Podcasts about bad dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris kick off Dan week with Bong Joon-ho's 2003 South Korean crime thriller Memories of Murder, a bleak, funny and deeply unsettling film inspired by the real Hwaseong serial murders.The film takes us to rural South Korea in the late 1980s, where a local police squad is completely unprepared for a serial-killer investigation. The opening crime scene says it all: a body in a drainage ditch, farmers and kids wandering around, clothes being handled, evidence being trampled, and the one useful footprint destroyed by a tractor. From there, the dads follow a case built on hunches, violence, false confessions and the painful absence of proper forensic tools.At the centre is Detective Park, played by Song Kang-ho, who believes he can spot guilt by looking into someone's eyes. He clashes with Detective Seo from Seoul, who arrives with more method and a belief in evidence, but the longer the case goes on, the more the film shows how easily procedure can collapse into obsession. Park starts as the thug with the hunches, Seo starts as the rational outsider, and by the end those roles have become horribly unstable.The dads dig into the police culture that Bong presents almost as black comedy: suspects beaten into saying what officers want to hear, tape recorders paused so confessions can be corrected, footprints fabricated, and vulnerable people dragged into the woods and threatened. It is often absurdly funny in the moment, but the joke curdles because the consequences are catastrophic. People are brutalised, leads are lost, evidence is ruined, and the killer keeps going.They also talk through the killer's ritual: rainy nights, women in red, a particular binding method, underwear over the head, and a recurring radio song request that becomes one of the investigation's key clues. The female officer is the one who pieces together the song pattern, despite being ignored and patronised by the men around her, which makes her one of the few genuinely competent figures in the film.As the case develops, the film keeps swerving between tension and farce. There is the traumatised survivor who remembers the killer's soft hands, the suspect in women's underwear who turns out to be guilty of something much less murderous but still deeply awkward, and the quiet factory worker who seems to fit too many pieces of the puzzle while still leaving the police without proof. The dads especially focus on the way Bong refuses to turn the film into a satisfying puzzle-box mystery. The point is not just who did it, but what happens when the people chasing him are violent, panicked and under-equipped.The ending leaves a mark. Years later, Park returns to the original site and learns that an ordinary-looking man had recently visited and said he had done something there long ago. The killer, if that is who it was, looked completely normal. Park's final stare into the camera becomes the film's last accusation: at the killer, at the failed system, and maybe at the audience too.Verdicts are broadly warm but mixed around the edges. Dan admires the direction and performances but does not rank it among his favourite Korean films. Cris finds the tonal shifts confusing and thinks the film is too long. Sidey thinks it drags a little and shows Bong still refining his craft, but he enjoys it and gives it a strong recommend. Everyone recognises the power of a film that turns a serial-killer story into something stranger and more troubling: a blackly comic study of incompetence, brutality and unresolved guilt.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week, Da7e and Neil construct their thoughts on the penultimate episode of season one of HBO's Lanterns!In The Calm [05:22], they unpack the fact that the show has pivoted from Bad Dads to Sad Dads, theorize about why the show chose to play the fight song for a specific college, and begin their advocacy for the inevitable Kelly MacDonald Emmy campaign.Then in The Storm [43:42], it's time for predictions for what will happen in the finale, what (if any) ambitions the show has beyond a single season, and more.Next week, Lanterns concludes its first season on Sunday night and the pod will be back on Monday to break it all down. Then after a few weeks off, Storm of Spoilers is headed back to Middle Earth for a rewatch of the first two seasons and coverage of the new season of The Rings of Power.To interact with the show, send your comments and questions to stormofspoilers@gmail.com, and follow us on Twitter/X and Bluesky @Da7eandNeil.You can also support Da7e and Neil and get all kinds of bonus content (from the Game of Thrones era to the LOST rewatch to our Twin Peaks rewatch project to our current Adventure Pod and Dark watch project) by subscribing to our Patreon here: patreon.com/Da7eandNeil

Send us Fan Mail9-26-26: Bad dad jokes and NFL picks, who is the biggest 2-0 frauds?  this is podcast Season #5, episode #51Get Help Dad Podcast with Bad jokes and tips and tricks to make your life  alittle bit better.Instagram: get.help.dad.podcastTiktok: @get.help.dad.podYoutube: Get Help Dad PodcastFYI: You are a great parent!!You can send in your own parenting advice, Dad topics, tell us where you are listening from or lawn care advice to gethelpdad@gmail.com.  We are excited to hear from you.  Please let us know your Name, City/Country you are from.  

