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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.

Bad Santa 2 (2016)

I'd almost forgotten what politically incorrect comedy looked like. Not the easy, faux-liberal raunch of Sausage Party, with its winking, eighth-grade assaults on morality and diversity. I'm talking about deliciously angry material that could've been conceived at a rehab facility or a Trump rally. Bad Santa 2 is the real deal, a coal-hearted film so eager to flip off anyone who dares show interest that its very form seems as burdened by existence as its protagonist. The plot is an off-center Xerox of part one: randy, alcoholic safe-cracker Willie Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) teams with diminutive double-crosser Marcus (Tony Cox) and his own equally repugnant mom (Kathy Bates) to rip off a children's charity (Tip: Nocturnal Animals is still playing, if you crave complex story mechanics). The jokes mostly land, fortunately, and Oscar-winners Thornton and Bates give these cartoons a z-axis, making their characters' twisted family drama actually hurt.

Jackie (2016)

Manchester by the Sea (2016)