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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.

Gun Shy (2017)

I don’t wonder how a film like Gun Shy gets made. I wonder about the tipping point, that moment during production when myriad little problems with script, direction, performances, etc., swell into a capsizing torrent of mediocrity. Director Simon West has made big, mainstream movies before, as have stars Antonio Banderas and Olga Kurylenko. And it looks like few expenses were spared in telling the story of a washed-up rock star and his ex-super-model wife who get mixed up with kidnappers, the CIA, an off-kilter mercenary, and the world’s sleaziest talent agent while vacationing in Chile. But the concept feels yanked from the shelf about twenty years too late, and the humor is a puzzlingly flavorless puree of okay British comedy, dick jokes, and Trump-as-president sight gags. Someone paid handsomely for a movie that wound up largely bypassing theatres. But not nearly as much as those who might watch it.

mother! (2017)

It (2017)