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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 Noé, Rachel Brosnahan, Amy 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.

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)

Ian Simmons

Like Matthew McCaughnahey’s character in Dazed and Confused, Zombieland: Double Tap hangs around the horror-comedy soiree long after its prime. Fourth-wall-smashing, on-screen zombie-apocalypse survival rules, rattled off by a cast of award winners who were not nearly as famous when the original came out in 2009, is an amusing nostalgia-scratch in the context of a trailer. At feature-length, this episodic, chatty-but-not-charming diversion staggers across the screen, vainly trying to recapture what little life it once had. Only the addition of bubble-headed mall creature Madison (Zooey Deutch) can distract from the nonsensical plot, in which wanderlust fractures our scrappy survivalist quartet. A movie exploring how mundane relationship problems can seep into rock-solid bonds forged by surviving the end times is a great premise for a comedy. But Double Tap is too focused on Elvis gags, monster trucks, and hippie bashing to realize that its once-cutting jabs now sound like dad jokes.

Girl on the Third Floor (2019)

Girl on the Third Floor (2019)
American Dreamer (2018)

American Dreamer (2018)