsession, and very stupid men with swords In this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, we kick things off with our Top 5 Jewels – a glittering mix of cursed stones, crime magnets and wildly impractical accessories. From the Pink Panther diamond and Uncut Gems ’ black opal to Titanic’s Heart of the Ocean, Baz Luhrmann’s blinged-out Great Gatsby , Moana...

A nameless truck, an everyday salesman, and 90 minutes of pure escalation: this episode is all about Steven Spielberg’s debut feature, Duel (1971). We talk through how a simple setup – Dennis Weaver’s mild-mannered David Mann driving to a routine meeting – turns into a relentless nightmare when he’s targeted by a grimy tanker truck that seems less like a vehicle and more like a stalking predator....

Frankenstein (2025) – Tech bros, trauma, and a super-horny monster movie on Netflix Mary Shelley by way of Guillermo del Toro feels almost too perfect, and Frankenstein (2025) absolutely leans into that match-up: lush Gothic sets, grotesque body horror, tender fairytale beats, and a very modern anxiety about people who build things they can’t control. In this episode, the Bad Dads dig into Netflix...

Arnold Schwarzenegger in a yellow jumpsuit, a murderous game show, and more terrible puns than should be legal – this week we’re diving into The Running Man (1987). Set in the far-flung future of… 2017, the film drops Arnie into a fascist police state where the government keeps the masses quiet with a wildly popular TV bloodsport. Framed as the “Butcher of Bakersfield,” helicopter pilot Ben Richar...

Christopher Walken, Larry Fishburne, and Abel Ferrara’s moral abyss of a movie. This week, the dads descend into King of New York , the neon-slick crime drama that turns Manhattan into a fever dream of violence, power, and warped justice. Walken plays Frank White , a freshly released drug lord who wants to “give back” — but only by murdering every rival and funding a hospital with blood money. His...

Terrence Malick’s debut gets the Bad Dads treatment. We dive into the cool, clinical menace of Martin Sheen’s James-Dean-by-way-of-the-Midwest and Sissy Spacek’s fairytale-flat voiceover that makes murder sound like homework. What the episode covers The real-world shadow: The Starkweather–Fugate killings that inspired Badlands , Springsteen’s Nebraska , and the film’s uneasy “romance.” Vibes and v...

Starship Troopers (1997): Would you like to know more? We’re suiting up for Paul Verhoeven’s gloriously un-subtle space satire—where propaganda pops like bubblegum, the bugs aren’t the dumb ones, and “service guarantees citizenship.” We talk giant arachnids, bigger egos, and why so many people somehow missed the joke. What we cover The Federal Network effect: recruitment ads, newsreels, and how th...

In this episode, we wade into Chinatown — a sun-bleached noir where water is power, everyone’s lying, and the system wins. We talk Jack Nicholson’s bandaged nose, Faye Dunaway’s glass-shard fragility, John Huston’s all-time villainy, and that ending that still guts you. Yes, we address the director caveat up front; then we focus on what’s on screen: A precision-engineered thriller that never waste...

In this week’s episode we dive into Better Man , Michael Gracey’s glossy Robbie Williams biopic — the one where Robbie is portrayed as a CGI chimp . Yes, really. It’s a bold swing that reframes a familiar music-biopic arc with unexpected bite: boy-band manufacture, burnout, reinvention, and the messy business of becoming “Robbie” when “Robert” is still in the room. What we cover The Big Swing: Why...

Chimp genius or 70s hubris in a suede jacket? We dive into James Marsh’s Project Nim —the wild “let’s raise a chimp as a human” saga aimed at dunking on Noam/“Nim” Chomsky and proving apes can master language. What we actually get: sex-commune vibes, bad science, worse ethics, and one heartbreakingly charismatic chimp shunted between indulgent “parents,” media circuses, and grim laboratories. We t...

