Kicking the Seat

Wildwood , the latest stop-motion animated feature from Travis Knight and Laika Studios, is a critical and audience darling. So why aren't people showing up for it? In this week's livestream, Ian and Jeff look at an offbeat modern-day fairy tale, in which a headstrong, lonely young girl in Oregon discovers a magical world full of bizarre creatures ruled by a cruel, sinister mother figure. If you t...

Kicking the Seat winds down Spooky Season with its scariest, most controversial episode of the year! Recently, Ian was introduced to Blake Edwards' 1968 farce, The Party , in which Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor who inadvertently crashes a high-society Hollywood soiree. Last weekend, Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G: Who Iz I? debuted, plopping the pasty, British gangsta wannabe into more outrageous...

Spooky Season may be drawing to a close, but Kicking the Seat is still Treating the Hungry with our second livestream of the week! In our first-ever live edition of "Castle Freaks", Ian and Jeff take on the 1961 Gothic thriller, Mr. Sardonicus ! Guy Rolfe stars as the titular mysterious and cruel Baron, whose face has become frozen in a horrifying grin. He seeks out a prominent London physician, a...

Talk about an October surprise! James Watkins' Clayface is a solid comic-book movie--leaps and bounds above the other floundering projects in the James Gunn-led DC Cinematic Universe! Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, a young Hollywood actor on the cusp of realizing his greatest dream. When he inadvertently crosses a mob boss (David Dencik), he winds up with a carved-up face and vanishing care...

This is the one you've been screaming for! After 17 years, horror fans finally have more Friday the 13th to enjoy--not counting that weird 2025 hard cider commercial or whatever it was! Last week's debut of the Peacock Original streaming series, Crystal Lake , split slasher fandom as firmly as an axe to the noggin. In this episode, Ian and Jeff put down stakes and dive deep into the choppy waters...

Scary Season is upon us once more, and this year Kicking the Seat has partnered with Feeding America to fight the horrors of nationwide hunger! In our first installment of "Kicking the Seat Treats the Hungry", Ian and Jeff take on Alejandro Iñárritu's Digger , starring Tom Cruise! From the director of Birdman and The Revenant comes a genre-shattering social satire that some have compared to Dr. St...

For decades, movie studios have struggled to translate Capcom's Resident Evil video games into a consistent and compelling franchise. Sadly, the quest continues. Zach Cregger, hot off of Weapons , has lent his...erm, unique horror/comedy sensibilities to this Great Value version of the T-Virus outbreak--wherein a blood-borne infection turns humans into mutants, zombies, and all manner of Stranger...

Ian welcomes back Guido and Lucas Henkel, the father/son powerhouse behind Celluloid Dreams, to talk about their latest 4K release, The Black Belly of the Tarantula ! Continuing our insider's look at what it takes to restore half-century-old gialli and create a comprehensive package that will have genre fans drooling--the guys dig deep into the production of the Limited Edition Black Belly 4K. The...

This week's livestream is brought to you by the letter "D", for "Derivative"! Yes, there's another indie horror movie in theaters with audience buzz, killer marketing, and very little else to recommend it beyond some truly remarkable aesthetics. Casper Kelly's Buddy centers on a titular late-90s children's program modeled off of Barney the Dinosaur . In this case, our chuckling, anthropomorphic ho...

It doesn't get more meta than Coyote vs. Acme ! The live-action/animation hybrid was shelved by Warner Bros in 2023, before being picked up by Ketchup Entertainment and released in theaters. Fittingly, the film centers on a scrappy, small-time attorney (Will Forte) and his aggrieved client, Wile E. Coyote, taking on a mega corporation engaged in shady deeds. Now that it's out, several questions co...

Ian and Jeff go positively psycho for William Castle's 1961 fast-follow thriller, Homicidal ! It's easy to write this movie off as a copy/paste cash-in of Alfred Hitchcock's horror classic, Psycho (troubled blonde with a bagful of cash; mysterious references to shocking family events; terrible things happening on a very prominent staircase, etc.). But Castle and screenwriter Robb White present a t...

Joe Swanberg's new dramedy, The Sun Never Sets , was the closing night event of 2026's Chicago Critics Film Festival. Following the May premiere, Ian and David sat down for a spoilerific look at one of the year's best movies. Now that the film is in limited release, the guys are ecstatic to share their thoughts with you! Swanberg introduces and dissects an Alaskan love triangle in an effort to dis...