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris review Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours: Blue, the first part of the director's famous trilogy inspired by liberty, equality and fraternity. This is the liberty one, although the film's idea of freedom is less “joyful self-expression” and more “what if grief made you sell your life, bin the furniture, delete your feelings and move into a Paris flat with only a blue lamp for company?”Juliette Binoche stars as Julie, a woman who survives the car crash that kills her composer husband and young daughter. After a failed suicide attempt, she decides not to die but to detach from everything: the house, the music, the money, the memories, the people and any emotional bond that might hurt her again. Unfortunately for Julie, life keeps refusing to leave her alone. A witness from the crash returns her necklace, a neighbour draws her into an unlikely friendship, Olivier tries to complete the great unfinished concerto, and the discovery of her husband's pregnant mistress forces Julie to confront what compassion might look like after devastation.The dads talk about the huge Prime subtitles, the opening crash, the funeral, the failed overdose, the destroyed manuscript, the swimming-pool scenes, the blue lighting, the sugar cube, the street musician, Lucille and the sex club, Julie's mother, the mistress Sandrine, the concerto for Europe, and the way the film uses reflections, glass, music and sudden cuts to black to show memory and grief breaking through Julie's carefully constructed numbness.Verdicts are a clean sweep. Dan finds the filmmaking so strong that the heavy subject matter becomes surprisingly easy to watch, and he now wants to see the rest of the trilogy. Sidey thinks some viewers might accuse it of being pretentious, but for him the story is simple, moving and beautifully made, with Juliette Binoche giving an exceptional performance. Reegs loves it and calls it a banger. The official Bad Dads verdict: a strong blue recommend.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This video podcast is the third in a series of three posts about the Hidden Hold of Horrors Golden Thread in the work of author Rowling-Galbraith. A Golden Thread is a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author's stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer's writings viewed as a whole. The ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors' repeated scene is of a location underground, be it a cave, a cellar, a tunnel, a tomb, or a basement pool, in which a frightening confrontation, a Near Death Experience, flat out murder, or transformative revelation occurs.The first post in this series was Nick Jeffery's exploration and explanation of Rowling's Church Cottage childhood home in Tutshill and its remarkable cellar beneath a covered access port, what has been mistakenly referred to as a “trapdoor.” In The Hidden Cellar Beneath J. K. Rowling's Childhood Home, Nick shares why a building in West England on the border with Wales from the mid 19th Century that was built as a Church of England school would have a substantial brick and cement vaulted basement and what this room, originally a cistern to prevent cholera outbreaks, was probably like during Rowling's childhood.[Golden Thread Image: Wovex.com; Ladder to Cellar Under Access Port: Pinterest]The second post was one I sent out yesterday in which I shared Nick's and my off-the-top-of-our-heads catalog of everything subterranean, frightening, and damp in Rowling's oeuvre, that is, her seven Harry Potter novels, eight Cormoran Strike mysteries, the Cursed Child ‘collaborative' play script, her Beedle the Bard fairy tale collection and Ickabog “political fairy tale,” the three Fantastic Beasts screenplays, her border-line autobiographical Casual Vacancy, and the Dante-meets-Dickens Christmas Pig classic. Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap DoorHogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The morning after posting it, readers are already adding scenes Nick and I overlooked and I am kicking myself for not including the “deepest dungeon” in ‘The Warlock's Hairy Heart' and “the trapdoor beneath the rug” concealing the tunnel beneath Poem and Pretense's sanctuary from the Loss Adjustors, a tunnel reached via a ladder. ‘The Tunnel' takes them “to the bottom of the mountain” where Compass joins them for their flight to the City of the Missed across the Wastes of the Unlamented, Pig's story turn and meaning-in-the-middle. As Nick and I note in the conversation above, a comprehensive list will require a repeated reading of Rowling's complete writings. Please add the ones you think of that we missed in your comments below, especially for Cursed Child, the only book for which Nick and I drew a complete Golden Thread blank.Those first two posts cover half of the four subjects Nick and I tackle in this Golden Thread conversation; the Ten Questions guiding that discussion with the relevant links and notes from our answers can be found below. What I want to write out here briefly are some notes about Golden Threads in general, their place in a Lake and Shed bifurcated critical environment, and then the importance of the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors' Golden Thread specifically for understanding Rowling's work, its inspiration and intentional artistry, and for seeing what will happen in the remaining Strike novels. Not to mention the meaning of Hallmarked Man's fictional silver oligarch Murdoch's name!{Lake image source; Golden Thread image source; Shed image source]Are ‘Golden Threads' Evidence of ‘Lake' Inspiration or ‘Shed' Intentional Artistry?Since the time of our first Hogwarts Professor Substack posts and podcasts, Nick and I have described what we are trying to advance here in the niche field of Rowling Studies is Fourth Generation work. For a discussion of the four generations of Rowling scholarship, listen to On Reading ‘On Writing.' where we discussed the evolution of reader approaches to Rowling-Galbraith texts and how each generation, while typical of a specific time period, continues into the other generations (most of Strike-Ellacott fandom, for example, is reading that series as the ‘Shippers and speculators did the Hogwarts Saga during Potter Mania, the first generation of Rowling Studies).What distinguishes Fourth Generation thinking is, in essence, (1) the incorporation of biographical material in understanding the inspiration of Rowling's work (per her implicit instruction since the late 2019 Lake and Shed metaphor interview), (2) the creation of a gauge to measure the success or failure of her work out of the intention evident in her choices of literary tools, her Shed artistry, and (3) shifting the critical focus from the latest work and the book-next-in-queue to the oeuvre as a whole, everything she's written. The bumper-sticker version of that?Lake — Shed — Golden Threads. Lake? Rowling describes the source of her stories' inspiration as the ‘Lake' of her unconscious mind, her personal issues, the events of her life, her reading and education. This is the work of Fourth Generation specialists who sift through what is known about Rowling's life in pursuit of clues to the source material of her stories.Shed? Again, Rowling's bipolar metaphor for her creative process has a marker, her ‘Shed,' that represents the alocal place ‘where' she deploys her traditional tools to craft archetypal story out of her very personal Lake inspiration. These tools — I focus on seven — have a specific quality, both antiquarian and profoundly effective in producing the effect Rowling desires on her reading audience.And, at last, the Golden Threads, which are not explicitly Lake or Shed findings, but, as noted above, “a plot point, scene, or character type that recurs repeatedly through an author's stories, a commonality that is evident only when looking at the writer's writings viewed as a whole.” Examples?In two episodes of The Kanreki Series last July (here and here), Nick and I discussed fourteen Golden Threads in Rowling's work: The Bad Dad, Writing about Writing, Violence against Women, the Evils of Fleet Street, Mother Love, Ghosts, Pregnancy Traps, the Lost Child with Grieving Steward, Evil Government, Occult tropes, the Embedded Author, the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers. ‘Blood' makes fifteen (see here, here, and here for that) and my post yesterday about the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors' is sixteen.As Nick and I explain in the conversation above, most of these Golden Threads have a Lake element or point of origin, e.g., the Cholera Cistern cellar beneath Church Cottage. Understanding why Rowling returns to them again and again in reinventive ways in her work, though, requires more than a psycho-biographical connection. This is obviously the case with all the underground terrors to be found in Rowling's stories.[Basement Image from WallPaperAccess.com]How are We to Understand the ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors' Golden Thread? What does it mean?As I listed at the end of yesterday's post and the conversation with Nick above, Rowling's childhood home with its hidden depths beneath the floorboards and neighboring graveyard and attendant ghosts is only one part of the explanation for the Hidden Hold Golden Thread. It's a wonderful point of origin and launching pad for inspiration, certainly, but restricting the interpretation of her usage of this meme to nightmares and flights of fancy she had as a child about the sublimely subliminal spaces around her is, for lack of a better word, lazy. Her use of these spaces again and again reflects, I'm sure, to a certain degree her psychological Default Setting from childhood memories of the ‘Wet Nightmare Place' under the dining room table and next door. But Rowling's mind was shaped as much by her bibliography, the books she read and loved, as by her biography, the exterior circumstances of her life. Her reading is the bridge linking her Lake and Shed creative process and it plays an outsized role in her Golden Threads as well. Granting that the first inspiration of her unconscious mind may just have been childhood fears and fantasies, knowing that Rowling has read Homer, Virgil, and Dante and studied Greek mythology from her time at Wyedean Comprehensive through UExeter means that a Trip to the Underworld to speak to the dead is a touchstone of myth and epic. There's a word for this commonplace, katabasis, the going-down-and-coming-back. Odysseus visits Tiresias, Aeneas his father Anchises, Dante with Virgil tours the Inferno's multiple levels — and Psyche is sent by Venus into Hades on the last of her purgative trials.· Rowling, having entered into these stories, knows they are delivery vehicles for the cathartic transformative change to be found in consultation with the dead and in thinking about death.Joseph Campbell famously argued in Hero with a Thousand Faces that per James Joyce, ethnographers, and comparative mythology experts this descent into the nether worlds and return was an essential aspect of the “monomyth” or Ur story underlying all story and myth. Campbell's more important contribution was arguing that this was not an abstract historical or literary assertion but one fundamentally important in every human being's life and psycho-spiritual development.The Journey to the Underworld from this perspective is that it represents the conscious entry into the Unconscious Mind, the Hidden ‘Depths' of the Person Behind the Persona-Mask. Rowling has said that, if the writing dream had not worked out, she would have studied to become a psychologist. It is a touchstone belief of Fourth Generation Rowling Studies that, even though the writing gig did work out, that Rowling-Galbraith still became a psychologist in the sense of a person working to help her client-readers experience meaning (logos) more profoundly in their souls (psyche).Every time we descend into the depths with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, with Cormoran and Robin, or with Jack Jones, we jump into a shared psychological crucible for our alchemical dissolution, purification, and reintegration. In this Golden Thread, we can see the Shed tools of literary alchemy, mythology, psychomachia, Christian symbolism, chiastic writing, and cathartic shock all at work.And, though speculating about the novel-on-the-near-horizon isn't a signature quality of Fourth Generation reading, I would be remiss not to point out that Rowling-Galbraith has left pointers in Hallmarked Man and throughout the Strike series that Robin Ellacott is on a ‘Heroine's Journey' — and overdue for a trip to Hades.Pointers to Trips Underground to Come in the Cormoran Strike Series' Remaining BooksSubscribers to Hogwarts Professor are familiar with Rowling-Galbraith's use of the Cupid and Psyche Myth as a template for the Strike-Ellacott series, a use the author highlighted in a tweet after the publication of Strike 8. That myth is about the Soul's trials to be worthy of Divine Love, Psyche being the Greek word for Soul and Cupid or Eros for love (Anteros for True Love). Psyche's great trial is her descent into Hell at Venus' command to receive from Persephone a gift for the Goddess of Beauty. As infernal as Robin Ellacott's sufferings have been, Serious Strikers have been anticipating that she will at last ‘go there' for real in Strike 9.Iris T. M. wrote in The Rowling Library Magazine, Issue #99 (March 2025), her belief that Robin's story arc conformed, intentionally or not on the author's part, with ‘The Heroine's Journey.' See ‘Robin's Heroine's Journey: How J. K. Rowling's Robin Ellacott from the Strike Series Follows the Classic Path of Self-Discovery' in that archived issue of TRL (and say a prayer for the return of The Rowling Library in 2027!). Iris mentions psychotherapist Maureen Murdock as the original advocate of a ‘Heroine's Journey' distinct from a Campbell-esque ‘Hero's Journey,' but uses the ‘Aletis' archetype of Jody Gentian Bower as her framework for tracing Robin's story arc. It's a brilliant exegesis and well worth reading in full.It misses the mark, however, in at least three important respects.First, it makes no mention of the Cupid and Psyche myth, which conforms to every ‘Heroine's Journey' marker and is Rowling's only admitted mythological template for the series;Second, it was written before the publication of Hallmarked Man so Iris T. M. could not have seen that Rowling-Galbraith gave a historical character, a 19th Century Freemason, silver millionaire, and author of Secrets of the Craft (see Ed Shardlow's discussion of his importance here), the name Alexander Hughson Murdock. Taking that as a pointer to Maureen Murdock and her groundbreaking The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness, we're obliged, I think, to look at the stages Dr Murdock assigns to this transformative odyssey.Last, that look reveals a stage that Iris, Bower, or both neglect, namely, ‘Initiation and Descent to the Goddess' after ‘Awakening to Feelings of Spiritual Aridity/Death.' Iris following Bower looks for a ‘Dark Night of the Soul' and attendant “descent into the underworld,” which she ties to Robin's being buried alive at the UHC's Chapman Farm in Running Grave. She argues that after this experience “two key stages remain in the Aletis Journey: Self discovery and integration—where she fully embraces her skills and authenticity—and the Establishment of a new home, where she builds a life that reflects her true self and her desires.”A Murdock reading, in contrast, suggests that Robin's descent into hell has not yet begun or is not yet over.Heroine Journey's Cycle image source; Maureen Murdock image sourceMurdock's ten stage Heroine's Journey looks like this per HeroineJourneys.com with my notes in [Brackets}:* HEROINE SEPARATES FROM THE FEMININE. The “feminine” is often a mother/mentor figure or a societally prescribed feminine/marginalized/outsider role. [Robin's decision to pursue her vocation to be a private detective despite her fiancee's and family's disapproval, especially Linda's]* IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE & GATHERING OF ALLIES. The heroine embraces a new way of life. This often involves choosing a path that is different than the heroine's prescribed societal role, gearing up to “fight” an organization/role/group that is limiting the heroine's life options, or entering some masculine/dominant-identity defined sphere. [Her move from secretary to detective to partner at the Agency]* ROAD/TRIALS AND MEETING OGRES & DRAGONS. The heroine encounters trials and meets people who try to dissuade the heroine from pursuing their chosen path, or who try to destroy the heroine. [Insert list here of those who try to convince Robin to leave the Agency or to kill her.]* EXPERIENCING THE BOON OF SUCCESS. The heroine overcomes the obstacles in their way. (This is typically where the hero's journey ends.) [Partner status and respect of Strike and the Met as a First Tier detective]* HEROINE AWAKENS TO FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY/DEATH. The heroine's new way of life (attempting the masculine/dominant identity) is too limited. Their success in this new way of life is either temporary, illusory, shallow, or requires a betrayal of self over time. [Robin's growing awareness that her vocation as a detective is in an undefined but certain way in conflict with her life as a woman and the roles of wife, daughter, and mother]* INITIATION & DESCENT TO THE GODDESS. The heroine faces a crisis of some sort in which the new way of life is insufficient, and the heroine falls into despair. All of the masculine/dominant-group strategies have failed them. [Strike 9! Robin breaks down but conferring with the Goddess-Crone, her Jungian psychoanalyst, she learns how imbalanced her life has become; she makes decisions a la those of Psyche in Hades per the Crone's instructions]* HEROINE URGENTLY YEARNS TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE. The heroine wants to, but is unable to return to their initial limited state/position. [Ditto]* HEROINE HEALS THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT. The heroine reclaims some of their initial values, skills, or attributes (or those of others like them) but now views these traits from a new perspective. [I suspect this healing will be akin to Strike's Chapel ‘conversation' with the late Charlotte Campbell; for reasons to be discussed, I think Linda Ellacott dies in Strike 9 which precipitates Robin's mental crisis]* HEROINE HEALS THE WOUNDED MASCULINE WITHIN. The heroine makes peace with the “masculine” approach to the world as it applies to them. [Strikes 9 and 10]* HEROINE INTEGRATES THE MASCULINE & FEMININE. In order to face the world/future with a new understanding of themselves and the world/life, the heroine integrates the “masculine” and “feminine” qualities/perspectives. This permits the heroine to see through binaries and to interact with a complex world that includes the heroine but is also larger than their personal lifetime or their geographical/cultural milieu. [The Alchemical Hermaphrodite or Rebis, Strike 10]I think there are two more Golden Threads to be explored in Rowling's work that are rooted in Tutshill's Church Cottage and Rowling's life there, both of which I began to pull in the conversation with Nick above, namely, the Nightmare Upstairs Room and the Neglected Dead Mother. But those will have to wait for another day!Hats off in salute to Iris T. M. for her work with Robin's ‘Heroine's Journey' (and Strike's in TRL Issue #100)! Writing as she was before Hallmarked Man and not being familiar with Rowling's Shed tools and how they work together, she still revealed the psychological template Rowling is deliberately following, it seems, if the Murdoch name drop is any indication.The Hidden Hold of Horrors, then, is an especially rich Lake-Shed-and-Golden-Thread story point in Rowling's work. Stay tuned for more of the same with respect to Mums and Upstairs Nightmares!The Ten Questions with Notes and Links1. Good day, Nick! What can you tell me about the trap door basement in Rowling's childhood home, Church Cottage in Tutshill?* The Hidden Cellar Beneath J. K. Rowling's Childhood Home2. So, it's bigger than I once thought. Are you asking for the reasons I think you're asking?* Golden Thread discussion above3. So, yes, that Ironbridge cellar and my recent revisits to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with its gauntlet run beneath a trapdoor, made me wonder: is the nightmare basement a Rowling Golden Thread? It's not as if all of them have been identified; you just came up with the Crimson Golden Thread this year --* See here, here, and here for that.4. How many Golden Threads have we discussed, John? Why do we care again?* Golden Thread 1: Kanreki (Bad Dad, Writing about Writing, Violence against Women, the Evils of Fleet Street, Mother Love, Ghosts, Pregnancy Traps, the Lost Child with Grieving Steward)* Golden Thread 2: Kanreki (Evil Government, Occult tropes, the Embedded Author, the Search for the Real, Embedded Texts, and Shadow Doppelgangers)* Lost Child Golden Thread: Kanreki Finale* See Golden Thread discussion above.5. So it's a Big Deal, really. Care to join me in reviewing Rowling's work to see what's lurking in her basements? (Harry Potter back and forth)* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door6. How about the Stand-Alones, John: Casual Vacancy, the Ickabog, The Christmas Pig? And the collaboration exercises, Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts (back and forth)* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door7. And Cormoran Strike? (back and forth)* Rowling Golden Thread: The Hidden ‘Hold of Horrors Downstairs, Beneath the Trap Door* Nick: “And the Dell, of course, in Lethal White's Chiswell House, where the remains of the Shetland pony are dug up in the pink blanket.”8. Okay, that was fun -- and we have sufficient evidence to say that Rowling thinks of the spaces downstairs as wet, scary, even horrible. So what? Tell me this isn't just a Lake inspiration bit; what is this very deliberate artist choosing to do with the basement image? Do we have any bibliographic pointers?* Discussion Above in text.9. What about the psychological piece here? Rowling has said she'd have been a psychologist if the writing gig hadn't worked out. Is her ‘underground' piece of Harry's Journey everywhere our moving into the subconscious of depth psychology?* Joseph Campbell ‘Hero's Journey,' Joyce scholar, Jung disciple, monomyth advocate – myth not only historical but important as individual psychological template;* Maureen Murdock ‘Heroine's Journey,' Jungian psychotherapist, writing for therapiss and patients not writers on Campbell model, “Initiation and Descent to the Goddess”* Victoria Lynn Schmidt ‘Heroine's Journey for Writers'* Iris T. M: The Heroine's Journeys of Robin Ellacott (TRL #99) and of Cormoran Strike (TRL #100)10. Do you think we'll be going underground in the last two Cormoran Strike novels? * YES, we will!Hogwarts Professor is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris take aim at Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel, the 1990 psychological cop thriller starring Jamie Lee Curtis as rookie police officer Megan Turner, Ron Silver as Wall Street lunatic Eugene Hunt, Clancy Brown as Detective Nick Mann and Tom Sizemore as the unfortunate convenience-store robber who sets everything in motion.The episode starts where the film starts: with a gun. A very lovingly photographed gun. The dads talk about the title sequence, Brad Fiedel's industrial score, Bigelow's moody New York visuals, and Megan's disastrous first day on the job, where a justified shooting quickly becomes a professional nightmare because the weapon disappears from the crime scene. Unfortunately for Megan, the man who takes it is Eugene Hunt, a witness who becomes obsessed with both the gun and the woman who fired it.From there, Blue Steel turns into a strange mix of cop thriller, stalker movie, serial-killer melodrama and sweaty gun psychosexuality. Eugene scratches Megan's name onto bullets, kills strangers, romances her under false pretences, reveals himself far too early to be sensible, and then gaslights his way out of trouble with the help of a lawyer. Megan, meanwhile, keeps telling the truth and keeps being doubted by almost everyone around her, including the police force that supposedly brought her back in to help.The dads dig into what works and what really does not: Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop nobody believes, Ron Silver going full mega-acting mode, Clancy Brown's strong hair and unexpected nudity, Tom Sizemore's brief but important appearance, the father subplot, the gender politics, the fetishised gun imagery, the rain, the smoke, the subway shootout, the hot dog stand, and the ending that suggests Megan's next enemy may be internal affairs.Verdicts are all over the place in the best Bad Dads tradition. Sidey enjoys the brisk runtime, the style and the villain. Dan gives it something like a medium-to-blue recommend, mainly for Ron Silver and the direction. Cris is still annoyed about paying £2.50 to rent it and bailing out halfway through. Reegs admires the look and the lurid energy while also noting that Megan Turner may be one of cinema's more catastrophically questionable police officers.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Full show - FrYiday | Bring it back | News or Nope - The Traitors, Lenny Kravitz, and Lizzie Borden | Feel Good Friday | Is T. Hack a bad dad? | Will somebody just answer Erica's phone call, please!? | Song Showdown - Saxy songs | Stupid stories | Consumer reviews - Snickers banana nut bread | Slacker's dad visited him again | Showing off www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/askslacker www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin

Is he being too hard on his daughter?

