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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.

Song to Song (2017)

“You get used to drifting, waiting.” This sleepy bit of narration from Ryan Gosling’s character in Song to Song proves that writer/director Terrence Malick is officially screwing with us. The Austin, TX-set drama centers on a love triangle, which becomes a love square, and then a love pentagon. Even those descriptions are insufficient, as they imply shape and dimension—two of many essential cinematic qualities that come up lacking in Malick’s two-plus-hour assemblage of rehearsal footage, location scouting, and camera tests. As sure as thirteen patrons left the screening I attended, my mind drifted to alternate-universe movies where Rooney Mara’s character stops complaining about life and actually lives it; where Natalie Portman convincingly plays a struggling waitress/teacher; where the minute allotted to Val Kilmer’s crazed rock star becomes a three-hour road picture, co-starring Iggy Pop; and where more holds my attention than a brief game of “Six Degrees of Ridley Scott”.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #205 to hear Ian and HollywoodChicago.com's Pat "The Über Critic" McDonald muster a funeral hymn for Song to Song!

Turbo Kid (2015)

Life (2017)