profile pic ian.jpg

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.

A Quiet Passion (2017)

I clearly didn’t pay enough attention in school. To me, Emily Dickinson was just a sickly, sad poet who lived a long time ago. Writer/director Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion bridges the gap between Dickinson’s lone, lonely photograph and the well-traveled spirit who wrote “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. This multi-layered look at the author’s self-imposed familial confinement, in which she endures the rigors of societal and religious oppression as embodied by those she holds most dear, is a hymn to the gods of pure artistic righteousness. Cynthia Nixon’s brilliant lead performance manifests such humor, grace, and cutting wit that I often forgot I was watching a tragedy. For anyone worried that this might be a visually static period piece, Davies’ aesthetics are as rich as his narrative. There’s enough life, light, and scrumptious symbolism here to make even the most distracted kid in third-period American Lit take notice.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #224 to hear Ian's conversation with writer/director Terence Davies!

Alien: Covenant (2017)

AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)