Bad Dads Film Review

On this episode of Bad Dads Film Review, the dads review Saipan (2025), a dramatization of one of the most explosive moments in modern Irish football history. In this episode Why this story still matters: Ireland’s 2002 World Cup buildup and the Keane/McCarthy falloutThe core tension: perfectionist, win-first standards vs “get the job done” tournament pragmatismCamp preparation issues and why they became the flashpointClub-vs-country politics in the background (including pressure dynamics aro...

The lads open with the Wu-Tang connection (RZA has this high on his all-time kung fu list), then jump straight into what makes this film such a riot: a betrayed warrior clan, relentless set-piece combat, and some of the most creative pole/staff fighting you’ll ever see. They unpack the story of the Yang brothers being ambushed, the surviving brothers’ trauma and vengeance, and Gordon Liu’s turn as the Fifth Brother as he channels rage into monk training before the movie detonates into a legen...

It's conspiracies week at Bad Dads. All four dads — Sidey, Dan, Reegs and Cris — count down the Top Five Conspiracies before getting to Sovereign (2025), a devastating drama about a father and son in the Sovereign Citizen movement that made $63,000 at the box office and absolutely deserved better. In the Top Five: JFK — Oliver Stone's four-hour masterpiece of the grassy knoll, covered in fullAll the President's Men — Woodward, Bernstein, the paper that's now owned by BezosMichael Clayton — Cl...

This week the dads work late for Steven Shainberg's Secretary (2002) — one of the more unusual love stories in American independent cinema, and almost certainly the most interesting thing James Spader has ever worn a tie for. But first: a very thorough Top Five Secretaries list. Dolly Parton, Mad Men, Ghostbusters, Batman Returns, The Simpsons, Beetlejuice, Moneypenny through all her iterations, and the West Wing. It's a good one. Top Five highlights: Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton) from 9 to 5...

This week Sidey, Dan, and Cris fly solo — Simon's been called to Southampton on urgent business (he was spotted in a pub surrounded by tea cups, so make of that what you will). The dads are reviewing Ballad of a Small Player (2024), the new Netflix film from Edward Berger — the director behind All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave — starring a very much on-form Colin Farrell. The Film: Colin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a dissolute British gambler drowning in debt in the ...

This week we go fully corporate: Top 5 Corporate & Tech Jargon — the phrases designed to sound like progress while delivering absolutely nothing. We’re talking circle back, take it offline, pivot, blue-sky thinking, synergy, and the whole “results-driven ecosystem” dialect spoken exclusively by people who describe themselves as “thought leaders” on LinkedIn. Then we hit the main feature: Thunderbolts* — Marvel’s surprisingly sincere group-therapy movie disguised as an action film. Think T...

Bad Dads Film Review heads to the Italian Riviera this week for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) — a sun-drenched, jazz-soaked psychological thriller where gorgeous people do terrible things, and the worst person in the room still somehow isn’t the guy committing the murders. We follow Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a small-time grifter with big social ambitions, who’s handed a golden ticket: travel to Italy and convince trust-fund prince Dickie Greenleaf (prime Jude Law, unfairly beautiful) to come ...

This week’s pick is Train Dreams: a quiet, meditative Netflix drama adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, following the life of Robert Grainer (Joel Edgerton) — a logger and railroad worker drifting through early 20th-century America. It’s the kind of film that feels like a memory: sparse dialogue, heavy atmosphere, and a sense of time moving faster than any one person can keep up with. The opening sets the tone immediately: rail tracks, a tunnel, Will Patton’s voiceover, and an image that pa...