Ep. 312: R. Emmet Sweeney on Tomonari Nishikawa, Minecraft, Long Gone, Crac!, plus Sinners and The Sniper

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m pleased to welcome back a friend of the podcast, R. Emmet Sweeney, who produces physical media for Kino Lorber and writes about movies as well as music. He runs a thriving substack newsletter called Old New, where he recently assembled remembrances of the filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa, who recently passed away. We talked a bit about Nishikawa’s movies, as well as baseball picture Long Gone, Minecraft, the Canadian animated short Crac! (a selection from Light Industry’s recent Children’s Cinema), with a few words from me on Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and The Sniper, an Edward Dmytryk joint featured in the Columbia Pictures series at the Museum of Modern Art.

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Ep. 311: Radu Jude on his film Kontinental ’25, reflecting the world today, and going back to basics

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s not every day that I feature the same filmmaker twice in two years on the podcast, but we’ll make a delightful exception for Radu Jude, director of Kontinental ’25. I spoke with Jude about Kontinental '25 at the Berlin Film Festival, where his film won a Silver Bear, and where Jude previously won the Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Kontinental ’25 follows a bailiff (an outstanding Eszter Tompa) who faces a personal reckoning after she evicts a man. True to the director of the rambunctious Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, our conversation features his thoughtful reflections on living in the world today, on filmmaking technique, on dinosaur parks, and on what he’s been reading and watching.

Kontinental ’25 will be released theatrically in North America by 1-2 Special.

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Ep. 310: Amy Taubin on Dying for Sex, The Shrouds, Adolescence, Marina Zurkow, Hoberman Book, Black Bag, Zero Day, Mickey 17, plus Warfare

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. What better way to begin the glorious spring than a deluxe episode with the one and only Amy Taubin! The legendary critic returns to the podcast to talk about what she’s been watching, seeing, and reading. Among the works discussed: Dying for Sex, Adolescence, Black Bag, The Shrouds, J. Hoberman’s new book Everything Is Now, Marina Zurkow’s Whitney show, shows of John Zorn and Ericka Beckman at the Drawing Center, Zero Day, Mickey 17, and more. I chime in with some thoughts on Warfare and 2,000 Meters to Andriivka and some recent reading.

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Ep. 309: Jourdain Searles on Lurker, Mad Bills to Pay, Dead Lover, Together, By Design, Desert Fury

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of my absolute favorite critics working today is Jourdain Searles, a contributor to several publications (The Film Stage, Hollywood Reporter) and DVD/Blu-ray labels, but I also avidly read her X posts which offer a sharp running critique on films new and old. Searles joins the podcast to discuss a couple of big films screening in New Directors / New Films—Lurker (the Closing Night selection, directed by Alex Russell) and Mad Bills to Pay (Joel Alfonso Vargas)—and some other notable titles from Sundance like Dead Lover (Grace Glowicki), Together (Michael Shanks), and By Design (Amanda Kramer). Plus: the last film she saw at the time of recording: Desert Fury (1947, Lewis Allen).

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Ep. 308: Karina Longworth on You Must Remember This: The Old Man Is Still Alive – Capra, Ford, Donen, Wyler, and Co.

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast needs no introduction for her erudite, wildly popular considerations of Hollywood film history, and in her latest season of episodes, she looks at the late-career work of major directors through a variety of lenses. I was delighted to welcome Longworth to the latest episode of The Last Thing I Saw to discuss her selection of filmmakers and their often idiosyncratic later works, including Frank Capra, Stanley Donen, John Ford, Otto Preminger, and William Wyler. She also makes a pick or two of contemporary directors we might consider in their twilight today...

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Ep. 306: Olivier Assayas on his film Suspended Time, personal filmmaking, and recent favorites

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This weekend, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema presents the latest Olivier Assayas film, Suspended Time—a thoughtful and funny chronicle set in the French countryside during pandemic lockdown. Set in Assayas’s parents’ house, it’s about much more, circling his relationship with his rock critic brother—whom he isolated with, along with their partners—and the feelings of reckoning with mortality and the past that are stirred up. I spoke with Assayas when Suspended Time originally premiered in Berlin about fictionalizing his experience, the introspection of the pandemic, the directors that influenced him, his recent viewing, and where his Irma Vep series fit into all of this. Vincent Macaigne (also in the Irma Vep series) and Micha Lescot co-star as the brothers Assayas.

Suspended Time screens March 14 and 16 at Film at Lincoln Center as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025.

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Ep. 307: Bruce Bennett Returns! Two by Kaneto Shindo, Breezy, Anita Pallenberg, Nightshift, My First Film

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. First, some news: It's a wonderful honor to be presenting a special double screening at the wonderful Light Industry on March 18: An Evening with The Last Thing I Saw! The films that I'll be presenting spring forth from chats on... The Last Thing I Saw. One of these chats is the latest with Bruce Bennett, returns to the podcast to share another treasure chest of movies. We start with two films written by the relentlessly sharp Kaneto Shindo: Devil’s Temple (1969) and The Whale God (1962, aka Killer Whale). What follows ranges from Clint Eastwood’s Breezy (1973) to Zia Anger’s My First Film to a little word on Nightshift (1981) from your host.

Kaneto Shindo's work comprises one half of the March 18 double feature at Light Industry: Elegant Beast, written by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Yūzō Kawashima. The other half is Fate, from the rarely screened directorial oeuvre of Fred Kelemen, DP for Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse, The Man from London) among others.

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Ep. 305: K.J. Relth-Miller on Berlinale Classics: Tenderness of the Wolves, Solo Sunny, Spare Parts, Don’t Cheat, Darling!

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I welcome back K.J. Relth-Miller, director of film programs at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, to hear about her latest travels through new restorations and revivals. As we did last year, we explore this year's Berlinale Classics, a section at the Berlin film festival devoted to restorations and revivals. Our focus is “Wild, Weird, Bloody!”—a series devoted to German genre cinema in all its splendor. We discuss films ranging from horror to musical to crime drama, including: Tenderness of the Wolves (directed by Ulli Lommel), Solo Sunny (Konrad Wolf), Spare Parts (Rainer Erler), Don’t Cheat, Darling! (Joachim Hasler), and Hat Off When You Kiss (Rolf Losansky). Plus: a new Hitchcock restoration, The Paradine Case.

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Ep. 304: Eric Hynes on True/False 2025: WTO/99, A Body to Live In, Resurrection, Kouté vwa, The Undergrowth

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The True/False Film Festival brings outstanding nonfiction films and filmmakers to Columbia, Missouri, each year, attracting world premieres and also curating from Sundance, IDFA, Berlin, and beyond. I sat down in Columbia with fellow True/False-goer Eric Hynes, senior curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image, to exchange some highlights from our time at the 2025 edition. Films discussed include: Resurrection (directed by Hu Sanshou), A Body to Live In (Angelo Madsen), WTO/99 (Ian Bell), The Undergrowth (Macu Machin), and Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices) (Maxime Jean-Baptiste).

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Ep. 303: Justin Chang on Berlin 2025: Blue Moon, Dreams (Sex Love), Girls on Wire

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For my latest dispatch from the Berlin film festival, I sat down with Justin Chang, film critic at The New Yorker (which, as it turns out, makes an appearance in one of the movies!). Films discussed include: the Golden Bear winner Dreams (Sex Love) from director Dag Johan Haugerud, Blue Moon (directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott, who won a Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance), and Girls on Fire from director Vivian Qu.

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