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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.

Tokyo Vampire Hotel (2017)

I like movies featuring vampires, violence, and the Japanese pop aesthetic, so Sion Sono’s Tokyo Vampire Hotel should have really been my thing. But this nearly two-and-a-half-hour blood canvas obliterates its flimsy horror/fantasy boundaries early on, never fully recovering from a sadistic, walk-out-worthy café gun massacre. The premise centers on immortal warring dynasties vying for control of a hotel whose unsuspecting human “guests” become a perpetual food supply. It’s good stuff, sadly lost in soapy, sappy narratives and an impossible economy of characters (both victims and undead staff appear to multiply exponentially, despite the rising tide of viscera). It makes sense that Tokyo Vampire Hotel was trimmed from an Amazon Japan TV miniseries, especially because its essence had already been distilled from less stylized and more soulful works by Quentin Tarantino and Brian De Palma. This is a broom closet, downgraded from a smoking room, and advertised as a suite.

Chavela (2017)

Killing Gunther (2017)