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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 Belko Experiment (2017)

Office Space may be the definitive cinematic parody of workaday corporate life--which is why I can’t stand hearing people describe The Belko Experiment as a cross between Mike Judge's 1999 cult hit and Battle Royale, a Japanese thriller about murderous high school students. The characters in James Gunn’s screenplay are neither archetypes nor cartoons. They are mostly likable and certainly relatable lower- and middle-income employees who’ve been cruelly thrust into an impossible situation. Like Battle Royale, Belko takes place in a remote location, and centers on eighty office workers forced to kill each other for eight hours, lest they suffer terrible fates at the hands of their unseen captors. The exploding heads, mass shootings, and geyser-like stab wounds are chilling, not thrilling. They heighten an increasingly bleak set of moral quandaries that may just leave you questioning your faith in yourself, your friends, and the company that signs your paychecks.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #202 to hear Ian and Keeping it Reel's David Fowlie go bonkers for Belko!

Life (2017)

Beauty and the Beast (2017)