Your Dad's Favorite Movies

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watch this tonight, there's always something good to watch. Let's get started. Today on the show, we're doing your dad's favorite movies. So I'm a big fan of these kind of films. I've discussed them on here many times. It's a very specific genre. Most of these movies are kind of bad, so when they make a good one, my dad watches it a good fifteen to twenty times. A lot of the good ones you've probably already seen. So I went deep to try to find you some off the beaten trail recommendations. And I gotta say a lot of this, honestly, like one of my big aspirations professionally is to create just I just want to make one of these movies that my dad can watch and actually really get into. So it was interesting kind of going down the rabbit hole here. I think I found three recommendations that you might not have seen and that I think are definitely worth seeing, and our movies that your dad would like. My first recommendation is Braven.

1:30 Braven is available for free on the Roku channel on Freeview, which is basically Amazon, so you can watch it on Amazon. The premise is a logger and his father head to their hunting cabin hoping for a quiet weekend. Instead, they find themselves and a killer be killed Standford Survival when they encounter a gang of ruthless drug traffickers. So the secret sauce. The reason this movie is good is it's directed by a guy named lynn O Ding who's the stunt coordinator for The Equalizer and director on Jack Reacher on Amazon and Cobra Kai and and he is probably a big part of why the movie is like better than it had any right to be, kind of thing like it's a low budget film, but it's so well made. It's seventy seven percent around Tomatoes, Like, you know, people liked this movie. There was a review by a guy named Brent McKnight from The Last Thing I See and he said, quote, Braven Scratch is a very particular itch for those longing for the types of beefy Father protects his brood pictures Schwarzenegger and Stallone turned out in the eighties, and Jason Momoa chucking axes at batties is always a welcome sight. Flickering Myth said, Braven is the kind of nineties punch in the mouth genre fans fight tooth and nail to find nowadays, and even Variety liked it. Bridy said, to put it simply and gratefully, Braven is the sort of unpretentious, thoroughly professional popcorn entertainment that brings out the best and everybody involved. The La Times liked it, they said director at Lino dings stunt background serves them well. The stripped down action fights and stunts work here feel like the real

3:01 deal instead of effects, heavy marvels of editing. So you know, it's interesting. Mamoa actually almost We sort of had a little flirtation with him on a movie that I made called The Virginian. We sent it to him, you read it, it was like, yeah, it's kind of interested, but he has a lot of notes and then we were like, great, we'll we write the whole thing whatever we wants to do. And then it's like Yeah, no, he's just not gonna do it. But we had like a little flicker there. You know, I actually have a lot of connections to this movie. So Ara cal Plane, who was the production manager for almost every movie that I've made, did that same function in this film. Stephen Lange, who was attached to a movie that I almost got made would have been an awesome movie. He is in this movie. And the story for the film is by a guy named Mike Nylon, who is Nicholas Cage as manager and a guy that I interacted with a bit when we almost made a movie with Nicolas Cage. So I sort of know a lot of the people involved in this. And again, this could have easily turned out to be kind of a junkie schlockey, not very good movie, and it turned out great. It's really fun. So if you like those again, a classic dad movie this Woe. My dad calls me up and he's like, hey, I watched this movie with Jason Momoa. It's got a weird title. It was really good. So yeah, that's Braven. Number two pick is Appaloosa. Appaloosa is sort of old school Western. It was but was made relatively recently with Ed Harris, Fige Mortensen, Jeremy Irons, Rena Zellweger, very classic premise, small town being terrorized by some Dirk guy local

4:35 rancher Randall Bragg, who killed the town's marshal and two deputies when they came to his ranch to arrest some guys. So the town hires lawman and peacekeeper Virgil Cole and his deputy Everett Hitch to protect and regain control of the town. Ed Harris wanted to make an old school Western like three ten Ayuma, My Darling Clementine. This is according to Wikipedia and the man who shot Liberty Balance, rather than a revisionist approach, which is kind of cool. And again, what makes it a dad film, right, It's not trying to say, like, let's reinvent the Western. It's like, I want to just do a good version of a classic Western. And the real thing that makes it special is his character's friendship with Vigo Mortenson in the movie, and Harris said, though they've been hanging out for years, they're not too intimate, but they know each other aside from in sports or being a cop.

