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Welcome to Kicking the Seat!

Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).

The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar NoéRachel BrosnahanAmy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.

Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.

Ep390: Late Screening: Green Vegetables

Today, The Kicking the Seat Podcast and Cole Rush of ColeTries.com and The Quill to Live wake up to the harsh reality that The Matrix isn't a very good movie. On the eve of this influential sci-fi blockbuster's twentieth anniversary, the guys take a fresh look at The Wachowskis' flawed spectacle, and ask how a film with such (relatively) high aspirations could plummet, crash, and burn on the shores of bad storytelling, dead characterization, and the very action-movie clichés it initially sought to upend.

(But at least the movie still looks really cool.)

There's a little something here to offend absolutely everyone, so choose your pill wisely.

Also, Ian talks about Kicking the Seat's own breakthrough into a different reality!

Episode 390 follows itself down the rabbit hole!

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Ep391: The Indispensables

Ep389: Saulnier School: The Siege and The Horror