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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.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

You’ll rarely catch me saying that an Awards Season movie needs to be longer, but Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is a startling exception. Writer/director Angela Robinson’s take on the forbidden academic love triangle that produced comics’ most iconic heroine is tremendously acted and visually welcoming. But the first hour’s slow-burn seduction of a college student (Bella Heathcote) by a pair of married professors (Luke Evans and Rebecca Hall) gives way to a You Tube-compilation-worthy accelerated timeline that doesn’t quite earn its climactic moments of transcendent tenderness. The main cast ably capture the tortured dual identities of characters whose unorthodox passions could only be expressed in secret or translated through wild four-color adventures. But the drama requires greater social context and a sturdier exploration of the Marstons’ unique family dynamics in order to fully take hold. The characters were ahead of their time. Their story gets ahead of itself.

Killing Gunther (2017)

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)