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan and Reegs finish “Reach Around Week” with Jack Reacher, the 2012 Christopher McQuarrie action thriller starring Tom Cruise as Lee Child's wandering ex-military investigator. After watching Alan Ritchson's Prime Video version in the Midweeker, the dads now turn to the film that gave many book fans their first major complaint before the opening credits had even rolled: Tom Cruise is many things, but he is not 6'5".The episode begins with the real main event, which is obviously walking football. The dads' team has beaten Madeira 3–0, Dan has scored, Sidey is still protecting his clean-sheet record, and the squad has somehow been told off at half-time despite being ahead. Christian is missing after a suspected bout of sunstroke, while recent viewing includes Reegs watching The Patient, Dan falling into YouTube pinball and arcade content, Sidey continuing through Barry, and a new version of The Grand Tour that appears to have enough Amazon money behind it to launch a car into another tax bracket.Before the film, the Top 5 theme is short people, or at least people who are not especially tall. That means Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Hepburn, the Oompa-Loompas, Mickey Rooney, Martin Short, Al Pacino, Daniel Radcliffe, Prince, Danny DeVito, Verne Troyer, Hervé Villechaize, Warwick Davis, Charlie Chaplin, Napoleon, Michael J. Fox and Michael J. Anderson all come up in a list that moves freely between Oscar history, Jersey trivia, Austin Powers, Twin Peaks, Bill & Ted, The Simpsons, Purple Rain and the frankly irresistible existence of a 2 foot 9 Filipino action star called Weng Weng in For Your Height Only.Then it is time for Jack Reacher, which opens with a cold and nasty sniper sequence. A man sets up in a parking garage, watches ordinary people through a rifle scope and kills five of them in public. The sequence is not especially gory, but the dads find it grim and effective, especially because the victims seem so arbitrary. The police quickly gather evidence pointing to James Barr, an ex-army sniper with previous, and the case appears open and shut until Barr writes one message during interrogation: “Get Jack Reacher.”Reacher arrives already wrapped in myth. The authorities describe him as a decorated military-police ghost with a ridiculous list of medals, only for him to appear at the door before anyone can find him. He knows Barr from the army and once warned him that if he ever killed again, Reacher would come for him. That means he is not initially there to prove Barr innocent; he is there to make sure the right punishment lands on the right man.Rosamund Pike plays Helen Rodin, Barr's defence lawyer and the daughter of the undefeated district attorney. Reacher agrees to investigate while sending Helen to learn about the victims, because he has already started to suspect that five random deaths may not be random at all. From there, the film becomes a conspiracy thriller about a staged mass shooting, a framed sniper, a murdered woman who may have been the real target, and a corrupt network hiding behind official certainty.The dads enjoy several of the action beats. Reacher's bar fight works because he predicts exactly what will happen before it happens, tells the men they wanted it, and then has to take a few shots while still finishing the job. The car chase is a highlight, partly because the film goes out of its way to show that Cruise is really doing the driving, with clean practical shots rather than incoherent cutting. Robert Duvall also turns up as Cash, a grizzled shooting-range owner who only agrees to help after making Reacher prove he can still hit the target, because apparently crucial murder evidence must sometimes be unlocked through old-man range banter.Werner Herzog is the secret weapon as the Zec, a shadowy villain with a damaged eye, a Gulag backstory and the sort of voice that makes every line sound like a cursed bedtime story. The dads particularly enjoy the scene where he demands a subordinate prove his worth by chewing off his own fingers, because the Zec once did exactly that to survive. Herzog is so strange and sinister that the only real complaint is that the film does not use him more.The final stretch takes the story to a quarry, because action thrillers love a quarry almost as much as they love corrupt cops. Cash provides sniper support, Reacher works his way through the henchmen, fights Jai Courtney's Charlie, exposes Detective Emerson as part of the plot, rescues Helen, and then deals with the Zec in the most Reacher way possible. The villain explains that prison will not scare him and that the case may not stick, so Reacher shoots him. When Helen asks what happened to justice, he says he just delivered it.Verdicts are positive but qualified. Dan thinks the film was more fun to discuss than to watch and prefers Alan Ritchson as the physical idea of Reacher, though he still credits Cruise's stunt work and the film's better action moments. Reegs also prefers the series but sees this as a solid, well-made, pulpy thriller with patient pacing and clear set pieces. Sidey likes the procedural shape, the conspiracy reveal, the car chase, Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog, but finds the film grey and a little sterile, and thinks Reacher's low-charisma wandering-avenger persona can be hard to fully love.So the Bad Dads verdict is a moderate-to-strong recommend: Jack Reacher is not the definitive version of the character, and Tom Cruise is never going to be the 6'5" human wall from the books, but as a tough, slightly overlong, well-staged action conspiracy thriller, it does enough. Also, any film where Werner Herzog quietly explains finger-eating survival tactics deserves at least some respect.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan and Reegs head to Margrave for the first episode of Prime Video's Reacher, “Welcome to Margrave”, starring Alan Ritchson as Lee Child's wandering ex-military policeman, blues enthusiast, pie-denied murder suspect and extremely large problem for corrupt small-town criminals.The dads start with their own Reacher experience. Sidey has not read the books and is watching the series for the first time, Dan once started one but did not finish it, and Reegs is currently listening to Killing Floor, the first Jack Reacher novel, on audiobook. This naturally becomes a brief celebration of audiobook actors, a debate about whether Ritchson has borrowed from the narrator's delivery, and the important possibility that Jack Reacher might be read by Alan Carr or Julian Clary in another, better universe.The episode itself wastes no time establishing the essentials. Someone is murdered in the dark by a professional-looking killer, the body is beaten after the shooting, and then Reacher arrives in town as a pair of boots, shoulders and pure physical inconvenience. He spots a man being aggressive to his partner outside a diner, says almost nothing, and the man wisely decides that perhaps today is not the day to find out what happens if you square up to a human wall.Reacher then enters the diner, orders the famous pie he has been told about, and is arrested before he can properly eat it. The police cannot get handcuffs around his wrists, so they use cable ties, which tells you most of what the show wants you to understand about Alan Ritchson's version of the character. Detective Finlay, a Harvard-educated outsider in a tweed suit, interrogates him, only for Reacher to dismantle the murder theory, explain that there were multiple people involved, and profile Finlay's life with the calm confidence of Sherlock Holmes after a very aggressive protein phase.The dads follow the plot through Hubble, the terrified banker who confesses to a murder he clearly did not commit, the mysterious phone number hidden in a shoe, Chief Morrison's suspiciously convenient evidence, and the decision to send Reacher and Hubble to prison for the weekend while the police chase bus-company footage. In prison, Hubble immediately becomes fresh meat and Reacher immediately becomes the one person you would want standing between you and everyone else. He gives Hubble practical advice, refuses a cavity search on legal grounds, and then demonstrates his conflict-resolution style: a tiny bit of verbal warning followed by broken noses, eye gouging and very efficient shower-room violence.The appeal, as the dads see it, is not subtle but it is very effective. Reacher is huge, clever, calm, decorated, right about nearly everything and capable of doing horrible things to people who have earned them. Reegs describes him as a hulking serial killer crossed with Sherlock Holmes, while Dan lands on “Sherlock Schwarzenegger.” The show leans into that fantasy rather than apologising for it, especially once Finlay discovers Reacher's military-police background, secret medals and experience leading the 110th Special Investigations Unit.The first episode ends by making the case personal. After Reacher and Hubble are released, Reacher is allowed into the morgue, where he studies the body and realises before anyone says it out loud that the murdered man is his brother. It is a strong cliffhanger, and Dan admits it worked well enough that he and his wife carried on through the whole season together, partly because the show keeps dropping just enough cliffhanger bait to make the next episode very easy to press.There is also the unavoidable comparison with Tom Cruise's Jack Reacher, though the dads try not to completely give away the film-review conversation. Alan Ritchson feels much closer to the book's conception: enormous, intimidating and physically central to every scene. Reegs likes the way the character's size informs his philosophy, especially the idea that Reacher hates seeing bigger people push smaller people around and exists to push back harder. That gives the violence a simple moral shape, even when the show is gleefully pulpy about it.Verdicts land warmly. Dan thinks the series is predictable and guilty-pleasure television, but also very watchable and stronger than the film version they are about to discuss elsewhere. Sidey is a little weary of the mysterious stranger arriving in a small town as a one-man army, but thinks this is a good version of that setup, likes Ritchson, and may download more for a no-Wi-Fi trip. Reegs is firmly on board, praising Ritchson, the character and the way the later seasons apparently widen the idea of who Reacher is beyond medals, machine guns and being very difficult to handcuff.So the Bad Dads verdict on Welcome to Margrave is a strong recommend: pulpy, chunky, well-shot Amazon action comfort food about a giant clever man arriving in a corrupt town, not getting his pie, and making that everyone else's problem.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris take on Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, the Oscar-winning 2000 ensemble drama about the war on drugs, starring Michael Douglas, Benicio del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzmán, Erika Christensen, Dennis Quaid and several thousand other people you recognise from better-lit rooms.The episode begins with Reegs back from France, a heroic return to walking football, a 6–2 win, snacks from Grand Marché, Rioja on the table and the usual sense that the podcast might be more structured if anyone genuinely wanted that. Recent viewing includes Dan on Early Man, Ted Lasso and Grown Ups, Reegs going deep into Reacher, Cris bringing a bit of cartel-adjacent homework energy, and Sidey watching Barry plus Netflix serial-killer thriller The Whisper Man, a film he enjoys until the last-minute ghost business turns up and starts knocking over the furniture.Before the main film, the dads count down Steven Soderbergh and Soderbergh-adjacent favourites. Cris explains how Benicio del Toro led him towards Traffic and Che, while the conversation takes in the myth and reality of Che Guevara, Soderbergh's habit of editing and shooting under pseudonyms, and the frankly annoying fact that he appears to have made several films since this paragraph began. The list includes Solaris, Contagion, Syriana, Logan Lucky, Erin Brockovich, Magic Mike, Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Thirteen, Haywire, Her, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Sidey's beloved Out of Sight, which he still considers a 10-out-of-10 film thanks to Clooney, J-Lo, Luis Guzmán, Catherine Keener, David Holmes and the sort of charm that should probably be illegal.Then it is time for Traffic, a film the dads remember as serious, long, colour-coded and very much trying to win awards, which, to be fair, it did. The review follows the film's interlocking stories: Javier Rodriguez trying to do good police work in Mexico while the system around him is already captured by cartel politics; DEA agents Montel Gordon and Ray Castro attempting to protect an informant long enough to bring down Carl Ayala; Helena Ayala discovering that being a wealthy pregnant society wife becomes much more complicated when your husband is dragged away by federal agents; and Robert Wakefield becoming America's new drug czar just as his own daughter Caroline falls into addiction.The dads dig into the film's bleak central point: the drug war is not really a war that can be won, because every apparent victory is also part of somebody else's business model. Sidey describes the film as showing where drugs come from, how they move, how people try to stop them, where demand lives and why the whole machine is so futile. Cris particularly likes the Mexico storyline and the way the film's colour palette helps you instantly know which world you are in, while Reegs connects the whole thing to the kind of institutional fatalism later explored in The Wire.A major talking point is the subtitle disaster. Dan and Sidey both watched versions where the Spanish sections were not properly translated, which is not ideal when huge parts of your Oscar-winning bilingual drama are in Spanish. Dan's version apparently just told him people were “speaking Spanish”, which he had already managed to work out by being awake. Reegs uses this as a chance to grumble, correctly, about the loss of physical media and the way streaming platforms can serve up broken versions of films without anyone seeming to care.The film itself gives the dads plenty to chew on: Benicio del Toro's quiet moral centre, the funfair arrest and “don't shoot the clown”, Luis Guzmán's excellent Ray Castro and his brutal car-bomb exit, Catherine Zeta-Jones going from shocked wife to ruthless operator, Dennis Quaid sniffing around the Ayala money, Caroline Wakefield's awful spiral, Michael Douglas having to confront the war on drugs happening in his own house, and Javier's beautifully modest final request for electricity so kids can play baseball at night.Verdicts are positive, but not breathless. Sidey thinks Traffic is extremely well made, handheld, fluid, serious and still strong, but also calls it a one-and-done rather than a film he would rush to revisit. Dan struggles more, partly because the missing subtitles kneecapped the experience and partly because the film is long, worthy and occasionally lost up its own arse; if forced to choose, he is watching Gladiator twice before watching Traffic twice. Cris is warmer on it, praising the acting, the structure, the Mexican material and the way the separate stories connect without turning into a neat crossover event.So the Bad Dads verdict lands somewhere between strong recommend and medium-well: a serious, grown-up Soderbergh drama about drugs, power, money, family and futility, admired more than loved, and improved enormously if your streaming service can manage the advanced technical feature known as subtitles.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Sidey, Dan and Cris review Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack. It is a legal thriller without grandstanding courtroom speeches, a corporate conspiracy movie without cartoon villains, and a George Clooney film where the star power is deliberately worn down into exhaustion, debt and moral compromise.Sidey has loved this one for years, Cris remembers liking it, and Dan arrives as a Michael Clayton virgin after realising the “Michael” film in his head was actually Michael Collins. The dads begin with the film's strange, non-linear opening: Arthur Edens spiralling through a voiceover, Michael being dragged away from a backroom poker game to clean up a rich client's hit-and-run, and the early reminder that Clayton may have a fixer's reputation but he is not a miracle worker. He can tell a man to face the music; he cannot make the consequences vanish.The review digs into Clayton as a man trapped by other people's mess. He is the firm's problem-solver, not a partner. He has an ex-DA past, a failed restaurant business, a brother whose addictions helped put him in debt, and an $80,000 hole that makes him useful to Sydney Pollack's Marty Bach. Clooney plays him as tired rather than cool: still sharp, still well-dressed, but visibly sick of being sent into the night to mop up disasters for people richer and worse than him.At the centre of the film is Arthur Edens, played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson. Arthur's breakdown during the U-North deposition is spectacular and humiliating, but the dads keep coming back to the idea that his madness is tangled up with moral clarity. He has spent years defending a company whose weed killer has damaged and killed people, and once he finds the smoking-gun memo proving U-North knew the truth, he can no longer keep doing the job. His obsession with Anna, one of the plaintiffs, and with the fantasy book Realm and Conquest gives the film its odd spiritual thread, leading eventually to the horses on the hill that save Michael's life.Tilda Swinton's Karen Crowder becomes the face of corporate panic. The dads talk about her sweaty armpits, her rehearsed speeches, her desperation to satisfy U-North's board and her terrible decision to hire surveillance operatives who turn into assassins. Arthur's murder is one of the episode's key talking points because it is so coldly procedural: no big struggle, no dramatic villain speech, just sedation, injection, staged suicide and the awful efficiency of people doing a job.As Michael follows the clues Arthur left behind, the film becomes a study in compromised people trying to survive a rotten system. He finds the marked book, learns about the memo, realises Arthur had thousands of copies printed, and starts to suspect that the suicide story is nonsense. Yet when Marty offers him the money he needs, Michael takes it. That is part of what makes the film work for the dads: he is not pure. He sells Arthur out for $80,000 before finding his way back to something like decency.The finale is pure thriller satisfaction. After the bomb in Clayton's car fails because he has walked up the hill to look at the horses from his son's book, he confronts Karen at the U-North settlement meeting. She thinks he is dead, then thinks he can be bought. Michael pushes her into saying enough, reveals he is wearing a wire, and walks away as her world collapses behind him. The final taxi ride, with Clooney silently processing everything as the credits roll over his face, gets praised as a perfect ending.Verdicts are emphatic. Sidey gives Michael Clayton the strongest possible recommend and says he could watch it again immediately. Dan calls it one of the best midweek films the podcast has done this year and wants more undiscovered films like it. Cris loves that the legal world is not glamorised: it is late-night rooms full of lawyers billing hours, protecting corporations and turning human cost into numbers. The dads praise the whole cast, especially Clooney's pared-back performance, Wilkinson's haunted intensity, Swinton's Oscar-winning panic and Pollack's completely believable law-firm authority.In short: a brilliant grown-up thriller about corporate greed, moral exhaustion, legal compromise and the terrifying power of a memo everyone wants buried.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads review Giant, the Prince Naseem Hamed biopic starring Amir El-Masry as Naz and Pierce Brosnan as legendary Sheffield trainer Brendan Ingle. It is a boxing film, a mentor-protégé story, a study of fame and arrogance, and a surprisingly knotty argument about whether loyalty, recognition and money can ever stay clean once a child prodigy becomes a multi-million-pound champion.The episode opens with Reegs still absent in French France, which means no clever intro but plenty of warnings about swears and spoilers. Dan has watched classic film noir Laura and revisited Universal Soldier for the Midweeker, Cris has been watching Pierce Brosnan in western series The Son alongside some nostalgic X-Men '97, and Sidey has been back into Barry while also sampling a Netflix serial-killer thriller involving De Niro and missing boys. There is also football, DIY, paint guns, teal walls and the sort of domestic detail that proves cinema podcasting is mostly glamour.For Top 5 Giants, the dads go suitably massive. Dan starts with The Iron Giant and the animated BFG, while Cris brings in Romanian basketball player Gheorghe Mureșan via Billy Crystal's My Giant, then stretches the theme through the MonsterVerse, The Odyssey, Leprechaun 4: In Space and Rush Hour 3. Sidey nominates Fezzik from The Princess Bride, They Might Be Giants, The The's “Giant”, Game of Thrones' actual giants and finally the Giant from Twin Peaks, giving him another chance to declare David Lynch's nightmare television more or less untouchable. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Riding Giants and several real-life giants also get thrown into the oversized mix.The main review focuses on Giant as a story about two men rather than one. Prince Naseem is obviously the famous fighter, but the film arguably belongs just as much to Brendan Ingle, whose Sheffield gym gives young lads discipline, community and a way to redirect anger. The dads talk through the early scenes: Brendan spotting young Naz's footwork, taking him into the gym, making new boys sing before they fight, teaching movement before punching, and helping him deal with racist abuse in an environment where National Front attitudes are never far from the surface.As Naz rises, the film follows the familiar sports-biopic path of talent, training, showmanship and success, but the more interesting material comes from the relationship slowly cracking. Brendan nurtures Naz's cockiness because it fuels the fighter, but that same confidence becomes harder to control once promoters, sponsorships, family influence and huge money arrive. Frank Warren sees the commercial value of Naz's brash persona, the family starts questioning Brendan's cut, and the childhood handshake deal over 25% becomes the moral fault line of the film.Sidey and Dan both find that argument more complicated than the film first appears to suggest. Brendan clearly changes Naz's life, puts the money back into the gym, builds champions and cares deeply about the boy he trained from childhood. At the same time, agreeing a huge percentage with a 12-year-old is uncomfortable, however much both of them believed in the dream. The imagined reconciliation scene near the end gives the film its strongest emotional beat, because it lets Naz say he was a child and Brendan say he gave everything. The sting is that, in real life, they never properly reconciled.The performances get the strongest praise. Pierce Brosnan is very good as Brendan Ingle, and the various actors playing Naseem — especially Amir El-Masry as the adult Naz — capture the movement, swagger and showboating well. The fight scenes are convincing, the Sheffield material gives the story texture, and the film does enough with a modest-feeling British production to stay watchable throughout.The verdict is positive but measured. Sidey thinks it is pretty paint-by-numbers and admits he was never a huge fan of Naseem's arrogance, though he respects the story and really likes the performances. Dan enjoys the sports-movie structure and the tragic mentor-student angle, but does not think the film quite lands a knockout blow. Cris had not seen it in time for recording, but the discussion leaves the film sounding like one he would still watch. Overall, the dads call it a moderate to strong recommend: interesting, well acted and easy to watch, if not quite a heavyweight classic.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Dan, Sidey and Cris revisit Universal Soldier, the 1992 sci-fi action thriller from Roland Emmerich starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam soldiers killed in action, frozen, revived and turned into government-controlled super-commandos. Naturally, nothing about that plan goes wrong apart from absolutely everything.The episode opens with the realisation that the podcast has not covered nearly enough Van Damme, despite some hazy memories around Bloodsport, Kickboxer and the sacred word “Kumite”. From there the dads head into the film's Vietnam prologue, where Luc Deveraux discovers that Dolph Lundgren's Sergeant Andrew Scott has gone completely bananas, started collecting ears and decided that everyone is a traitor. Luc refuses to execute civilians, Scott kills one with a grenade, and the two men finish the scene by shooting and stabbing each other to death.Twenty-five years later, both men are back as Universal Soldiers: refrigerated black-ops zombie-cyborg-commandos who need cooling down, daily injections and convenient memory suppression. Their first big showcase comes during a hostage crisis at a dam, where they are dropped from absurd height, swim, climb, snipe and punch their way through the terrorists while the military tries very hard to keep the press away from the weird dead-men-with-cameras situation.Unfortunately for the programme, a freshly unemployed reporter sneaks into the operation, sees more than she should, and ends up on the run with Luc after Dolph's Scott starts remembering Vietnam and immediately chooses murder. What follows is a wonderfully daft road-chase movie in which Luc removes a tracker, discovers nudity-based comedy, learns that food tastes good, orders nearly everything in a diner, drinks heroic amounts of Pepsi, beats up a chef for expecting payment and slowly becomes more human while the military and a rapidly unraveling Dolph hunt him down.The dads also get into the supermarket/freezer sequence, Dolph's speeches about traitors, the prison-van chase, grenades being thrown back through windows, Luc returning home to Louisiana, Dr Gregor's extremely generous pseudoscience and the final barn fight in the rain. It is classic Van Damme business: spinning kicks, split kicks, slow motion, a syringe of Mega Juice and a massive agricultural machine waiting patiently to mince the villain at exactly the right moment.There is room for plenty of action-movie nostalgia as well. Cris remembers the film as part of a shared VHS diet alongside Kickboxer, Bloodsport, Double Impact, Commando and Total Recall, including wonderfully flat Romanian dubbing. Dan talks about Van Damme and Dolph being near the peak of their powers, while Sidey admits he skipped the film back in the day because it looked like a poor man's RoboCop, only to discover it is much more enjoyable than expected.The verdict is positive. Universal Soldier may be silly, sweaty and scientifically indefensible, but it is also fast, funny, practical, quotable and powered by two properly iconic action bodies. Sidey lands on a strong recommend, with the caveat that he is not quite ready to go spelunking through all the lower-budget sequels.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Wolf Week continues as Sidey, Dan and new dad Jamie sink their teeth into Martin Scorsese's riotous financial crime epic The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau and Joanna Lumley. With Reegs absent and therefore no proper intro to keep things vaguely professional, the dads begin by catching up on what they've been watching. Dan has largely swapped screen time for Cold War spy histories while his wife is away in the Czech Republic for the summer, Jamie has returned to the comforting embrace of Blue Bloods, No Offence and Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, and Sidey has endured Jason Statham's Mutiny, a revenge-on-a-boat action thriller with suspiciously Die Hard-adjacent poster energy. The Top 5 this week is Wolves, which naturally sends the conversation roaming all over the cultural wilderness. There's Winston Wolf from Pulp Fiction, Moro from Princess Mononoke, Teen Wolf and the obvious sporting advantage of being Michael J. Fox with werewolf powers, plus Shrek's Big Bad Wolf and a detour through wolf-related music from Warren Zevon, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Duran Duran, Howlin' Wolf, Steppenwolf, Los Lobos, Wolfmother and Wolf Alice. Liam Neeson's miserable survival odds in The Grey get a mention, as do Bad Wolf and Rose Tyler from Doctor Who, Jack Nicholson in Wolf, Remus Lupin, Dances with Wolves, Portia Crystal from Sing 2, Lupine Howl, the direwolves from Game of Thrones, How Wolves Change Rivers, Rainier Wolfcastle and Oz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then it's on to The Wolf of Wall Street, a film the dads note is arriving neatly alongside Jersey's current Martin Scorsese cinema season. They follow Jordan Belfort from his first day as Wall Street pond scum through Matthew McConaughey's career-rescuing lunch scene of coke, booze,chest-thumping and “rookie numbers”, before Black Monday promptly ends any chance of a respectable finance career. From there it's penny stocks, Spike Jonze, 50% commissions and the arrival of Donnie Azoff, whose cousin-wife logic, blinding white teeth and crack-pipe networking help turn Stratton Oakmont into a full-blown fraud machine. Along the way, the dads dig into the film's most notorious moments: the “sell me this pen” lesson, motivational speeches, middle fingers to clients, dwarf tossing, strippers, head shaving, Rob Reiner as Belfort's furious father, Margot Robbie's Naomi making her entrance, Donnie's appalling first impression, the famous 11-second romance, Vegas excess, penicillin shots and a superyacht wedding present. They also cover Kyle Chandler's FBI agent Patrick Denham closing in, Jon Favreau's lawyer trying desperately to make Jordan stop, the Steve Madden IPO, hidden stock ownership, Joanna Lumley's Aunt Emma and the Swiss bank account, plus Jordan's spectacularly arrogant attempt to bribe the FBI with lobster, prostitutes and absolutely no self-awareness. The review also takes in the yacht storm and Italian rescue, the infamous Lemmon Quaaludes sequence with crawling, ham-choking and the destroyed Lamborghini reveal, Jordan wearing a wire while warning Donnie not to incriminate himself, and the ugly final collapse as Naomi demands a divorce, Jordan turns violent and everything finally crashes. By the end, the dads are left wrestling with prison, sales seminars and the uncomfortable question of whether the film really works as a cautionary tale, or whether it is simply too entertaining for its own good. Verdicts are strong across the board. Sidey recommends it, while still insisting it is far too long. Dan also gives it a strong recommend, particularly for the endlessly quotable scenes, and Jamie calls it a must-watch — although preferably consumed as three one-hour chunks rather than one enormous sitting.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, it is Wolf Week, which means we are heading to the moors, the Tube, the London Zoo wolf enclosure and one of cinema's all-time great transformation scenes for An American Werewolf in London.Sidey and Dan are joined by guest dad Jamie for John Landis's 1981 horror-comedy about two American backpackers, one very unwelcoming pub, and the worst possible way to discover that “stay on the road” was not just local colour.Sidey had somehow never watched the whole film before, despite having seen the famous transformation sequence many times. Jamie definitely saw it before, but at an age where he absolutely should not have. Dan brings the cult-classic affection, and the result is a review full of practical effects appreciation, Yorkshire pub suspicion, Jenny Agutter, decomposing best mates and moon-based needle drops.Along the way we discuss:Jamie's debut as a Bad Dad and the need for subtitles/phone voiceThe Slaughtered Lamb and Britain's least welcoming pintRick Mayall, Brian Glover, Frank Oz and other “what was he in?” faceswhy the film does not bother over-explaining the village, the cover-up or the logistics of getting David to LondonJack returning as an increasingly decomposed undead adviserthe nightmare sequences, including the Nazi werewolf home invasionJenny Agutter as Nurse Alex Price and the film's spectacularly fast romanceDavid being oddly honest about his visions, nightmares and wolf problemRick Baker's Oscar-winning makeup and the transformation scene that still holds upwhy practical effects age so much better than dodgy CGIDavid waking naked in London Zoo and trying to buy a small boy's balloonsthe doomed attempt to get arrested by abusing the police and the monarchythe porno-theatre support group of victims suggesting suicide methodsPiccadilly chaos, armed police, decapitation and catastrophic traffic managementthe moon-heavy soundtrack, from Blue Moon to Bad Moon Risingwhether the film is horror, comedy, romance, body horror, or all of them at onceThe dads come away with a very strong recommend. It is brisk, funny, gruesome, strangely sweet, brilliantly made and still properly entertaining. The werewolf may occasionally look like it is on a dolly, but the transformation remains magic, the comedy still lands, and the whole thing has exactly the right amount of nonsense.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Hope you had a great weekend, and remember just one crime at a time as you listen to the Ill-Advised News. We have a bad dad, fake flock cameras, and Cass failed in a major way. We recap Sublime Saturday, play The Chicken Game, as well as The Planet Game. We hear why Anthony “won’t go there again”, and discuss the millennial trends that Gen Z claim are uncool. Support the show and follow us here Twitter, Insta, Apple, Amazon, Spotify and the Edge! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Some fun antics at Mets games, a guy named Tugboat, what Joey Votto wants to be when he grows up, an idea for what the players should do during the lockout, MLB remains quiet on ICE abducting a Padres coach, there's some money crimes around the Dodgers, and more proof that TERFs don't know ball. Go to patreon.com/battingaround to get access to bonus episodes (new one coming tomorrow) and support the show.