The Ballad of Wallis Island This week, the dads swapped blockbusters for something quieter, sadder, and sneakily hilarious: The Ballad of Wallis Island , the melancholic comedy starring Tim Key , Tom Basden , and Carey Mulligan . In a remote Welsh idyll, a lonely lottery winner (Key) invites his favourite long-lost folk duo to reunite and perform a private gig just for him. What follows is a beaut...

Neighbours — Episode 234 (Charlene’s Debut) We dove back into Ramsay Street for a pure hit of Aussie soap nostalgia: Neighbours ep. 234 , a.k.a. the first-ever appearance of Charlene (a tiny, feral Kylie Minogue ) breaking into a house and into British hearts. Why this episode slaps Iconic entrance: Scott grabs a “burglar” in the window… hat comes off… “ Charlene! ” Cue destiny, perms, and pop sup...

The dads return to their spiritual home — the grimy, neon-lit world of A24 — for Love Lies Bleeding , a wild, sweaty, steroid-soaked crime-romance from director Rose Glass ( Saint Maud ). Kristen Stewart plays Lou , a gym manager in a desert backwater who falls for Jackie (Katy O’Brien), a drifter and aspiring bodybuilder built like a Marvel origin story. Their chemistry is instant, their passion...

This week, the dads head down under for Chopper — the semi-biographical crime film that introduced the world to Eric Bana’s raw, terrifying range. Directed by Andrew Dominik ( The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford ), it tells the story of Mark “Chopper” Read , Australia’s most notorious criminal, self-mythologising psychopath and folk hero rolled into one. Part prison horror,...

This week, the dads head into the mosh pit with Jeremy Saulnier’s brutal, claustrophobic thriller Green Room — where a struggling punk band finds themselves trapped in a neo-Nazi club after witnessing a murder. It’s one part siege movie, one part social horror, and all parts grim . When the Ain’t Rights take a last-minute gig deep in Oregon’s backwoods, they expect low pay and bad beer — not blood...

The dads go full retro this week with The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters , the 2007 documentary that turns arcade gaming into blood sport — complete with villains, underdogs, mullets, and enough ego to fill an entire arcade. In one corner: Billy Mitchell , hot-sauce magnate, self-styled all-American hero, and the reigning Donkey Kong world champion since 1982. In the other: Steve Wiebe , a la...

This week we celebrate the late, great Robert Redford the Bad Dads way: with a chaotic Top 5 Roberts and a deep dive into All the President’s Men — the newsroom thriller where Redford and Dustin Hoffman painstakingly peel back Watergate until the whole presidency caves in. It’s cigarettes, typewriters, and journalism that actually mattered. What we get into Redford & Hoffman, peak charisma: wh...

We don’t usually double up on an actor, but when Robert Redford died at 89, it felt only right to go again. A true Hollywood legend — Butch Cassidy , The Sting , All the President’s Men — Redford left us not just with an iconic filmography but also Sundance, a festival that gave countless indie movies a life. This week, we pay tribute by reviewing Indecent Proposal (1993). It’s the one where a you...

Jennifer Lawrence goes full-send comedy in No Hard Feelings , playing Maddie — a broke Montauk local hired by uptight parents to “de-awkward” their 19-year-old son before college. The setup’s spicy, the execution’s funnier than it has any right to be, and yes, we talk about that beach fight. What we dig into J-Law in chaos mode: fearless physical comedy, tight timing, and why this role works becau...

The dads are back in the mid-90s sweet spot with Breakdown (1997), a lean, relentless thriller starring Kurt Russell and his glorious Hollywood hair. Jeff (Russell) and his wife Amy (Kathleen Quinlan) are relocating cross-country when their Jeep suddenly dies in the middle of nowhere. A friendly trucker (the ever-sinister J.T. Walsh) offers Amy a lift to a nearby diner. She never arrives. What fol...

This week the dads take a look at Copycat (1995), a mid-90s thriller that wants to be Silence of the Lambs but often ends up more made-for-TV movie . Sigourney Weaver stars as an agoraphobic psychologist dragged into a game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer imitating history’s most infamous murderers. Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney round out the cast, while Harry Connick Jr. chews the scener...