5:20 I can't think of any other situation where a friendship like that is called for and Vigo, Mortenson said, I like to ride horses, and I like westerns, but there are a lot of bad ones. What set this one apart is just how the characters are a little more guarded. Seventy six percent around tomatoes. Just a really good classic western. You know, obviously a very few of them made anymore. Too great actors, It's so fun to see those guys together, and they have such a fun vibe their friendship. It's so enjoyable to just hang out with them. So definitely encourage you to check that one out. And then the last one I'm going to suggest as a great dad movie is The Next Three Days, which I think is pretty underrated. So it's Paul Haggis film, Russell Crowe Elizabeth Thanks, the remake of a French movie. Basic Premise is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at Laar Brennan is sentenced to life in prison for murder. Three years later, her young son Luke ceases to acknowledge her during prison visits. Her appeal fails.

6:13 She was seen leaving a parking lot where her boss was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher. Her fingerprints were on the murder weapon. The victim's blood was found on her coat, so she thinks that she's screwed. It's gonna be prison forever. She attempts suicide and her husband played Marsa Crowe, becomes determined to break her out of prison, and he calls up Liam Neeson and he's like, Liam, you know about these dad movies? And Liam Neeson plays the guy who wrote a book about prison escapes, and he basically says, this is what you do. So it's just a regular guy who has to figure out how to break his wife out of prison. So that's kind of a fun premise. The French film, it was really obvious that the wife is innocent. In the American version, Haggis really invests in like ambiguity, which is interesting and makes you sort of, I think, process it a little differently. Haggis based the lead character himself and just sat down and said, all right, I have to break my wife out of prison. How would I do it? And he's just started researching, like how do you break into a car? How do you do this? In that you know?

7:13 And and so by making Rustle Crows character and every man, the challenge that he faces feels bigger, right, and and so that's the fun of it is you sort of think, Wow, if I was in this situation, could I do what Rustle Crowe did. That's what makes it a fun movie to watch. Craigs didn't like it that much. It got a fifty percent around Tomatoes. He said it was implausible, which, of course it's implausible. It's super implausible. But I think that's what makes it fun, you know, and you know, overqualified cast Elizabeth Banks really really good in the world role the wife. It's it's again a classic, like your Dad. Three o'clock in the afternoon, this is playing on like TNT. He's like, all right, cool, the next two hours for doing this, Let's get a beer, let's complain about the applausible elements. So those are three pretty different movies, but I think they all fall into the umbrella of dad movies. The Next three Days, Appaloosa and Braven. You know, I think the thing about dad movies is that it's a movie that it's comfortable, right, It's like laying on the couch at your house that you grew up in. That's what a dad movie is to me. And I think any of these movies throw it on. You know, you know you're gonna get something that's like satisfying and sort of I don't know, it makes you feel reassured in a weird way. I think all three of these movies kind of do that. I would love to hear what's your favorite kind of dad movie?

8:37 What was your dad's favorite movie? Tell me that. I think this is something that a lot of people have probably experienced, so I'd be interested to know. If you have any perspective on it. You can always reach me at dan ad voyagemedia dot com, bennymore down on Twitter, Watch This Tonight on Instagram, Watch This Tonight podcast on TikTok, or you can join our Facebook group Watch this Tonight on Facebook. That is the show for today. Some cool stuff coming up. Um, there's a show on Hulu about a class of FBI agents across three different time periods that looks really interesting. So I'm probably gonna do that next week. UM. I'm, you know, always open to suggestions. You can always reach out to me. But that's the show for today. Until next time. Bye bye,