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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.

Wakefield (2017)

Wakefield lacks the ambition and gonzo artistry of Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange, or American Psycho. However, Robin Swicord's film is a rare, dark poem mined from the exploits of a truly wretched human being. Though attorney Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston) never kills anything except time, he only cares about people and things he can possess. One night, Howard decides to not come home from work. He spends a year spying on his family from the loft above their garage. Swicord, Cranston, and Jennifer Garner (as the beleaguered Mrs. Wakefield) expose every nook of our narrator’s fragile psyche. But Wakefield doesn’t care if you think the protagonist’s journey from self-absorbed bully to semi-self-actualized dumpster diver is a new-millennium American Beauty--or the nail in the coffin for cinematic portrayals of affluent white males in crisis. Its only demand is that you engage with The Other and recognize part of yourself within it.

Band Aid (2017)

Middle Man (2017)