The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 341: Amy Taubin on My Undesirable Friends, Highest 2 Lowest, Terence Stamp, Chantal Akerman, What Could Go Wrong, The Pitt Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I welcome back the one and only Amy Taubin to the podcast for a catch-up about what she’s been watching (and a few words about things to come). Among the titles and topics discussed are the essential new documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part One—Last Air in Moscow (whose director, Julia Loktev, Taubin recently interviewed); Spike Lee’s latest, Highest 2 Lowest; the dearly departed star Terence Stamp; the upcoming MoMA series on Chantal Akerman and on Hurricane Katrina; the TV show The Pitt; and the podcast on AI from screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, What Could Go Wrong. I also throw in a couple of recently viewed movies I enjoyed. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 340: Ehsan Khoshbakht on Great Expectations, the British retrospective of Locarno 2025 Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m reporting from the Locarno film festival, where the annual retrospective has once again been quite popular. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to speak with the retrospective’s programmer, Ehsan Khoshbakht, who also co-directs Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna and also curated Locarno’s 2024 tribute to Columbia Pictures. Khoshbakht explains the basis of the series, providing fascinating insights into what fueled British postwar cinema, crosscurrents with other cinemas, and the thought processes behind film programming. Among the titles discussed (adding new ones to those already discussed on the podcast): Locarno’s 1952 Golden Leopard winner Hunted (directed by Charles Crichton), It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer), The Woman in Question (Anthony Asquith), as well as a look at the director Jack Lee (Turn the Key Softly). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 339: Jordan Cronk on Locarno 2025: Dry Leaf, Mare’s Nest, Le Lac, Sorella di Clausura, Two Seasons Two Strangers Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m reporting from the Locarno film festival, where the second week has not disappointed. I sat down again to chat with Jordan Cronk, critic and founder of Acropolis Cinema in Los Angeles. Films discussed include: Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze), the follow-up from the director of When Do We See When We Look at the Sky?; Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers); Le Lac (Fabrice Aragno, aka longtime DP/collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard); Sorella di Clausura (Ivana Mladenović); and Two Seasons, Two Strangers (Sho Miyake). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 338: Jessica Kiang on Locarno 2025: The Best of the Postwar British Retrospective + Becoming Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m reporting from the Locarno film festival, which every year has an outstanding retrospective that’s a parallel essential to the premieres of new films. To discuss this year’s retro, a deftly curated tribute to British postwar cinema called Great Expectations, I’m joined by a regular guest, critic and programmer Jessica Kiang, who is filing reviews for Variety but also, like me, inhaling swathes of this retrospective. Titles discussed include Obsession (1949, Edward Dmytryk), The Yellow Balloon (1953, J. Lee Thompson), It Always Rains on Sundays (1947, Robert Hamer), Turn the Key Softly (1953, Jack Lee), To Be a Woman (1951, Jill Craigie), The Elephant Never Forgets (1953, John Krish), Train of Events (1949, Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden), Passport to Pimlico (1949, Henry Cornelius), The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950, Frank Launder), Time Without Pity (1957, Joseph Losey), and Never Let Go (1960, John Guillermin). Plus, just because: a bonus, brand-new film from Kazakhstan, Becoming (Zhannat Alshanova). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 337: Keva York on Locarno 2025: Dracula, Legend of the Happy Worker, plus The Seasons Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m reporting from the Locarno film festival, which annually rolls out an adventuresome sale of films. For my latest episode I’m joined by Keva York, a critic and an editor of the festival’s Pardo publication. Titles discussed include the highly anticipated Dracula (directed by Radu Jude), Legend of the Happy Worker (Duwayne Dunham), and The Seasons (Maureen Fazendeiro). Ambient sound is courtesy of our recording location, the lounge of the GranRex cinema, one of the festival’s venues. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 336: Jordan Cronk on Locarno 2025: With Hasan in Gaza, Mektoub My Love, Blue Heron, Balearic, Phantoms of July Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I report from the Locarno film festival, which annually rolls out an adventuresome sale of films. For my first episode I’m joined by Jordan Cronk, critic and programmer, who has already seen an impressive share of titles in the early days. Titles discussed include With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari), Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari), Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due (Abdellatif Kechiche), Balearic (Ion de Sosa), and Phantoms of July (Julian Radlmaier). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 335: Will Sloan on Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA about the director of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week the writer and podcaster Will Sloan visits to discuss his new book, Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA, a reconsideration of the filmmaker who notoriously symbolized the bottom of the barrel in movies. Sloan’s book avoids the usual so-bad-it’s-good look at Ed Wood and instead appreciates the strange dreamlike spaces opened up by the likes of Plan 9 from Outer Space, the “accidental” experiments of his shoe-string-budget movies, and the poignant personal resonance of Glen or Glenda and other movies with Wood’s identity as a cross-dresser (as memorably chronicled in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood). Plus any number of tangents and comparisons that Wood’s work seems to invite through its very imperfections. Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA is available now from OR Books (https://orbooks.com/catalog/ed-wood/). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 334: Mark Asch on F1, Tour de France, American Hunter, Revelations of Divine Love, Afternoons of Solitude, plus 92 in the Shade, The Brig, and Al Green Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week’s episode is a little midsummer night’s stroll through movies with critic and bon vivant Mark Asch! This time on the show he brings together the Brad Pitt racing film F1 with his recent viewing of Tour de France and other sports broadcasts, and from there it’s off to the races: Spectacle Theater favorite American Hunter (Arizal); Oblivion, also from F1 director Joseph Kosinski; Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra); Revelations of Divine Love, recently premiered at FIDMarseilles and previously previewed by the filmmaker, Caroline Golum, on this program; 92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane); Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli); The Brig (Jonas Mekas); and the music documentary Gospel According to Al Green (Robert Mugge). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 333: Kiyoshi Kurosawa on his new film Cloud, life, lighting, casting, and the last thing he saw Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Cloud is the new film by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose unique career includes the films Cure, Pulse, and Tokyo Sonata. Cloud follows an internet reseller (Masaki Suda) who becomes targeted for murder by a band of customers he has played a little too fast and loose with. It’s suffused with the air of menace that the director excels at creating, but situated in an actual cutthroat world of extremely online internet resellers. Kurosawa has said it’s partly inspired by a true story of an internet-inspired killing, and partly by his desire to shoot an action movie, particularly with characters who are (relatively) ordinary people. As a longtime fan of his work, I felt especially fortunate to speak with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa about Cloud and his work generally. Thank you to Monika Uchiyama for translation. Cloud is in theaters now and had its world premiere in the Venice film festival last fall. It was the centerpiece film at the Japan Society’s annual festival Japan Cuts, where director Kiyoshi Kurosawa was honored with the Cut Above Award for his outstanding achievements in cinema. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 332: Amy Taubin on Cloud, Tribeca (I Was Born This Way, Happy Birthday, Shadow Scholars), Twin Peaks, Outrageous, plus Mountainhead Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The summer may have technically begun, but it’s not truly the summer without our annual June-July-ish kick-off: a podcast with critic Amy Taubin! Once again she brings a selection of highlights gleaned from the Tribeca, including prize-winners and otherwise: I Was Born This Way (directed by Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard), Natchez (Suzannah Herbert), The Shadow Scholars (Eloise King), Cuerpo Celeste (Nayra Ilic García), Happy Birthday (Sarah Goher), and the delightful Lion King doc Runa Simi (Augusto Zegarra), with my chiming in about The Scout (Paula González-Nasser). But wait, that’s not all: Amy also talks about Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (coming to U.S. theaters on July 18); her recent work on Twin Peaks, with a remarkable personal connection to David Lynch’s work; and Outrageous, the very resonant TV series about the Mitford sisters. Plus: I ramble a bit about the latest movies from Celine Song, Materialists, and from Danny Boyle, 28 Years Later, as well as Jeremy Strong’s feature-film directorial debut, the tech-bro-apocalypse satire Mountainhead. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass