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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.

Middle Man (2017)

What a pathetic state of affairs. Barely a month into blockbuster season, audiences have already begun kicking over mega-budget studio tent poles left and right.* Good. All the more opportunity to discover films like Ned Crowley's delightfully ghoulish Middle Man. Accountant Lenny Freeman (Jim O'Heir) quits his day job to pursue stand-up comedy. While driving to Las Vegas for a TV talent show audition, he picks up a charismatic and very talkative young hitchhiker (Andrew J. West), who's also a serial killer (natch). Turns out Lenny is a few punch lines short of a set himself, and Middle Man slowly transforms from charming-yet-predictable road movie into a genre-junking blend of The King of Comedy and The Hitcher. If imagination, talent, and passion were currency, Crowley's crowd-funded assemblage of revelatory performances and memorable dialogue would get the Transformers 5 treatment.

Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #229, to hear Middle Man star Jim O'Heir and writer/director Ned Crowley tell Ian where the bodies are buried!

*For every Wonder Woman, a Baywatch drowns just off the coastline.

Wakefield (2017)

Wonder Woman (2017)