Bad Dads Film Review

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we head into early Scorsese territory with Mean Streets, starring Harvey Keitel as Charlie and Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy.

It is New York, 1973: Catholic guilt, bar-room bravado, small-time gangster pressure, unpaid debts, family loyalty, loaded silences, unloaded guns, and the unmistakable beginning of the Scorsese crime-movie language that would later explode into Goodfellas.

What we covered

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This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we review Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, the 1957 jury-room classic starring Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb.

A young man’s life is on the line. Eleven jurors are ready to convict. One juror wants to talk. From that simple setup, the film becomes a tense, brilliantly engineered argument about reasonable doubt, prejudice, memory, class, personal baggage and the terrifying confidence of people ...

This week the Bad Dads take a midweek spin of the Amazon Prime roulette wheel and land on The Bad Education Movie, the 2015 big-screen send-off for Jack Whitehall’s BBC Three sitcom. Sidey is not thrilled. Reegs has seen some of it before. Cris has only caught the ending. Dan is mostly wondering how all this happened.

What We Covered

• Amazon Prime roulette: With no planned theme and a hectic week, the Dads pick numbers, scro...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews The Brothers Grimsby — also released as Grimsby — Louis Leterrier’s 2016 spy-action gross-out comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong.

In this episode

• England week, recorded in the heat with the dads trying to finish before England kick off
• Pete’s return to the podcast, Dan’s absence, and Reegs charging the show with bringing the game...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews This Is England (2006), Shane Meadows’ raw, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama starring Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Vicky McClure, Joe Gilgun, Andrew Shim, Rosamund Hanson, and Jack O’Connell.

In this episode

• Recording outside the man cave in brutal heat, with England playing later and possible background birds
• Returning to Shane Meadows after the da...

This week the Bad Dads ride across South America with The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles’s 2004 drama starring Gael García Bernal as young Ernesto Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as Alberto Granado.

Before the main feature, the Dads count down their favourite movie motorcycles, from Arnie’s shotgun-reloading Harley in Terminator 2 to Tom Cruise going full Cruise in Top Gun and Mission: Impossible, the Easy Rider chopp...

This week the Bad Dads take on Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 anime classic: part cyberpunk biker movie, part psychic apocalypse, part body-horror nightmare, and still one of the most influential animated films ever made.

What We Covered

• The motorcycle connection: Sidey picked Akira partly off the back of motorcycle week, with the famous “Akira slide” still instantly recognisable decades later.
• Neo-Tokyo and the s...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Aftersun (2022) — Charlotte Wells’ quietly devastating father-daughter memory piece starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio.

In this episode

• Top 5 Holidays: package holiday dread, cancelled flights, family trips, airport memories, and British holiday behaviour at its absolute finest/worst
• Sidey’s Malta anxiety and the curse of relatives who “mog&rdquo...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Abigail (2024) — a gleefully gory vampire horror-comedy from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, starring Melissa Barrera, Alisha Weir, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Giancarlo Esposito, and Matthew Goode.

In this episode

• Why the poster and streaming artwork spoil the film’s big vampire reveal
• Universal’s monster-movie legacy,...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Toscana (2022), Netflix’s Danish-Italian comfort drama about a stressed fine-dining chef who inherits his father’s restaurant in Tuscany and slowly rediscovers rustic cooking, unresolved family memories, and a wildly inconvenient romance.

In this episode

• The tragic walking football update: a playoff final lost on penalties, after Sidey chose love and anniversar...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Jonah Hex (2010) — DC’s supernatural western starring Josh Brolin as the scarred bounty hunter, John Malkovich as revenge-villain Quentin Turnbull, and Megan Fox as Lilah/Tallulah, depending on which bit of the film you believe.

In this episode

• Dan’s late pick and the argument over whether Jonah Hex counts as the midweek movie
• “Johan Hex” and t...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the team reviews Apex (2026) — a stripped-back survival thriller set in the Australian outback starring Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Eric Bana.

In this episode

• Garden-recording vibes, warm-weather chaos, and the usual Bad Dads preamble
• Top 5 Travellers/Gypsies segment before the main review
• Setup: remote climbing trip gone wrong after a devastating opening loss
• Tone shift from su...

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the dads review Saipan (2025), a dramatization of one of the most explosive moments in modern Irish football history.

In this episode

• Why this story still matters: Ireland’s 2002 World Cup buildup and the Keane/McCarthy fallout
• The core tension: perfectionist, win-first standards vs “get the job done” tournament pragmatism
• Camp preparation issues and why they became the fla...

This week the dads tackle Wilson Yip’s SPL: Kill Zone — part crime thriller, part tragedy, part full-contact martial-arts clinic. Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung and Simon Yam carry a film that’s interested in corruption and consequence as much as it is in breaking bones on camera.

First though: Top Five Dons. Unsurprisingly, this goes everywhere. Corleone, TV Dons, gaming Dons, football Dons, and assorted nonsense all make...

The lads open with the Wu-Tang connection (RZA has this high on his all-time kung fu list), then jump straight into what makes this film such a riot: a betrayed warrior clan, relentless set-piece combat, and some of the most creative pole/staff fighting you’ll ever see.

They unpack the story of the Yang brothers being ambushed, the surviving brothers’ trauma and vengeance, and Gordon Liu’s turn as the Fifth Brother...

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we cover Song Sung Blue — a true-story music biopic about married couple Mike and Claire Sardina, whose Neil Diamond tribute act takes them from local gigs to national attention. What starts as a feel-good performance story gradually becomes a heavier drama about fame, pressure, family strain, and loss.

What the Movie Is About

Set around a tribute-band scene, the film follows Mike and Claire a...

This week the Bad Dads take a pounding with The Bleeder (2016), the Liev Schreiber-led biopic of Chuck Wepner — the Bayonne brawler whose improbable 15-round fight with Muhammad Ali inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky. The film charts Wepner's rise from club fighter and liquor delivery man to brief, cocaine-fuelled celebrity — and his long, self-inflicted fall back down again.

The Dads discuss:

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This week, Bad Dads Film Review takes on The Untouchables with a full spoiler-light breakdown and final verdicts.

What We Covered

• The Main Feature: The Untouchables review and reactions.
• Standout Moments: Performances, scenes, and sequences that hit hardest.
• Does It Hold Up?: What still lands and what feels dated.
• The Verdicts: Final scores and whether it gets the recommendation.

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback...

This week, the Bad Dads are taking on the "Top 5 Evils" in cinema history before diving into the excruciatingly tense thriller, Speak No Evil (2024).

What We Covered

• Top 5 Evils: We rank the ultimate cinematic bad guys. Expect mentions of everyone from the Joker to historical monsters.
• The Main Feature: Reviewing Speak No Evil. How far will middle-class couples go to avoid appearing rude? All the way to a shallow grave, apparently...