The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 417: Mark Asch on No Picnic, Late Fame, Half-Cocked, Welcome II the Terrordome, Wet Hot American Summer, One Night Only

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This August I welcomed back Mark Asch for another summertime episode extravaganza. This time we talk about some of his recent viewing from the past—No Picnic (directed by Philip Hartman), Half-Cocked (Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky), and Wet Hot American Summer (David Wain)—as well as a two recent releases, Late Fame (Kent Jones) and One Night Only (Will Gluck). We also discuss the newly restored 1994 film Welcome II the Terrordome, the Afrofuturist debut feature of Ngozi Onwurah.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 416: Keva York on Locarno 2026: Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming, 16 Moments in My Life, Donkey Princess, Asphalt Guerrilla

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 79th Locarno Film Festival is wrapping up and joining me for a chat about some of the highlights is returning guest Keva York, a critic who’s also working away as an editor for the festival’s daily. Among the films discussed are I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming (directed by Isabelle Stever), Albert Serra’s concert documentary on Ingrid Caven (16 Moments in My Life), Donkey Princess (Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña), Asphalt Guerrilla (Edgar Pêra) and last but not least, the latest Hong Sangsoo film (Nowhere to Lay My Eyes). York also shares notes on an interview she conducted with Rick Baker.

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Ep. 415: R. Emmet Sweeney on Wings of Dread, MoMA Silent Movie Week, Oh Darling Yeh Hai India, Blades of the Guardians, Driver’s Ed

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I always look forward to my regular check-in with R. Emmet Sweeney, who oversees physical media production at Kino Lorber and writes on film and jazz at his substack Old New. This time we trade notes on this year’s Silent Movie Week at the Museum of Modern Art, from Raoul Walsh (What Price Glory) to John Ford (3 Bad Men) to Chaplin (Shoulder Arms), and he shares his viewing in current Chinese action cinema, including Wings of Dread (Qin Pengfei & Ashton Chen) and Blades of the Guardians (Yuen Woo-ping); an outstanding 1995 Bollywood pick, the comedically and politically vibrant Oh Darling Yeh Hai India (Ketan Mehta); and a Farrelly Brother joint, Driver’s Ed.

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Ep. 414: Alissa Wilkinson on Jackass, The Odyssey, Ross McElwee’s Remake and Sherman’s March, Recent Viewing

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. After a summer break avoiding the flocks of the Sun God, I was delighted to welcome back to the show Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic at The New York Times and author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. Among the movies discussed are The Odyssey (directed by Christopher Nolan), the Jackass series and the larger stories they tell, Ross McElwee’s new essay documentary Remake and his classic feature-length debut Sherman’s March, and some recent viewing. My Fourth of July holiday watch is also revealed, in response to the (nonexistent) demand to know this fact. Stay tuned for more climate-controlled summertime episodes of The Last Thing I Saw!

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Ep. 413: Jourdain Searles and Maxwell Paparella on Backrooms, Maddie’s Secret, I Love Boosters, Rose of Nevada, Disclosure Day

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the summer settles in, I thought it was high time to catch up with a few theatrical releases of note. I had a wonderful time with my two guests who’ve each previously been on the show but not together: Jourdain Searles, critic and programmer, and Maxwell Paparella, deputy editor of Filmmaker magazine. We wove a thread or two through several titles that hopefully by now listeners have had a chance to see: Backrooms (directed by Kane Parsons), Maddie’s Secret (John Early), I Love Boosters (Boots Riley), Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin), and Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg).

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Ep. 412: Pierre Coffin on Minions and Monsters

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Somehow Minions and Monsters was just the heaping serving of nuttiness that I needed last week! But what I hadn’t quite anticipated was the extent of the movie's Hollywood references—ranging from Citizen Kane all the way back to... Eadweard Muybridge?! The movie love was evident and so I was eager to chat with Pierre Coffin, the director of Minions and Monsters, and the voice of its multilingual multitudes. We talked about movie influences, inspiration for the Minions voice, animation favorites and pet peeves, his favorite Miyazaki film, and much more.

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Ep. 411: Amy Taubin on Tribeca 2026 (Labrador: Autopsy of Silence, Jail Time Records, The Lorraine, Jean-Michel, Crocodile, They Fight, The Last Day), plus Romeria and I Love Boosters

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As has become our wont, I had the total pleasure of talking over films from the 2026 Tribeca Festival and other recent viewing with the one and only Amy Taubin. She shares a few Tribeca highlights (a couple of which won prizes at Tribeca) and also spotlights a couple of theatrical releases. Titles discussed include Labrador: Autopsy of Silence (directed by Rodrigue Jean), Jail Time Records (Dione Roach and Steve Happi), The Lorraine (Sam Pollard), Basquiat doc Jean-Michel (Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman), Crocodile (Pietra Bretkelly and The Critics), They Fight (Sheldon Candis), The Last Day (Rachel Rose), plus Romería (Carla Simón) and I Love Boosters (Boots Riley). But it all starts with the Knicks.

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Ep. 410: Caroline Golum on The Nitrate Picture Show 2026: Midnight, The Little Match Girl, When Tomorrow Comes, Bellissima, and much more

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Nitrate Picture Show at the George Eastman House has become an annual pilgrimage for film lovers, who come to see an array of titles from Hollywood and beyond, shown on prints, each with its own history. This year I chatted with Caroline Golum, director of Revelations of Divine Love, co-programmer of Pre-Code Parade at Nitehawk Cinema, and contributing editor at Screen Slate, where she filed a report on this year’s edition of the Nitrate Picture Show. Among the films I was lucky to hear about were Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939), The Little Match Girl (Jean Renoir, 1928), When Tomorrow Comes (John M. Stahl, 1939), Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944), Bellissima (Visconti, 1951), Unter den Brücken... (Helmut Käutner, 1945), Camille (George Cukor, 1936), and Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950).

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Ep. 409: Chris LeMaire on Bleak Week + John Wilson on Beak Week 2026

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2026 edition of Bleak Week marks the fifth year of the acclaimed series at the American Cinematheque, which now also takes place in other theaters across the nation and the globe. Happily I was able to talk to Chris Lemaire, director of programming at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles and co-founder of Bleak Week, about a few fantastic selections in the ongoing series, including tribute programs for guests Isabelle Huppert and Warwick Thornton, rarities like Letters from a Dead Man and Eureka, and restorations such as Buster and Billie.

On the second half of the episode, I was lucky to catch filmmaker John Wilson, co-founder of the Low Cinema in Ridgewood, in the midst of the theater’s delightful Beak Week program. Wilson talks about a personal favorite from the bird-centric lineup, a special recent surprise guest, a program of pigeon shorts, and some infrequently screened titles in the lineup.

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Ep. 408: Tubi programmer Ryan Lavallette on The In-Laws, Magic, 20 Questions, Arlington Road, Scorpio, Captain Ron, Report to the Commissioner, Skinamarink

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Tubi holds a special place among streamers for its free, wildly eclectic selection, and I’m not the only one who goes trawling through its selections to find something different to watch. And so for the latest episode, I had a blast talking with a member of the Tubi programming team, Ryan Lavalette, senior manager of content programming at the streamer. I picked his brain a little about how the Tubi mix is created, and then we chatted about a few movies currently on Tubi that had caught our eye for various reasons: The In-Laws (1979, with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin), Magic (1978, with Anthony Hopkins), 20 Questions (1987), Arlington Road (1999), Scorpio (1973), Captain Ron (1992), Report to the Commissioner (1975), and Skinamarink (2022).

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