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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.

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

Adam Sandler’s Netflix curse has ended, at least for now. A few years ago, the actor signed a huge original-content development deal, and the resulting “comedies” turned his association with the streaming service into a punch line. Sandler roars back to life in Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories, a kind of grounded Royal Tenenbaums in which an aging also-ran artist (Dustin Hoffman) gathers his three dysfunctional children (Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Elizabeth Marvel) to attend a gallery show and (they learn) oversee the dismantling of his legacy. As he did with While We’re Young, Baumbach stares into the abyss of youth-and-fame-obsessed modernity and reports back with a sharply-written, powerfully acted cautionary tale about narrowing one’s scope in the quest for meaning to the self and to the family. Sandler establishes and maintains the film’s delicate, tragicomic tone. Also, I'm happy to report there's not an ounce of donkey-diarrhea in sight.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

Swing Away (2017)