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we review True History of the Kelly Gang, Justin Kurzel's bleak, stylish and aggressively unromantic version of the Ned Kelly myth, starring George MacKay, Essie Davis, Nicholas Hoult, Charlie Hunnam and Russell Crowe.Before we get to Australian outlaw trauma, we discuss the important stuff: Dan's adult-nappy experiment, whether “pound a piss” is a viable subscription model, and Sidey's long-standing policy of treating every body of water as a toilet.Our top five is gangs / revolutions / rebellions, featuring:Chris remembering the Romanian Revolution of 1989, childhood gunfire and shiny spent shellsThe Warriors and “Warriors, come out to play”The Wanderers and its soundtrackthe Rebel Alliance as freedom fighters / terrorists, depending on perspectiveSpartacus and historical inaccuracy done properlyPolice Academy 2 as, apparently, gang cinemaDaniel Day-Lewis method-acting complaints during Gangs of New Yorkthe Fremen from Dune and spice-fuelled jihadthe Baader-Meinhof gang, Joe Strummer T-shirts and Luke HainesGreen Street Hooligans and football-fight bravadochildhood gangs from Stand by Me and Itthe War Boys from Mad Max: Fury RoadThen we get into True History of the Kelly Gang, including:the film's fake-truth title gaga red dress, a white horse and an apocalyptic Australian bushyoung Ned Kelly watching his mother bargain with Charlie Hunnam's police sergeantRed Kelly, stolen cows, hidden dresses and emasculated fathersEssie Davis as Ellen Kelly: protective, seductive, terrifying and constantly pushing Ned toward violenceNed being offered a possible escape through education, only for his mother to sabotage itRussell Crowe's Harry Power, an enormous beard, and a family singalong about the “Constable Cunt”Ned being sold into outlawry and refusing Harry Power's pancakesCharlie Hunnam having a very bad day in a whorehousethe Sons of Sieve, dresses, mud-blackened faces and theatrical rebellionGeorge MacKay's adult Ned arriving through brutal prize-fightingNed and Joe Byrne's intense, ambiguous bondNicholas Hoult's Fitzpatrick in suspenders socks, spreading vice and misery wherever he goesMarlon Williams' astonishing hair and “I'm gonna be your daddy” energyFitzpatrick's predatory deal over Ned's sister and the confrontation that finally tips everything overEllen Kelly asking why Ned did not kill himpolice murders, severed ears, hostage-taking and bank robberythe famous homemade armoura botched train derailment plana strobing, bloody final siege where the police do not care who else is in the buildingEllen's command to “die like a Kelly”whether Australia's Ned Kelly mythology is heroic, poisoned, or bothIt is not an easy watch. Dan finds it long, bleak and punishing, though brilliantly acted. Reegs thinks it looks amazing and digs the way it interrogates Australian identity, colonial oppression and generational trauma. Chris appreciates the harshness and lack of romance. Sidey thinks this is probably closer to what survival and outlawry actually felt like than the cleaner folk-hero versions.Verdicts: Dan gives it a mid recommend; Reegs, Chris and Sidey are on strong recommends.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we review Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein's A24 sports-hustle drama starring Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a table-tennis prodigy with Olympic-level confidence and almost no visible concern for anyone else.Only Dan and Chris have done the homework this week, leaving Sidey and Reegs to interrogate them on the plot, the tone, the ping-pong, the Gwyneth Paltrow of it all, and whether Chalamet can truly carry a film when he still looks like a haunted Victorian child who has discovered hair product.Along the way we discuss:Chris failing to return from Romania with the promised contrabandparents discovering IMAX and immediately wanting a monthly cinema clubthe Safdie brothers going their separate ways, with Josh Safdie on this and Benny Safdie off with The RockMarty working in a shoe shop but dreaming of table-tennis glorya sperm-and-egg title sequence that nobody had quite expectedMarty robbing the family business while trying to frame it as sensible career planningLondon tournaments, The Ritz and the ping-pong federationGwyneth Paltrow as Kay Stone, a famous actress in a loveless marriageEndo, the terrifying Japanese player with the modern grip and superior paddlewhether the table-tennis sequences are CGI, doubles or just very committed editingorange ping-pong balls, champagne bills and Marty's endless self-mythologisinga hotel bath falling through the ceilingMoses the gangster dogHarlem Globetrotters-style ping-pong tricksMarty getting to Japan, losing an exhibition match, refusing to kiss a pig, and demanding one more gamewhether achieving your dream means anything if you have used everyone around you to get thereThe big question: is Marty a brilliant, driven outsider, or just a selfish arsehole with a paddle?Dan finds the character so unpleasant that it limits his enjoyment, even while acknowledging the film is very well made. Chris is more taken with the craft, the period detail, the tension and the way the film keeps moving despite its hefty runtime. Reegs hears shades of The Karate Kid, White Men Can't Jump and Uncut Gems, while Sidey remains deeply suspicious of Timothée Chalamet's pixie leading-man energy.Verdicts: Chris is on a strong recommend, Dan is somewhere between mid and strong recommend, and Sidey and Reegs are officially TBC.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week, Da7e and Neil have been pulled out of Westeros in a green bubble and asked whether they are afraid of a new Damon Lindelof show. The answer? Absolutely not.In The Calm [05:10], they break down the pilot episode of Lanterns and highlight its many influences, from True Detective vibes to Fargo vibes to a promise of cosmic shenanigans. They also check in on some familiar tropes like Bad Dads, Time-hopping Mysteries, and Mythology Deconstructions.Then in The Storm [48:04], your faithful hosts use their knowledge of the comics, the "Weeks Ahead" trailer, and lack of screener access to lay down some theories about where this story will go, including the very important questions around why the show is specifically and simply called "Lanterns" (with no color-based qualifier).Next week, the Lanterns journey continues with episode two of eight. Will there be aliens? Probably. But more importantly, there will be more Garrett Dillahunt.To interact with the show, send your comments and questions to stormofspoilers@gmail.com, and follow us on Twitter/X and Bluesky @Da7eandNeil.You can also support Da7e and Neil and get all kinds of bonus content (from the Game of Thrones era to the LOST rewatch to our Twin Peaks rewatch project to our current Adventure Pod and Dark watch project) by subscribing to our Patreon here: patreon.com/Da7eandNeil

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, it is prison week — although with Riggs and Chris missing, Sidey and Dan are doing hard time as a two-man crew.Before the main feature, we look at memorable prisons and prison stories from film, TV and music. That means everything from miscarriage-of-justice anger to escape-movie comfort food, brutal borstal drama, wizard prisons, sitcom prisons and, naturally, George Clooney being offensively cool in Out of Sight.Along the way we discuss:In the Name of the Father and the fury of the Guildford Four injusticeThe Shawshank Redemption, new fish, Red, Andy Dufresne and the power of endless TV rewatchabilityThe Green Mile as another Stephen King prison classicBirdman of Alcatraz, Escape from Alcatraz and The Rockwhy Pete is missed whenever a Sean Connery impression is requiredBrubaker, with Robert Redford discovering prison corruption from the insidethe glorious stupidity of Prison Break and its tattooed escape-plan premiseScum, Midnight Express, Azkaban and The Great EscapeFolsom Prison Blues, Jailhouse Rock, I Fought the Law and John Lennon's Attica StatePorridge, HMP Slade and Fletcher trying to survive the system by wisecrackingEscape from Sobibor and the power of stories about people walking out through horrorOut of Sight, Glades Correctional Institution and the possibly illegal hotness of George ClooneyThen we review Sing Sing, directed by Greg Kwedar and starring Colman Domingo as John “Divine G” Whitfield. Inspired by the real Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the film follows a group of incarcerated men who use theatre to build community, process emotion and make something together in a place designed to strip people of freedom.The film opens with Divine G performing on stage. For a moment, it could be Broadway. Then the prison reality returns: standing to attention, routines, walls, control. That contrast becomes the film's central power. Inside the rehearsal room, the men are not reduced to their crimes or their sentences. They are actors, writers, collaborators, comedians and friends.A big part of the film's authenticity comes from the cast. Alongside professional actors like Domingo and Paul Raci, many performers are real RTA alumni and formerly incarcerated men playing versions of themselves. Sidey and Dan both pick up on how much that matters. The film feels lived-in because many of the faces on screen have lived some version of this world.The main dramatic spark comes when Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin joins the theatre group. He is guarded, tough and suspicious of vulnerability, but he is also the person who suggests the troupe should make a comedy instead of another serious drama. That choice leads to Breakin' the Mummy's Code, a real RTA production full of time travel, ancient Egypt, Hamlet and absolute chaos.Sidey had not heard of Sing Sing before this week and might not have watched it without the nomination, but he is very glad he did. Dan is just as positive. The dads admire the film's warmth, pace and humanity, and the way it avoids becoming either a grim prison misery parade or a simplistic “art fixes everything” story.It is moving, funny, generous and grounded — a prison film about performance, friendship, grief, justice and purpose.Strong recommend from both dads.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we head back to 1938 for Angels with Dirty Faces, Michael Curtiz's classic gangster drama starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan.It is very much an old-school Hollywood crime picture — street kids, reform school, crooked lawyers, corrupt city rackets, priests, gangsters, ledgers, shootouts and plenty of “what do you say, what do you know?” patter — but the dads are surprised by how modern and effective parts of it still feel.We start with young Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly, two poor kids stealing from freight cars in the hope of making a few dollars. Jerry makes it over the fence. Rocky gets caught. That one moment sends their lives in opposite directions: Jerry becomes Father Connolly, a priest trying to help the local boys; Rocky becomes a famous gangster whose name alone is enough to make those same boys look at him like a hero.The film's central question is simple and still uncomfortable: what happens when the person the kids admire most is exactly the person they should not become?Rocky returns to the old neighbourhood after prison looking for the $100,000 he is owed by Frazier, played by Humphrey Bogart in full slippery villain mode. Instead of paying up, Frazier and his partners try to have Rocky killed, while Rocky's presence in the neighbourhood starts pulling the Dead End Kids away from Father Jerry's attempts to give them discipline, sport and a better path.Along the way we discuss:James Cagney's magnetic gangster energyHumphrey Bogart before he became top-billed BogartPat O'Brien as Rocky's childhood friend turned priestAnn Sheridan as Laury, the grown-up “pigtails” from Rocky's youththe Dead End Kids as younger versions of Rocky and Jerrythe basketball scene and Jerry's attempt to teach rules and teamworkcorrupt rackets, hidden ledgers and gangster bookkeepingRocky's refusal to let Frazier and Mac kill Jerrythe rooftop/tenement shootout that seals Rocky's fatethe electric-chair ending and whether Rocky's fear is real or performedwhy that final walk is the thing everyone remembersthe film's influence on Angels with Filthy Souls in Home AloneSidey had not seen the film before and comes away genuinely impressed, especially by how strong the filmmaking feels for 1938. The camera moves more than expected, the street scenes have real life in them, and the moral ending still lands. Dan highlights Cagney's star power and the way his gangster roles sit alongside his broader musical and performance talents.So does it still work? Absolutely. The language and rhythms are unmistakably of their time, but the story of poverty, idol worship, bad choices and one final attempt at redemption still has weight.Strong recommend, see?You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, we complete our accidental trilogy of “third things.” After covering Close Encounters of the Third Kind on the midweek show, we turn to Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi's third Evil Dead film, and use that as an excuse to dig into the noble, messy and often suspicious art of the threequel.There is no formal intro this week — time has apparently been attacked by Deadites — so we open with a catch-up on what everyone has been watching. Reegs has been busy with Backrooms, Obsession, Disclosure Day and Apple TV's Cape Fear, which gets a recommendation so long as you know going in that it is extremely ridiculous. Sidey has finally finished The Pit, finding the second season weaker than the first but still worth the time, and has also watched Backrooms and started The Mandalorian. Dan has finished series five of Slow Horses, which he continues to push as an absolute treat, and has also seen The Odyssey at the cinema, where three hours apparently went by surprisingly quickly.That leads us into the usual wandering preamble: 4DX screenings with shaking seats, water and wind; panoramic side-screen cinema formats; the Sphere in Vegas; Sidey somehow still not having made it to IMAX; Spider-Man: Brand New Day and big cinema opening weekends; Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal on Hot Ones; and the general horror of people getting overconfident with hot sauce before reality arrives in liquid form.The Top 5 this week is third films in a franchise, which gives us one of those lists where genuinely great films sit shoulder to shoulder with absolute nonsense. Dan opens strongly with The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, a film that swept the Oscars so hard it practically brought its own broom. Sidey goes for Toy Story 3, remembering Lotso, Spanish Buzz, the daycare escape, the furnace sequence and the emotional finality of Andy giving up his toys. Reegs makes a spirited defence of The Matrix Revolutions, arguing that its uneasy truce ending and refusal to give everyone a simple victory has aged better than its reputation suggests.From there, we move through Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with Sean Connery, River Phoenix and the Holy Grail; The Bourne Ultimatum, which Sidey remembers as peak Jason Bourne closure and kinetic shaky-cam action; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, praised by Reegs for Rocket's unexpectedly emotional backstory; The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, because Frank Drebin remains Frank Drebin; and Die Hard with a Vengeance, which gives Sidey an excuse to talk about Zeus, Simon Says, Jeremy Irons and New York puzzle chaos.There are plenty of other third-film detours too, including RoboCop 3, Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Alien 3, John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, Back to the Future Part III, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the Cornetto trilogy, Avengers: Infinity War, Blade: Trinity, Karate Kid Part III and Ocean's 13. Sidey bends the rules by choosing the third episode of Twin Peaks, “Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer,” while Dan lands on Before Midnight, the third film in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy.Eventually, we arrive in 1300 AD for Army of Darkness itself. Dan has not seen it, but has correctly gathered that this is not really the same kind of horror film as The Evil Dead. Reegs, who has seen it many times, explains the tonal journey of the series: the first film as bleak, grimy horror; Evil Dead II as a genuine horror-comedy masterpiece; and Army of Darkness as the point where Ash becomes the full cartoon version of himself — part action hero, part idiot, part Bruce Campbell chin-delivery system.We talk about Sam Raimi's direction, Bill Pope's cinematography before The Matrix, Danny Elfman's contribution to the score, and the way Raimi's visual energy clearly echoes forward into later filmmakers such as Edgar Wright. The plot is gloriously simple and gloriously stupid: Ash is dragged through time after Evil Dead II, lands in the middle of a medieval conflict between Lord Arthur and Henry the Red, gets thrown into a pit, fights Deadites, reclaims his chainsaw hand, introduces everyone to the boomstick, and immediately becomes insufferable once the locals start treating him as their prophesied saviour.The film then sends Ash off to retrieve the Necronomicon, with one very clear instruction: say the words “Klaatu barada nikto” before taking the book. Naturally, Ash being Ash, he half-remembers, fudges it and unleashes the titular army of darkness. Along the way we get the windmill sequence, tiny mirror Ashes, Three Stooges slapstick, bad Ash splitting out of good Ash, Sheila falling for exactly the worst man available, and a castle siege finale full of skeletons, homemade weapons, a modified car and Ray Harryhausen-style chaos.We also get into the two endings: the darker UK/director's cut version, where Ash takes too many drops and wakes up in a ruined future, and the more crowd-pleasing US S-Mart ending, where he returns to work, tells the story and gets one last heroic Deadite showdown. Reegs prefers the bleaker ending because it feels funnier and more in keeping with Ash's ability to mess up almost everything.The verdict is affectionate, even if slightly qualified. Reegs still thinks Evil Dead II is the one to watch if you only watch one Evil Dead film, and he does not think Army of Darkness is great in quite the same way. But it is funny, quotable, inventive and packed with cult moments: the boomstick, S-Mart, “primitive screwheads,” bad magic words, skeleton armies and Bruce Campbell at maximum Ash. Sidey thinks Dan would probably enjoy it, describing it as something like The Princess Bride with Ray Harryhausen effects and comedy horror nonsense thrown in.So the final recommendation is simple: if you only watch one, Reegs says watch Evil Dead II. If you ask Sidey, just watch them all.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads look to the skies for Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a film packed with UFO classifications, mysterious lights, mashed potato mountains, musical alien communication and one of cinema's more questionable parenting decisions.Sidey begins by digging into what a “close encounter of the third kind” actually means, using J. Allen Hynek's UFO classification system as a guide. The dads move from first and second kind sightings into the third kind itself, before noting that later fourth and fifth kinds make parts of Spielberg's film feel even stranger in retrospect. From there, the conversation follows the film's global mystery: missing aircraft in the Sonoran Desert, the SS Cotopaxi, Bermuda Triangle mythology, air traffic controllers who definitely do not want to file an official UFO report, and Claude Lacombe's calm international investigation.The episode then turns to Roy Neary, whose roadside encounter with the impossible changes him completely. The dads talk through the power outage, the lights, the shaking truck, the radio interference and the physical burn that marks Roy's experience as more than just a sighting. What follows is one of Spielberg's most famous depictions of obsession, as Roy becomes consumed by an image he cannot explain: first in shaving foam, then in mashed potato, and eventually in the enormous Devil's Tower model that takes over his family home.Barry's abduction also gets plenty of attention, partly because the sequence remains so unsettling and partly because Dan remembers the repeated cry of “Barry!” as one of those film moments that became permanently lodged in family folklore. The dads discuss Spielberg's clever methods for directing such a young child, the way Barry's toys come to life, and the strange mixture of fear and wonder that runs through the whole sequence.As the film moves toward Devil's Tower, the dads dig into the bigger ideas underneath the spectacle. Close Encounters is a film about translation, interpretation and communication: people trying to understand languages, music, symbols, visions and experiences that do not fit ordinary life. Reegs picks up on the repeated non-verbal communication, while the group discuss how the aliens never feel like a straightforward invading force in the Independence Day mould. Spielberg's first contact is eerie and overwhelming, but also curious, musical and strangely hopeful.The final act gives the episode its big Spielberg moment: the government cover story, the fake contamination zone, the secret landing site, the five-note musical conversation, the glass-shattering alien volume and the mothership reveal that still looks astonishing nearly fifty years later. The dads also touch on production trivia, including model details, Easter eggs such as R2-D2, and the famous Spielberg/Lucas percentage swap between Close Encounters and Star Wars.Naturally, the Bad Dads courtroom saves its harshest scrutiny for Roy boarding the alien ship. Is he a terrible dad for abandoning his family, or does his altered mental state earn him some kind of cosmic mitigation? Sidey is ready to place Roy firmly in the Bad Dad category, while Dan offers a partial defence on the grounds that Roy has clearly been changed by forces beyond normal human control. Either way, it leads into a broader discussion of Spielberg's recurring interests in fathers, fragmented families, engineers, artists, music, communication and wonder.The verdict is a unanimous strong recommend. Nearly fifty years on, Close Encounters of the Third Kind still works as spectacle, mystery, family drama, spiritual science fiction and pure Spielberg awe. It is hopeful without being naïve, strange without becoming hostile, and still technically impressive thanks to practical effects, patient build-up and one of cinema's great mothership reveals. Roy may or may not get a full Bad Dad pardon, but the film itself absolutely gets a pass.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week the Bad Dads go big. Very big. City-smashing, helicopter-swatting, nuclear-lizard big.Sidey has been watching the modern Warner Bros / Legendary MonsterVerse with his daughter, and the results are a full kaiju download covering Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.What We CoverSidey's family MonsterVerse marathon and why his daughter was hookedThe difference between classic Japanese Godzilla, the 1990s Matthew Broderick version, and the modern Legendary / Warner Bros seriesKong: Skull Island and its excellent mix of Vietnam-era war movie, lost-world adventure and giant ape carnageSamuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, and why Kong looks “like a badass”Godzilla: King of the Monsters, including Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, Monarch, Charles Dance, and Ken Watanabe's heroic nuclear sacrificeGodzilla vs. Kong and the eternal playground question: giant lizard or giant monkey?Mechagodzilla, Apex Cybernetics, and why the monsters teaming up is exactly the kind of nonsense we came forGodzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Scar King, little ape business and the expanding Hollow Earth mythologyWhy the human drama in these films often feels like an interruption between monster fightsGodzilla Minus One and the contrast between Godzilla as hero and Godzilla as terrifying destructive forceWhy huge CGI monsters smashing things remains deeply satisfying when done properlyChoice Quote / Pull Line“They're obviously completely stupid, but I really love big kaiju, big monster movies. They're so cool.”Episode AngleA loving, sweary, spoiler-friendly defence of the MonsterVerse as premium switch-your-brain-off blockbuster entertainment: not always smart, not always coherent, but frequently brilliant at giving audiences exactly what they paid for — enormous creatures battering each other while humans explain things near laptops.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads head into deep space for Project Hail Mary — a Ryan Gosling-led Andy Weir adaptation about astrophage, reluctant heroism, alien engineering, musical communication and the most loveable rock-spider in modern sci-fi.What we coveredThe return to Podcast Mountain after a week off, with Sidey explaining why recent recording plans went slightly sideways.Sidey and Reegs seeing The Streets at Alexandra Palace, immediately considering Iceland, and generally having a far better time than Sidey later had in Malta.Malta being very hot, not especially relaxing, and a strong avoid unless you are on the picturesque ferry to Gozo.Family hotel movie nights, including a MonsterVerse run and the crushing parental disappointment of Raiders of the Lost Ark being switched off for being boring.Ryan Gosling news from Comic-Con, including Ghost Rider, Star Wars, and whether anyone can make Ghost Rider look good on screen.Gosling's range: Only God Forgives, Lars and the Real Girl, The Gray Man, blockbuster charm and oddball credibility.Andy Weir, The Martian, and why the dads respond to optimistic science-problem movies where clever people solve practical disasters.The central crisis: astrophage is eating the Sun's energy, reducing solar output and threatening Earth.The Hail Mary mission as humanity's last desperate throw, sent to Tau Ceti because that system appears mysteriously resistant to the astrophage problem.Ryland Grace waking from stasis with no memory, dead crewmates, a HAL-like computer and a beard that suggests deep-space personal care needs work.The flashbacks revealing Grace as a molecular biologist turned school teacher recruited by Eva Stratt to help understand astrophage.The moral ugliness of Grace not volunteering for the suicide mission, then being sedated and sent anyway after the intended crew are killed.The grim Earthside stakes: collapsing sunlight, food-chain panic, frightened children and governments handing Stratt extraordinary power.First contact with Rocky, the engineer from Erid whose own planet is facing the same astrophage disaster.Rocky's musical language, the translation process, and the dads' comparison with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.The two-ship friendship: different atmospheres, pressure barriers, xenonite tunnels and two scientists learning to trust each other through diagrams and experiments.Rocky's look: rock-like, spider-like, toy-like and somehow instantly endearing.The discovery of taumoeba, the organism that eats astrophage and offers a possible solution for both Earth and Erid.Rocky saving Grace at huge personal risk, then Grace choosing to use his remaining fuel to save Rocky when he realises Rocky's ship is in danger.The film's optimistic message: cooperation across species, cultures and worlds is the only thing that saves anyone.Grace ending up on Erid, teaching alien children about Earth, and the dads enjoying the full-circle return to teaching.The reported $200 million budget, worldwide box office heading toward $700 million, UK-built Hail Mary sets, and Gosling's likely “double bubble” as star and producer.Key moments / quotesSidey says “hopes were high for Project Hail Mary” because of the Gosling/Andy Weir pedigree.Dan explains the title through American football: the last desperate throw into the end zone.The dads note that Grace “didn't fucking volunteer”, which makes Earth's plan morally spicy even if the stakes are existential.Rocky's musical tones immediately bring Close Encounters to mind.The group enjoy the idea of a sci-fi film built around “scientist guy figuring shit out”.Cris appreciates that the film is warmer and more colourful than the bleaker spaceship sci-fi he usually struggles with.Sidey reads the Grace/Rocky relationship as a story about different worlds working together on the same problem.Cris highlights the happy ending, the little rock children and the satisfying “don't go back / actually he should go back” emotional turn.Sidey notes the film has done serious box office business against a huge production budget.The final verdict lands simply: “Strong? Strong. Strong. Yeah. Strong.”VerdictThe dads give Project Hail Mary a unanimous strong recommend. They respond to the Andy Weir problem-solving structure, Ryan Gosling's easy likeability, the film's optimistic tone, and especially Rocky — an alien sidekick/friend/co-scientist who turns the film from simple survival story into something warmer and more memorable.It is big-budget, accessible sci-fi with a hopeful streak: funny, emotional, smart enough to feel satisfying, and powered by the very Bad Dads-friendly idea that cooperation beats panic, even when the Sun is being eaten.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

