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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 Ticket (2016)

Throughout The Ticket, director Ido Fluk and screenwriter Sharon Mashihi present nightmarish, claustrophobic interpretations of blindness to convey the sensory prison from which their main character, James (Dan Stevens), has miraculously escaped. When the call-center employee awakens one morning to find his sight restored after decades of darkness, he immediately binges on earthly pleasures, abandoning the God to whom he’d previously sent daily prayers of gratitude. The story goes astray in act two, as the film, like James, enamored of its own conceit, takes on a much grander identity than it was ever meant to possess. The idea of James’ mortgage-broker employer setting up a shell charity in churches and schools to entrap customers by ostensibly helping them eliminate debt is compelling. But The Ticket is not The Big Short, and every attendant subplot tacked on to James’ descent into Hell detracts from our ability to truly appreciate his fall.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #212 to hear Ian's interview with writer/director Ido Fluk!

The Assignment (2016)

Landline (2017)