Why do June and July get all the fun movie mash-ups? Nothing says "August" like a new Jason Staham movie and an early-Awards Season contender from A24. So, what do you get when you cross Mutiny with Tony ? Mutony , of course! This week, Ian and Jeff look at two very different films with identical goals: To be the best possible representation of their respective sub-genres! Mutiny is the definition...

Summer's almost over...let's go camping! This week, Ian and Jeff look at the indie-horror meta sensation, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ! Writer director Jane Schoenbrun follows up 2024's I Saw the TV Glow with a bold, genre-bending psychosexual thriller. When a hot young director (Hannah Einbinder) is tapped to relaunch an 80s slasher franchise with the original film's "Final Girl" (Gillia...

Is Eli Roth's Ice Cream Man a scream--or a yawn? This week, Ian and Jeff scrape the bottom of the pint to find out if the creator of Thanksgiving , Hostel , and Cabin Fever can still get audiences' blood pumping. When a mysterious Ice Cream Man drives his truck through a sleepy little town, his frozen delights turn children into bloodthirsty monsters. Three adolescent friends (and a couple of obno...

It's a Brand New Day for Spider-Man -- and Kicking the Seat! In a world where everyone has forgotten that Peter Parker is Spider-Man (and in which Peter Parker doesn't technically exist), the wall-crawling web-slinger finds himself immune to a sinister new force that can take control of people's minds! Throw in a series of inconvenient body changes, a Hulk, a Punisher, and unrequited love--and you...

There's a reason 1972 is considered giallo's golden year: When a movie called Death Walks at Midnight has a synopsis like this... "During a drug-fuelled photoshoot, a model witnesses a brutal murder in the apartment opposite hers, and is forced to become an amateur sleuth to unravel the mystery..."* ...it's inevitable that good times are on the way! Join Ian and Steve as we pair black gloves with...

Kicking the Seat navigates the choppy waters of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey ! The writer/director's latest destroyed box office records on its opening weekend, and is selling out round-the-clock 70MM IMAX screenings nationwide. Hailed as the cinematic event of 2026, this modern take on Odysseus' (Matt Damon) post-Trojan War tribulations is the rare film that unites critics and audiences in cel...

Ian and Jeff take to the streets in search of cinematic justice! Their first target: Uwe Boll's controversial, anti-immigration polemic, Citizen Vigilante ! Armie Hammer stars as Sanders, a former American soldier living in Europe who manages his deceased father's real estate empire. When he's not on the clock, Sanders stalks various neighborhoods, taking out criminals and recording anti-immigrant...

Earth's Mightiest Critics have put out an APB for Bruce Campbell! While we wait, let's talk Evil Dead Burn ! Sébastien Vanicek's follow up to Lee Cronin's re-imagining of Sam Raimi's 1981 landmark indie horror flick is perhaps the purest manifestation of the series' premise: demented spirits from Hell possess and destroy the living for sheer grisly enjoyment. The question is: what does that mean f...

Earth's Mightiest Critics have caught Minion fever! Illumination's nonsense-talking, squishy, yellow henchmen creatures aren't for everyone, but the studio's latest offering, Minions & Monsters , hits the sweet spot for some cinephiles. James and Henry, two oddball Minions with big imaginations, finally find an outlet for their zany dreams: pre-Depression Tinseltown! But can they actually make...

Ian and Jeff have both seen Olivia Wilde's new A24 comedy, The Invite --but they don't accept it! Wilde stars with Seth Rogen in a remake of Cesc Gay's 2020 film, The People Upstairs , playing one half of a miserable married couple who invites a pair of hip neighbors (played by Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton) to join them for dinner. The evening goes awry as manners fly out the window, inhibition...

Ian and Dr. AC return to provide more haunting analyses of a William Castle Classic and its slipshod 21st Century remake! In 1960's 13 Ghosts , a destitute family inherits an old mansion from a distant, wealthy relative. Shortly after moving in they discover the place is already occupied by...you guessed it! The only way to see and deal with these pesky poltergeists is to don a pair of goofy exper...

When Superman hit theaters last summer, Ian vowed to sit out the rest of James Gunn's run as head of DC Studios. Months later, he had a change of heart and decided to give Supergirl a chance. Director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira's "adaptation" of Tom King's Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic is now upon us and failing spectacularly at the box office. But is this a case of bad press sca...

Earth's Mightiest Critics had thought they were done with the Toy Story franchise after 2019's abysmal fourth entry. But Andrew Stanton and McKenna Harris's have installed a fresh set of batteries known as Toy Story 5 ! Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the gang find themselves plunged into a world of tech, in which children have no need for rough-and-tumble toys. When 8-year-old Bonnie is gifted a "Lilypa...