The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 219: Sundance 2024 with Eric Hynes: Preview, Power, Black Box Diaries Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold. January is here and it’s time for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. To kick off this year’s suite of episodes, I am delighted to join forces again with Sundance stalwart Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image. We discuss the latest edition of the festival, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and we sample a few films that screened early on. Films discussed include: Power (directed by Yance Ford), Black Box Diaries (Shiori Ito), and Agent of Happiness (Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó). Check back for more reports from snowy-but-not-oppressively-so Park City! Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 218: Amy Taubin on I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Fellow Travelers, Sundance Past + My Napoleon Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s time to ring in 2024 with the one and only Amy Taubin! After some thoughts on the challenges of the contemporary film landscape, she talks about I Heard It Through the Grapevine, the elegiac 1982 civil-rights documentary featuring James Baldwin and co-directed by the late Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, playing at Film Forum; Too Much Sleep; Fellow Travelers, a dramatic series on Showtime; and remembrances of Sundance highlights past, on the occasion of a Criterion Channel selection from the festival’s history. I also share my experience watching Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in a special format. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 217: Rob Sweeney on Two by Twohy, Cannibal Corpse, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, Locked In, Tom Palazzolo Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold! What better time than the holidays to share my chat with movie pal R. Emmet Sweeney, who produces DVDs and Blu-rays at Kino Lorber. He talks about two films written by David Twohy, Warlock and Grand Tour: Disaster in Time; The Day the Earth Caught Fire, a New York repertory-viewing highlight; and Locked In, viewed on TUBI. But it all begins with praise for the Cannibal Corpse documentary Centuries of Torment, which Sweeney selected as his best film experience of the year in the Metrograph Journal. I chime in with a few words about shorts by Tom Palazzolo. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 216: Beatrice Loayza and Adam Nayman on May December, Zone of Interest, Knock at the Cabin, Fallen Leaves, and more Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold! As we approach the end of the year, I bring together a wonderful pair of critics who have appeared together here before: Adam Nayman (The Ringer) and Beatrice Loayza (The New York Times). In the spirit of the season, I asked them about their favorite movies of 2023, from Todd Haynes’s May December to M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin and Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves, and we reflect on Jonathan Glazer’s confronting The Zone of Interest. Adam and Beatrice also share their favorite first watches from the year. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 215: Sean Price Williams and Nick Pinkerton on The Sweet East and Recent Viewing Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. Sean Price Williams and Nick Pinkerton have been stalwart guests on the podcast before, sharing their encyclopedic viewing habits. But this time we start by talking about The Sweet East—the acclaimed new film that Sean directed and shot and Nick wrote. Talia Ryder stars as a young woman who goes on a picaresque journey through our complicated country, meeting a range of daunting characters (including Simon Rex as a politically unsavory professor, and Jeremy O. Harris and Ayo Edebiri as filmmakers casting a period drama). But that’s only half of our conversation, because I have to ask Sean and Nick (both Kim’s Video alums) about what they’ve been watching, as well as Sean’s other intriguing projects. The Sweet East opens on December 1 and stars Talia Ryder, Simon Rex, Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy O. Harris, and Jacob Elordi. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 214: Eric Hynes on award-winner "1489" and more documentary highlights at IDFA + bonus selections with Edo Choi Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. A special double episode wraps up our coverage of notable new nonfiction at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Eric Hynes, curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, discusses the IDFA Best Film award-winner, Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 1489, a harrowing and personal look at a family looking for a son missing in military action, and we cover other highlights including A Picture to Remember (Olga Chernykh), Chasing the Dazzling Light (Yaser Kassab), The Last (Sebastian Peña Escobar), and Behind Closed Doors (João Pedro Bim). And then, the podcast concludes with a quick bonus track: a chat with recent guest Edo Choi about a few more IDFA docs—Limitation, The Clinic, World Is Family, and Danger Zone. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 213: Julian Ross on New Nonfiction at IDFA Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Every year, a stimulating new crop of nonfiction cinema premieres at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. During the latest edition, I spoke with Julian Ross, an Amsterdam-based programmer and professor who is a film program advisor at IDFA and co-programmer of Doc Fortnight. He talks about recent events that occurred during the festival and attracted attention, and discusses film highlights such as Mohamad Jabaly’s Life Is Beautiful, Kaori Oda’s Gama, and Kumjana Novakova’s Silence of Reason, as well as the festival’s Corresponding Cinemas slate of filmmaker-to-filmmaker discussions and screenings featuring Sky Hopinka, Jumana Manna, and others. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 212: Restorations with James Vaughan: Abel Gance, Pressure, Man Ray, Abraham’s Valley Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Every year the New York Film Festival rolls out a selection of revivals and restorations, and for the latest edition, I welcomed filmmaker James Vaughan (Friends and Strangers) back to the podcast. We discussed a number of highlights, some of which will be making their way to cinemas: La Roue (Abel Gance), Pressure (Horace Ové), films by Man Ray (accompanied by Jim Jarmusch’s band SQÜRL), and Abraham’s Valley (Manoel de Oliveira). Plus a straggler from the premieres: Martin Rejtman’s La Practica. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 211: Edo Choi on Killers of the Flower Moon, Janet Planet, All of Us Strangers, Kevin Jerome Everson Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is finally out in theaters, and it’s one of the films I discussed with Edo Choi, associate curator of the Museum of the Moving Image. We chatted on campus at Lincoln Center while attending the New York Film Festival, and the titles in our conversation included: Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, playwright-turned-filmmaker Annie Baker’s Janet Planet, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, and new work by Kevin Jerome Everson and James Benning. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 210: Bruce Bennett on Eight Hours of Terror, Ambush at Tomahawk Gap, Yield to the Night, Nuke Films, and more Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s that most wonderful time: writer and “recovering film critic” Bruce Bennett returns to the podcast for another absolutely enjoyable discussion of recent viewing. As always it’s hard to pigeonhole the selection but broadly speaking we mine the 1950s—from Japan to England to the U.S.—for unsung brilliance by known and under-known auteurs. Films include: Eight Hours of Terror (Seijun Suzuki), Ambush at Tomahawk Gap (Fred Sears), Yield to the Night (J. Lee Thompson), Ladybird Ladybird (Frank and Eleanor Perry), Locked In (David C. Snyder), and much more. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass