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 Helander), a wintery sci-fi/horror-dark-co...

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. Ferrell plays Buddy, a human accidentally ...

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 horror of Simply Red – Fairground lodgin...

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, King, Duke and Boss – as they trek ...

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’s glowing heart of Te Fiti, and even ...

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. From suburban driveways to dusty Cal...

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’s lavish new take on the classic, fr...

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 Richards is forced onto The Running Man, a...

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 crew? Mostly Black. His moral compass...

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 visuals: Malick’s painterly Midwest, ...

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 the film weaponises UI/UX t...

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 wastes a line, a clue, or a cut.

What we ...

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 the CGI chimp isn’t a gimmick for ...

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 talk:

• Language vs mimicry: 120+ sig...

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 beautifully awkward, bittersweet...

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 superstardom.
• Peak mullet er...

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 feral — and before long, they’re injecti...

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, part dark comedy, Chopper opens with it...

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, dogs, machetes and Patrick Stewart ...