How useful would your superpower really be? Could you save the world… or would you simply be able to grow your fingernails 1% faster? Joe is joined by returning guest Stephen Adams for another hilarious and heartfelt episode of Wise_N_Nerdy, where fatherhood, fandom, and plenty of laughs collide. The episode kicks off with the Question of the Week: "What would be the most useless superpower imaginable?" The conversation quickly spirals into comedic territory as the hosts imagine powers that no superhero would ever want. From instantly knowing when milk has expired to voluntarily making your eyes lose focus, Joe and Stephen prove that not every superpower deserves its own comic book. As always, the Roll of the Dice determines the journey, landing first on "Daddy, Tell Me A Story." Joe and Stephen reminisce about some of the mischievous adventures from their younger days, sharing stories of sneaking into places they probably shouldn't have been. Joe recalls his family floating down a river to watch hydroplane races without paying admission, while other tales include clever movie theater side-door strategies and youthful antics that make for unforgettable memories. Next comes a generous helping of Bad Dad Jokes, featuring groan-worthy contributions from Bob, Stephen, and Joe. The puns are terrible, the timing is impeccable, and the laughs are absolutely unavoidable. The dice then roll into "How Do I...?", where the hosts discuss one of the most valuable life skills parents can teach: critical thinking. In an age of social media, misinformation, and endless online content, Joe and Stephen explore practical ways to encourage children to ask questions, evaluate sources, think independently, and—perhaps most importantly—not believe everything they read on the internet. From there, it's time for "What Are You Nerding Out About?" Stephen shares his enthusiasm for HITMAN World of Assassination, praising the freedom, creativity, and replayability that have made the series a favorite among stealth gaming fans. Joe, meanwhile, has been enjoying the cozy fantasy anime The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World, celebrating its relaxing atmosphere, charming characters, and comforting blend of fantasy and food. The episode wraps up with "Parliament of Papas," where the hosts react to a Reddit story involving a groomsman who refuses to buy a green suit for an upcoming wedding because he'll only wear it once—and it's going to be unbearably hot. The discussion turns into a fun debate about wedding expectations, balancing comfort with commitment, and when it's worth making a sacrifice for the people you care about. Whether you're laughing at ridiculous superpowers, reminiscing about childhood adventures, picking up parenting advice, discovering your next favorite game or anime, or enjoying another avalanche of Bad Dad Jokes, this episode has something for every geek and every parent. Join the conversation, celebrate your passions, and Find your FAMdom with the Wise_N_Nerdy community. Want to learn more about this week's guest? Visit Stephen Adams at https://www.thatstephenadams.com. Wise_N_Nerdy: Where Fatherhood Meets Fandom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is this a normal thing for a father to do?

What would you do if you woke up inside a video game? Would you start gathering resources, search for the nearest quest giver, or spend the first few minutes desperately trying to figure out whether you're living in Animal Crossing or trapped inside Resident Evil? Joe and special guest Philip D. Keating kick off another fun-filled episode of Wise_N_Nerdy by answering this week's Question of the Week, leading to a hilarious discussion about survival, strategy, and the importance of knowing exactly what kind of game world you've landed in. The Roll of the Dice sends the hosts first to "What Are You Nerding Out About?" Joe shares his latest anime obsession, The Cat and the Dragon, a delightfully goofy series that's full of charm and humor. Phil, meanwhile, is eagerly anticipating everything the Nintendo Switch 2 has to offer, with a particular excitement for the newest Star Fox adventure and what it could mean for longtime Nintendo fans. Next up is "How Do I...?", where Joe and Phil tackle an important parenting topic: How do you help your kids build genuine self-esteem and learn to love themselves? Through thoughtful conversation, the hosts explore the power of encouragement, celebrating effort over perfection, modeling healthy confidence, and creating an environment where children know they are valued for who they are—not just what they accomplish. The dice then land on "Parliament of Papas," where the hosts react to an unforgettable story about a teenager working in a coffee shop who secretly teamed up with his manager to pretend he was getting fired whenever customers became unnecessarily rude. The discussion dives into customer behavior, workplace humor, standing up for employees, and why kindness costs nothing. No episode would be complete without a healthy helping of Bad Dad Jokes, and this week delivers a wonderfully painful collection of puns centered around the paranormal and poetry. The groans are plentiful, the laughs are unavoidable, and the Wise_N_Nerdy tradition lives on. Finally, the episode concludes with "Daddy, Tell Me A Story," where Joe and Phil swap some of their most memorable travel horror stories. From flight delays and airport mishaps to the unpredictable chaos that seems to follow travel plans, the hosts prove that sometimes the best stories come from the trips that didn't go quite as expected. Whether you're imagining life inside your favorite video game, discovering a new anime, getting excited for the next generation of Nintendo, looking for parenting encouragement, or simply enjoying some spectacularly bad dad jokes, this episode has something for every nerd, parent, and lifelong fan. Join the conversation, celebrate what you love, and Find your FAMdom with the Wise_N_Nerdy community. Wise_N_Nerdy: Where Fatherhood Meets Fandom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on Bad Dads Film Review, the dads dive into Luc Besson's cult aquatic epic The Big Blue — a nearly three-hour blend of freediving rivalry, French mysticism, Jean Reno charisma, dolphin longing and some deeply questionable romantic choices.What we coveredLe Grand Bleu: the original title, the French phenomenon, and whether saying it properly makes the film any shorter.The director's cut runtime and the general feeling that 168 minutes is a lot of ocean.The black-and-white childhood opening in Greece, where Jacques and Enzo's friendship/rivalry begins.Jacques witnessing his father's diving death, and how the sea becomes both trauma and home.Enzo's adult introduction: Jean Reno in full swagger mode, rescuing a trapped diver and somehow turning it into a payday.Jacques as scientific anomaly: slowing his heart rate, bonding with dolphins, and generally behaving less like a man than an aquatic screensaver with cheekbones.Rosanna Arquette's Johana, who falls hard for Jacques and makes some bold career decisions in pursuit of a man who would rather be underwater.The freediving championship sequences, including the dads trying to understand how niche sport fame works.Breath-holding records, Kate Winslet's lungs, pure oxygen cheating, and the grim reality that most of us are good for about 35 seconds.Enzo and Jacques' rivalry: affectionate, macho, dangerous, and meaningful mostly because Enzo needs it to be.The film's underwater photography, which everyone agrees is often genuinely impressive.The score, which won a César and still gets absolutely battered here.Cris's appreciation of the costumes, wetsuits, shirts, colour coordination and general seaside style.The dolphin break-out sequence, aka the brief Free Willy section of the film.Enzo's fatal final dive and Jacques' decision to return him to the depths.Jacques' final choice, Johana's pregnancy, and whether the ending is poetic transcendence or a man abandoning responsibility via dolphin.Key moments / quotesSidey clocks the film as having a “runtime of 73 hours”.Dan admits he chose it and remembered liking it, but that it was not as great as he remembered.Reegs describes the Amazon Prime aspect-ratio problem as so bad he had to find another version to watch it properly.Sidey asks whether Luc Besson edited it himself, because surely someone should have said: “This is not a fucking three-hour movie.”Reegs objects to the film romanticising Jacques, describing the ending as abandonment of a pregnant woman through grief and dolphins.Cris likes the style more than the film: the beachwear, shirts, boat shoes, wetsuits and Italian flag diving suit all get more enthusiasm than the story.Dan still has affection for the film's imagery, Jean Reno and the childhood memory of its oceanic grandeur.VerdictThe dads admire the look, the water photography and Jean Reno, but the film takes a pasting for length, pretension, thin characterisation, the writing of Johana, and Jacques being less romantic hero than emotionally unavailable dolphin botherer.A very Bad Dads kind of strong recommend: if you have three hours spare and absolutely nothing else to do, you might come away with some nice water and a deep desire to watch football instead.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Today's talk: Swimming and the summer. BIG BROTHER IS BACK! Patreon My Website.

Welcome back to Wise_N_Nerdy, where fatherhood and fandom collide for another unforgettable adventure filled with laughs, nostalgia, parenting wisdom, and plenty of geeky discussion! This week's Question of the Week asks a surprisingly thought-provoking question: "Which villain would actually make a great parent?" Charles and Joe explore iconic antagonists who may not be as evil as they seem when it comes to family. From The Vulture and Magneto to Spawn and Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the hosts debate which villains possess the loyalty, sacrifice, and protective instincts that could actually make them outstanding parents. The Roll of the Dice sends everyone first to Parliament of Papas, where the hosts tackle a parenting dilemma involving a father who promised his son a reward worth up to $200 for finishing the school year strong—but now the child has his sights set on the highly sought-after Nintendo Switch 2. Charles and Joe discuss keeping promises, managing expectations, and balancing generosity with practical parenting. Next comes everyone's favorite palate cleanser: Bad Dad Jokes! Bob, Nolan, and Devo unleash a barrage of puns and groan-worthy punchlines guaranteed to make you laugh, cringe, and question why you keep coming back for more. The dice then land on What Are You Nerding Out About? Charles shares his excitement as preparations ramp up for Dragon Con, including his role as one of the convention's official spokespeople and interviewer. Joe, meanwhile, has fallen headfirst into The Primal Hunter series by Zogarth, praising the addictive LitRPG adventure and its immersive audiobook experience. From there, it's time for Daddy, Tell Me A Story, where the hosts reminisce about some of their favorite childhood gaming memories. Charles recalls countless hours spent exploring the groundbreaking world of Half-Life, while Joe fondly remembers battling through the notoriously challenging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on the NES. It's a nostalgic celebration of the games that helped shape two lifelong nerds. The episode concludes with How Do I...?, where Charles and Joe discuss one of the most valuable skills in today's information-rich world: How do you choose creators worth learning from? Rather than chasing popularity alone, the hosts explain how they evaluate creators based on expertise, consistency, humility, and demonstrated results, offering concrete examples of the voices they trust and why. Whether you're debating comic book villains, laughing through terrible dad jokes, reliving classic video games, preparing for Dragon Con, or searching for creators who genuinely add value to your life, this episode has something for every fan. Join the conversation, embrace your passions, and Find your FAMdom with the Wise_N_Nerdy community. Wise_N_Nerdy: Where Fatherhood Meets Fandom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Addressing Bad Dads" - Listen to my Morning Monologue: I'm sharing my take on pressing issues, enlightening research on human behavior, answering questions I get by email, and my favorite, most instructive interactions with callers. Everything you'll hear is designed to help you become a better spouse, parent, family member, co-worker, friend, and human being. It's the free therapy you need!   Got a dilemma? Call 1-800-DR-LAURA / 1-800-375-2872 or make an appointment at DrLaura.com Follow on social media: Facebook.com/DrLaura Instagram.com/DrLauraProgram YouTube.com/DrLaura Join the Dr. Laura Family!! >> Receive my weekly newsletter, perks, and more! Sign up now, it's FREE > DrLaura.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 CoveredAmazon Prime roulette: With no planned theme and a hectic week, the Dads pick numbers, scroll through Prime, and end up with The Bad Education Movie.Sidey vs Jack Whitehall: Sidey clarifies that Jack Whitehall may be lovely in real life, but the posh, fumbling, “I've said a swear word” comic persona absolutely grates.The sitcom-to-film set-up: A BBC Three comedy becomes a feature-length send-off, following teacher Alfie Wickers and his suspiciously adult-looking class.Amsterdam chaos: Mushrooms, the Anne Frank museum, a stolen model, E.T. bicycle imagery, and an early sign of the film's comic level.Classroom carnage: Harry Enfield appears, the PTA are unimpressed, and a hamster gag goes full Richard Gere.Cornwall instead of Vegas: The school trip ends up around the Eden Project rather than the intended big blow-out, with Cornish stereotypes and a fake liberation movement driving the plot.Running gags: Fencing, the unfinished C-L-A tattoo, the tourist helicopter, gentrification, Tarquin, and the Cornish Liberation Army all get set up and paid off — just not, in the Dads' view, amusingly.Gross-out humour: The relic/foreskin/pork-scratching gag, the Cornish strip club, zip-lining nudity, and repeated close-ups of Jack Whitehall's anatomy take the film firmly into loud juvenile territory.The cast: The Dads note a surprisingly large cast, including Harry Enfield, Iain Glen, Matthew Horne and Clarke Peters, while repeatedly asking why some of them are in this.The broader Whitehall question: The episode detours into Jack Whitehall's mainstream TV appeal, his safe-bet presenting persona, American audiences, and Michael Whitehall's industry background.Key Quotes / Moments“There's only so good that somebody can make you look.”“This was chosen in a sort of lottery-type fashion.”“I'm sure he's very nice… but I don't find him funny.”“This makes Brothers Grimsby look quite nuanced.”“All the jokes that they set up, they do pay off. They're just not funny.”“Top five worst things I've watched for the pod.”“Strong avoid for me.”VerdictA strong avoid. Sidey finds the film loud, juvenile, exhausting and almost entirely unfunny, placing it among the worst things watched for the podcast. Dan agrees with a strong avoid, Reegs recognises the sitcom background but does not rescue it, and Cris' “strong recommend?” is pure mischief.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Full show - FrYiday | Cool test | What's Colorado's most important invention? | Feel Good Friday | Good Dad, Bad Dad - Leaving Girly alone | Even Erin is starting to be annoyed with all the food in the studio! | The most misspelled words in America | Stupid stories | Joking off | Houseguest from hell www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/askslacker www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin

Does this make T. Hack a bad dad?

Father's Day may have just passed, but we couldn't resist one more dad-themed episode. Returning guest J. Hall of The Okiebook Cast joins Jamie Ray to discuss their Fave Five Bad Dads from TV and Movies. We've talked about great dads on screen before — now it's time for the ones who make us grateful for the dad we actually got. From neglectful to downright villainous, these are the fictional fathers who left a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons.That's our Fave 5! Drop yours in the comments — not the best, not the most popular — just the ones YOU love. Let's talk about it.Find out more about J Hall by visiting their website ( https://www.jhallwriter.com/ ) and on Instagram (@okiebookcast).Links can be found on our profile page and at www.linktr.ee/hulkboy. Visit & interact on Instagram ( @FaveFiveFromFans ), X ( @Fave5FromFans ), Facebook ( FaveFiveFromFans ), and our website (www.FaveFiveFromFans.com). Also, check out Plastic Microphone Studios' X and Instagram ( @PMStudiosPod ) and the great stuff on X from Complete Disarray With Jamie Ray ( @DisarrayPodcast ), The Average Home Theater Reviews ( @AHT_Reviews), Red Dog Terrain ( @RedDogTerrain ), Sequel House (@SequelHousePod ), and more!Fave Five From Fans - www.youtube.com/@favefivefromfans6580 The Average Home Theater Reviews - www.youtube.com/@averagehometheater4901Red Dog Terrain  - www.youtube.com/@reddogterrain Sequel House - www.youtube.com/@SequelHousePod #FaveFiveFromFans #FFFF #PMStudiosPod #podcast #podcasts #podcasting Fave Five From Fans, FFFF, podcast, podcasts, podcasting, PlasticMicrophone Studios

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 episodeRecording outside the man cave in brutal heat, with England playing later and possible background birdsReturning to Shane Meadows after the dads' love for Dead Man's ShoesMeadows writing from lived experience and Shaun Field as a loose version of the young Shane MeadowsThe film's 1983 setting: Falklands aftermath, Thatcher-era mood, working-class Midlands anonymity, and immaculate period detailShaun's grief over his father's death and the brutal school bullying around his clothesThe infamous Mini joke, the playground fight, and Reegs' detour into the real-world Mini passenger recordWoody's gang as surrogate family: underpass tea, derelict-house “hunting”, haircuts, boots, braces, and the gifted Ben ShermanSkinhead culture before the racist takeover: ska, soul, punk, clothes, belonging, and styleSmell, the shed snog, New Romantic fashion, and the very awkward age-gap discussionCombo's entrance from prison and the immediate tonal shift from funny coming-of-age story to something threateningStephen Graham's performance as Combo: vulnerable, pathetic, charismatic, manipulative, racist, and terrifyingCombo gaslighting Woody, exploiting Shaun's Falklands grief, and splitting the gangThe National Front meeting: respectable presentation, simple blame politics, Frank Harper's speaker, and Gadget's “NASHNIL” spellingShaun's corruption under Combo: racist intimidation, the corner-shop robbery, and the stolen language of national prideLol rejecting Combo and the emotional humiliation that turns outward into violenceMilky and Combo bonding over music and roots before Combo's jealousy eruptsThe brutal beating of Milky, Shaun being forced to watch, and Combo's immediate collapse into remorseShaun throwing the St George's flag into the sea as a rejection of the racist version of EnglandThe continuing relevance of the film's politics from 1983 to 2006 to nowStrong recommendations for the follow-up series: This Is England '86, '88, and '90Bad Dads consensusSidey: Strong recommend — sees it as at least a 9/10 and reads the final flag moment as Shaun rejecting the National Front's corrupted version of England.Pete: Strong recommend — praises the film's lived-in authenticity, performances, and the follow-up series; still holds Dead Man's Shoes as a 10/10 comparison point.Reegs: Strongly positive — highlights the bleakness, the current relevance of the racist rhetoric, and Stephen Graham's frighteningly layered work.Cris: Engaged with the period detail, humour, and discomfort of the film's tonal shift, particularly once Combo arrives.Final takeThis Is England begins as a warm, funny, scruffy story about a lonely boy finding friends, then slowly reveals how easily grief and poverty can be weaponised by people offering simple enemies and ugly certainty. It is beautifully observed, brilliantly acted, deeply uncomfortable, and still horribly relevant.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Ready for a fun twist? The topic this week is Bad Dads!   In honor of Father's Day, we've celebrated Dads all month… but now it's time to talk about how NOT to parent.   In this fun episode, we highlight 3 characters who made our list of all-time worst movie fathers!   But which Bad Dads did we choose? And do you agree with our picks, or did we miss your favorite silver screen scoundrel?    How to support Scandal Water: Rate, review, and subscribe! Follow the show on your favorite app or Scandal Water Podcast YouTube channel.  Send your shoutouts to scandalwaterpodcast@gmail.com. Become a member on patreon.com/ScandalWaterPodcast or buymeacoffee.com/scandalwaterpod – which will also grant you access to fabulous bonus content! #SilverScreenScoundrals #TVDads #LivingRoomLegends #AnimatedDads #BestDads #WorstDads #HappyFathersDay #DearOldDad

Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper homered again as the Phillies beat the Mets. The Yankees lost 2 straight to the Reds. Wyndham Clark won the US Open but knows he wasn't a fan favorite. The Moment of The Day: Emmanuel Berbari has a dad joke that doesn't go well.

Join the TBU team for our great big Father's Day episode! We've got interviews with Robin Porter from LoveLife, Roland Warren, the CEO of CareNet, a "Here for the Comments" segment on the best dads in media, and all our staff join together to share about their own mothers and fathers and the positive impact they made on each, growing up.Pastor Robin Porter has served in church ministry for over twenty years in various roles, including as lead pastor of Eastside Bible Fellowship in Bellevue, WA. He was introduced to the ministry of LOVE LIFE two years ago and was deeply impacted by the ministry's church and gospel focus to serve the most vulnerable. God continues to grow Robin's boldness to stand for life even as He equips Robin to mobilize and unite the church around the issue of life.  See more: https://lovelife.org/Roland C. Warren is an accomplished author and serves as president and CEO of Care net. His first two books, Bad Dads of the Bible: 8 Mistakes Every Good Dad Can Avoid (Zondervan) and Raising Sons of Promise: A Guide for Single Mothers of Boys (InterVarsity Press), have helped fathers and mothers apply biblical principles to their parenting journeys. His latest book, The Alternative to Abortion: Why We Must Be Pro Abundant Life, guides Christians on a new way forward for the pro-life movement in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  See more: https://care-net.org/roland-warren/

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 chopper, Indy's sidecar, Tron's light cycles, Dumb and Dumber's scooter, John Wick's katana bike fight, Fonzie's Knucklehead and Dan's beloved World's Fastest Indian.What We CoveredTop 5 Motorcycles: a surprisingly rich category covering choppers, scooters, sidecars, sci-fi bikes, stunt riding and Tom Cruise's apparent allergy to helmets.La Poderosa: the battered Norton 500 that carries Ernesto and Alberto until it absolutely cannot, giving the film its comic engine and its road-movie shape.Memory vs rewatch: Sidey remembers seeing the film at the cinema and discovers he had misremembered the pair as having one bike each.Ernesto and Alberto: the Dads enjoy the friendship, the teasing, the appetite for adventure, and Alberto's role as a funny, earthy foil to Ernesto's more serious awakening.A journey through inequality: miners, indigenous communities, poverty, illness and exploitation gradually turn the trip from lads' adventure into political education.The leper colony: the San Pablo section becomes the emotional centre of the film, especially Ernesto's refusal to accept easy divisions between people.Che without the T-shirt: the group discuss how the film shows the conditions that could radicalise someone without reducing Guevara to a poster, slogan or merch logo.Show, don't tell politics: Sidey praises the film for making its points quietly; Reegs notes the documentary-like authenticity; Cris reflects on education, knowledge and the ability to imagine different power structures.Travel as transformation: Dan highlights the idea that any journey like this, at that age and through those conditions, would inevitably change you.Final images: the airport farewell, the real Alberto, the closing text and the real photographs give the film a wistful, reflective ending.Key Quotes / Moments“I thought they had a motorcycle each.”“I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.”“Top five motorcycles. I'm amazed that we've not done this before.”“He's not the same me anymore.”“It doesn't ram his ideology down your throat.”“A strong recommend all round.”VerdictA strong recommend from the Dads. The Motorcycle Diaries is praised as warm, funny, beautiful and quietly powerful — a road movie about friendship, privilege, poverty and the moment a person starts to see the world differently.You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!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 Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads

Happy Father's Day!

Full show - Thursday | GMD - Camp or no camp | News or Nope - Love Island, Niall Horan, Dancing with the Stars, and froyo | Walk in a circle UPDATE | Bad dad | The single friends | T. Hack's controversial ketchup rankings | Flying for style or comfort? | Stupid stories www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/askslacker www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin

Bad Dad Jokes For Father's Day full 275 Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:43:04 +0000 9fWKcu7BaDTAVU6m4ne07uJ8AY7wbA5a latest,wbmx,society & culture Karson & Kennedy latest,wbmx,society & culture Bad Dad Jokes For Father's Day Karson & Kennedy are honest and open about the most intimate details of their personal lives. The show is fast paced and will have you laughing until it hurts one minute and then wiping tears away from your eyes the next. Some of K&K’s most popular features are Can’t Beat Kennedy, What Did Barrett Say, and The Dirty on the 30! 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture https://player.amperwavepodcasting.com?feed-link=https%3A%2F%2Fr

→ Help us improve our podcast! Click here to fill out this three-minute survey. "My husband and I are expecting our first child next week, so he will be a first-time dad. But he never knew his own father, so he'll be learning how to be a dad without any sort of first-hand example. How can he navigate being a dad when he never had one?" - Erin After 20 years in the corporate world (with IBM, Pepsi and Goldman Sachs), Roland Warren spent 11 years as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative before joining Care Net in 2012 as president and CEO. A graduate of Princeton University and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Roland is an inspirational servant leader with a heart for Christ and a mind for business. As part of our lead up to Father's Day this month, we'll be talking with Roland primarily about the difference a dad can make, drawing on insights from his work with the National Fatherhood Initiative as well as how the impact of fathers informs his work at Care Net.  → Click here for Roland's Book, Bad Dads of the Bible

HOUR 2- Klein Goes to the Shelter, Bad Dad Advice and MORE full 2019 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:41:00 +0000 WbQOrP7SP9oVAj8ZzEKohXikUC7qn3Dq society & culture Klein/Ally Show: The Podcast society & culture HOUR 2- Klein Goes to the Shelter, Bad Dad Advice and MORE Klein.Ally.Show on KROQ is more than just a "dynamic, irreverent morning radio show that mixes humor, pop culture, and unpredictable conversation with a heavy dose of realness." (but thanks for that quote anyway). Hosted by Klein, Ally, and a cast of weirdos (both on the team and from their audience), the show is known for its raw, offbeat style, offering a mix of sarcastic banter, candid interviews, and an unfiltered take on everything from culture to the chaos of everyday life. With a loyal, engaged fanbase and an addiction for pushing boundaries, the show delivers the perfect blend of humor and insight, all while keeping things fun, fresh, and sometimes a little bit illegal. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture https://player.amperwavepodcasting.c

Florida man robs a bank as 'Sonic the Hedgehog,' and Florida family consumes 'Spaghetti-O's Parasite.' On this episode, Josh Mills and Wayne McCarty discuss your favorite Florida Man headlines, read listener letters, and celebrate the end of their three-month table read! Stick around until the end for the final reading of the hit '90s classic film Point Break. Headlines: Florida family consumes parasite found in canned spaghetti; Florida man arrested in a river by paddleboard cops; Louisiana man running from police escapes into a swamp, where he is attacked by an alligator; Florida man robs a bank wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog mask; Florida man surfs his Chevy S-10 at New Smyrna Beach. On mic: Josh Mills, Wayne McCarty, Emily Grabill, Luke West, Jesse Nieman Each week, the Florida Men on Florida Man podcast blends comedy with the fascinating legends, lore, and history of the wildest state in the Union: Florida. Learn more at www.fmofm.com Support the show at www.patreon.com/fmofmpodcast

Ariana Grande's new comeback single - our thoughts! Bethenney Frankel keeps ruining her legacy! Brad Pitt takes another L! Mackenzie Shirilla is the new Gypsy Rose Blanchard! Marc Anthony snubs his own child! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.