Ep. 277: Shonni Enelow on Acting: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Mid-to-Late Rohmer, The Beast Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m happy to welcome back scholar Shonni Enelow for another thoughtful chat about acting and performance, and how they reflect or respond to changing times. Enelow, a professor at Fordham University who just published a new book on Joanna Hogg, writes an acting column at Reverse Shot. We talk about realism in...

Ep. 276: Mark Asch on Blitz, Hellraiser, Saturday Night, Northern Lights, plus Compensation Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 62nd New York Film Festival wound down, I nabbed critic Mark Asch after the press screening of Blitz for a little chat. We shared some initial impressions of Steve McQueen’s Blitz, the festival’s closing night film, and then went through a few notable selections from the Revivals section: Hellraiser (Clive Barker), Northern Lights...

Ep. 275: Rumours Directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson Talk About Movies Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week sees the release of Rumours, the new movie from Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson. It's about a remote gathering of world leaders (played by Cate Blanchett and Roy Dupuis among others) who face a looming crisis and encounter a giant brain in a forest -- for starters. During the New York Film Festival, I jumped at the...

Ep. 274: Alissa Wilkinson on NYFF: Suburban Fury, My Undesirable Friends, Wang Bing, 7 Walks with Mark Brown, Nickel Boys Redux Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In the concluding week of the 62nd New York Film Festival, I sat down with Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times to hear her thoughts on a few titles. Two were world premieres: Suburban Fury (directed by Robinson Devor) and My Undesirable Friends: Part 1—Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev). The other...

Ep. 273: Amy Taubin on NYFF: Nickel Boys, My Undesirable Friends, New Godard and Albert Serra, No Other Land, Rumours Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the New York Film Festival presents a kind of best-of-the-year selection for its 62nd edition, I sat down with the one and only Amy Taubin to discuss a few highlights. Titles discussed include: Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’s extraordinary debut fiction feature which we had just seen on opening night; Jean-Luc...

Ep. 272: Christian Lorentzen on Pavements (and Pavement) Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week the movie Pavements (and the band Pavement) came to The New York Film Festival. So I sat down after a Lincoln Center screening with critic Christian Lorentzen of the London Review of Books among many publications, to get his initial impressions on the hybrid documentary from director Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell, Listen Up Philip). Lorentzen talks about the band’s...

Ep. 271: Eric Hynes on Conclave, Friendship, Tata, The Last Republican, Winter in Sokcho (Toronto) Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. So it turns out I had another Toronto International Film Festival episode up my sleeve, with Eric Hynes, Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image. We talk about the Ralph Fiennes elect-a-pope movie, Conclave (directed by Edward Berger); the Tim Robinson comedy, Friendship (directed by Andrew DeYoung); an intriguing pair of...

Ep. 270: First-Person 1990s Documentary at MOMI with Jeff Reichert and Asha Phelps: Personal Belongings and Beyond Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The documentary work that bloomed in the 1990s, partly thanks to new technologies, has a raw immediacy that’s a pleasure to re-encounter on the big screen. Thanks to a new series starting this weekend at the Museum of the Moving Image, you can, and I sat down with the co-programmers, Jeff Reichert and Asha Phelps,...

Ep. 269: Toronto 2024: Mark Asch on The End, Hard Truths, Eden, Measures for a Funeral Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The fall is always packed with movies entering the world for the first time, and the Toronto International Film Festival brings together a sprawling slate of such premieres—some opening later in the fall, some looking for distributors. As I have for several years, I went to Toronto and chatted with fellow critic Mark Asch, who used to edit me...

Ep. 268: Venice 2024: Jessica Kiang on April, Queer, Vermiglio, Happyend, 2073 Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival had a few more important films up its sleeve in its final days, and I was very happy to sit down in Venice with Jessica Kiang of Variety for a chat. Titles discussed include: April (directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili), Queer (Luca Guadagnino), Vermiglio (Maura Delpero), Happyend (Neo Sora), and 2073 (Asif Kapadia). This...

Ep. 267: Venice 2024: Edo Choi on Pavements, Familiar Touch, Mistress Dispeller, Israel Palestine doc, plus Joker 2 Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival is underway, and I’m podcasting from the Lido about the latest movies to screen. This time I chatted with Edo Choi of the Museum of the Moving Image who is writing up a couple of films for Reverse Shot. Titles discussed include: Pavements (directed by Alex Ross Perry), Familiar Touch...

Ep. 266: Venice 2024: Guy Lodge on Harvest, Babygirl Redux, Peacock, Diciannove (Nineteen) Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival is underway, and I’m podcasting from the Lido about the latest movies to screen. This time I chatted with critic Guy Lodge of Variety about a number of titles including Harvest (directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari), Diciannove (Giovanni Tortorici), Peacock (Bernhard Wenger), and one more time, Babygirl (Halina...

Ep. 265: Venice 2024: Glenn Kenny on The Room Next Door, I’m Still Here, Wolfs, Separated, Finally, The Brutalist Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival is underway, and I’m podcasting from on site about the latest movies to screen. This time I chatted with critic Glenn Kenny (Roger Ebert, The New York Times) about a number of titles including The Room Next Door (directed by Pedro Almodóvar), I’m Still Here (Walter Salles), Separated...

Ep. 264: Venice 2024: Jordan Cronk on The Brutalist, Cloud, Baby Invasion, The Day the Clown Cried, Three Friends Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival has just begun, and I’m podcasting from the festival about the latest movies to screen. This time I chatted with critic and programmer Jordan Cronk. Among the titles we discussed are The Brutalist (directed by Brady Corbet), Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa), Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine),...

Ep. 263: Venice 2024: Jonathan Romney on Maria, Babygirl, The Quay Bros., John and Yoko, Beetlejuice 2 Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 81st Venice Film Festival has just begun, and I will be podcasting from the festival about the latest lineup. To make sense of the opening batch of movies, I sat down for a chat with critic Jonathan Romney, who is covering the festival for Screen Daily and The Observer. Among the titles we discussed are Beetlejuice...

Ep. 262: Locarno 2024 with Keva York: Invention, Sparrow in the Chimney, Mandico, Vernier Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Before the fall schedule of festivals and new releases begins in earnest, the Locarno festival has its say with a few choice selections (last year including one of my favorites, Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World). This year, I chatted about the Locarno selection with critic Keva York, who was attending the...

Ep. 261: Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells on The Strange Mr. Victor, Serpent’s Path, Parenthood, and more Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Nathan Silver’s latest movie Between the Temples comes to cinemas on August 23, with a cast lead by Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. So for this episode, Silver and his co-writer, C. Mason Wells, join the podcast to talk about recent viewing (some of it in preparation for writing a new film!). Among the titles discussed...

Ep. 260: Trap, Twisters, This Closeness, Janet Planet, Last Summer, and more with Maxwell Paparella and Elissa Suh Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. After a little summer vacation, it’s time once again to chat about some recent releases with two guests making their premieres on the podcast: Maxwell Paparella, an editor at MUBI Notebook, and Elissa Suh, a critic who’s published in Screen Slate, Vogue, and Bon Appetit, and writes a substack called MOVIEPUDDING....

Ep. 259: K.J. Relth-Miller on Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024: Sisters of Nishijin, Amadeus, Anatole Livtak retro, The Innerview, The Sealed Soil Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Il Cinema Ritrovato, the annual festival of revivals and restorations, showcases a bounty of discoveries, classics, and rarities in Bologna, Italy, many of which will then make their way across the world. Among the eager audience members was K.J. Relth-Miller, director of film programs at...

Ep. 258: Amy Taubin on Tribeca Picks, Agnieszka Holland, Bleak Week, Mireia Sallarès’s Little Deaths Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Why go through the summer without a return visit from the inimitable Amy Taubin? On this episode we discuss a few films cherry-picked from this year’s Tribeca Festival; Agnieszka Holland and her incisive latest film Green Border; the intriguing repertory series known as Bleak Week, held annually at L.A.’s American Cinematheque...

Ep. 257: The Nitrate Picture Show 2024 with David Schwartz Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Nitrate Picture Show takes place every year in Rochester, New York, at the George Eastman Museum, projecting movies from nitrate prints. The resulting super-vivid images create a movie-going experience that can be, in the words of my guest, programmer David Schwartz, “life-changing.” I asked Schwartz about some of his highlights at this increasingly popular...

Ep. 256: Amy Taubin on Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, The Shrouds, Charles Atlas, Arthur Jafa, Man Ray, and More Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The one and only Amy Taubin comes back to The Last Thing I Saw for a wide-ranging conversation about what she’s been watching. That includes at least a couple of Cannes titles—Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me and David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds—and New York repertory highlights from the spring: the enormous Charles Atlas...