The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 278: Sean Baker on Anora and its influences, and his recent viewing

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. We’re back with an extra-special episode that’s chock full of pure movie love! Written and directed by Sean Baker, Anora starring Mikey Madison keeps winning over audiences as it’s expanded to theaters across the country, with its New York story of a stripper (Madison) and her star-crossed relationship with a billionaire’s son (Mark Eydelshteyn). Baker is a voracious cinephile, so I jumped at the chance to sit down with him on The Last Thing I Saw and talk about the movie influences on Anora – plus some choice making-of details – and also what he’s been watching. His movie-watching range was an absolute delight to hear about, and I won’t spoil it here – so have a listen and enjoy!

Anora won the Palme d'Or at the 2024 Cannes film festival, where it premiered. Baker's other films include The Florida Project, Tangerine, Starlet, Prince of Broadway, Red Rocket, and another New York-set movie, Take Out.

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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 21st-century acting and direct address through her first column’s subject, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, as well as I Saw the TV Glow, both directed by Jane Schoenbrun. Then we discuss the distinctive performances and styles of self-presentation in Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast and two mid-to-late films of Eric Rohmer.

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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 (John Hanson, Rob Nilsson), Compensation (Zeinabu irene Davis). In the dramatic conclusion, Mark demands that we speak of Saturday Night (Jason Reitman).

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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 chance to chat with the filmmakers about movies. The conversation had two parts: movies related to Rumours in some way, and then (taps sign) the last things each filmmaker had seen, whether in a cinema or at home. Their wide-ranging answers were an absolute delight, which I won’t spoil here!

Rumours opens on October 18, including screenings at IFC Center moderated by executive producer Ari Aster and Owen Kline. Through Oct. 17, IFC Center is also showing a Guy Maddin retrospective including Careful, Brand Upon the Brain!, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, My Winnipeg, The Forbidden Room, and more.

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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 titles include Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy (Spring, Hard Times, and Homecoming), 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Vincent Barré, Pierre Creton), and Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross).

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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 Godard’s Scénarios and Exposé du Film annonce du film “Scénario”; It’s Not Me (Leos Carax); My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev), a world premiere; No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor); Union (Brett Story, Stephen Maing); Dahomey (Mati Diop); All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia); Rumours (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson); and Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra).

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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 past and present (and future?), recalls attending the Pavement musical excerpted in the film, quotes the late Fredric Jameson, and ponders how earnestness and great poets fit into what the band is up to.

Keep up with the latest from Christian Lorentzen at christianlorentzen.substack.com.

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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 documentaries, Tata (directed by Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc) and The Last Republican (Steve Pink); and Platform selection Winter in Sokcho (Koya Kamura). Last but not least, we take another look at Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End.

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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, about the series and its sampling of candid, complicated stories (with almost comically understated titles). Films discussed include: Personal Belongings (directed by Steven Bognar), Papapapá (Alex Rivera), The Tourist (Robb Moss), Vintage: Families of Value (Thomas Allen Harris), Finding Christa (Camille Billops and James Hatch), Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher), Family Gathering (Lise Yasui), and Moment of Impact, from Julia Loktev, whose latest, My Undesirable Friends, is premiering in the New York Film Festival.

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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 years ago at The L Magazine. Titles discussed include: The End (Joshua Oppenheimer), with Michael Shannon, Tilda Swinton, George MacKay; Hard Truths (Mike Leigh), with Marianne Jean-Baptiste; Eden (Ron Howard) with Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney; and Measures for a Funeral (Sofia Bohdanowicz) with Deragh Campbell.

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