The Last Thing I Saw

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Venice Film Festival has begun, with world premieres including Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, Pablo Larraín’s Spenser, Edgar Wright’s Last night in Soho, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. I’ll be talking about as many of them as I can here on the podcast. But to start off, I thought I would talk with Paul Schrader, whose his new movie The Card Counter has its world premiere in Venice before its U.S. release on September 10th. Oscar Isaac plays a quiet gambler haunted by his time as a military interrogator at Abu Ghraib. He gets taken on by a gambling recruiter played by Tiffany Haddish, and befriends a strange young man played by Tye Sheridan, who has some scary ideas. I talked with Schrader a little about Venice (where he set his 1990 film The Comfort of Strangers), and about finishing The Card Counter in a pandemic, Tiffany Haddish’s vital importance to the movie, gambling, and of course the last movies he saw. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Before the onslaught of new fall releases, I thought it’d be nice to tackle three big summer titles. We start with Annette, the long-awaited new feature from Leos Carax starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard; The Green Knight, David Lowery’s medieval fantasy with Dev Patel; and last but definitely not least, the mind-bender Old, from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. Joining the podcast for the first time is Adam Nayman, a contributing editor at Cinema Scope whose work is published in The Ringer and Sight & Sound and who's written books about Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Showgirls. And returning to the show is Beatrice Loayza, a fellow contributor at The New York Times whose work also appears in many other publications. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s August and that means it’s time to talk about the Locarno film festival, which for years has been a reliable launching pad for stimulating and challenging cinema. This year I’m back talking with the critic and programmer Jordan Cronk (Acropolis Cinema). Our highlights include a raw adaptation of Medea from Russia by Alex Zeldovich, a spectacular debut feature called A New Old Play from a Chinese artist that looks at the afterlife, and the Indonesian genre film Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. A few months ago I caught wind of a book with an intriguing title: Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna. It turned out to be a collection of writings from when Wilder as a brash young journalist—his previous career before becoming one of Hollywood’s absolute greatest directors. It’s a fascinating read, and as for his career, you can’t go wrong with a track record like Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Ace in the Hole, to name only a few. So I decided to bring together three colleagues to pick one Wilder movie apiece -- one per decade -- and share a few things we love about the director’s work. I was joined by three powerhouse critics of classic Hollywood who practically need no introduction: Farran Smith Nehme, Sheila O’Malley, and Steven Mears. Special thanks to Noah Isenberg who edited Billy Wilder on Assignment (Princeton University Press) which helps launch our conversation. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I like to bring together many kinds of movies on the show and this week’s deluxe episode is a case in point. We haven’t talked much about horror movies lately and so I was happy to get the chance to speak with Rebecca Hall about her role in The Night House, directed by David Bruckner. The Night House is a haunting horror movie about grief that opens on August 20, and we’ll hear more later about Hall's creating a character who faces both jump scares and weighty emotional burdens. But first we preview a few titles that we haven’t covered yet, with Giovanni Marchini Camia, a critic and editor (Fireflies Press) who attended the Cannes film festival. Key titles that premiered there will screen in New York and/or Toronto: Bruno Dumont’s dazzling satire France, starring Lea Seydoux; Gaspar Noé’s Vortex, a change of pace about an older couple; and Hong Sangsoo’s In Front of Your Face, his latest film (for now). You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s been a while since I’ve really focused on a documentary on the show, and a terrific opportunity came up with the release of The Viewing Booth. The Viewing Booth is a movie that’s been at festivals but for whatever reason, did not make its way to theaters until now. Which is unfortunate because it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen about how we sort out what we think and feel about the hundreds of things we are shown each and every day—intellectually, politically, emotionally. So I was very happy to talk with the film’s director, Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, and Eric Hynes, curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image, which is giving The Viewing Booth a two-week theatrical run. We talk about how the movie works and the questions it raises with its simply but ingenious concept. One final note: as you’ll hear, this is my first episode in a long time that I have recorded in the great outdoors, so enjoy the mild breeze. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of my favorite films this year hands-down is Friends and Strangers, directed by James Vaughan. It’s about a timid twenty-something guy in Sydney, Australia, who goes on a camping trip with a woman his age. Skipping ahead a bit, he kind of goes nowhere fast and gets bogged down on a job with a wealthy loudmouth. The movie had its world premiere at the Rotterdam film festival, and during the festival’s June anniversary celebration, I had the chance to talk with Vaughan. Vaughan chose silent cinema for our subject and sent a list of films that he had freshly encountered over the past year. We settled on a few: G.W. Pabst's Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, and The Love of Jeanne Ney; and from F.W. Murnau his spectacular retelling of Faust. But we also ended up talking about Eisenstein’s work, and got into how these movies have affected Vaughan’s thinking as a filmmaker. Friends and Strangers will be released in the U.S. down the road by Grasshopper Films so look out for it. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw. I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s not as well-known as the main competition, but I have always loved Cannes Classics and its selection of restorations, revivals, and film documentaries. The genuine discoveries and clever programming are outstanding, but many people find it hard to fit them into the usual crazy Cannes schedule. So, this year I vowed to put together a special Cannes Classics episode. There are far too many worthy titles to cover them all, but I got together with Carlos Valladares and talked about some highlights. Including: The Moon Has Risen, from Japanese filmmaker and actress Kinuyo Tanaka; La Guerre Est Finie, from Alain Resnais; and the much-loved Powell and Pressburger film I Know Where I’m Going. I also talk about the wonderfully odd Friendship’s Death, starring Tilda Swinton in an early role and directed by film theorist Peter Wollen; and also Repentance, a brash Georgian satire from the 1980s about a dictatorial mayor who comes back from the dead, sort of. For show notes and more, go to: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. We heard from Amy Taubin at the beginning of this Cannes series, and now that the festival has wound down, I got together with Amy once more. This time, we single out some strong movies that could use more attention. That includes a remarkable group of films set in Latin America: Prayers for the Stolen, La Civil, and Clara Sola. We also talk about the Bangladeshi drama Rehana, and Amy gives a few preliminary thoughts on a much-anticipated title that arrived late in the festival. If you like what you hear, please support this podcast: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For this week’s episode, I catch up with my colleague Jonathan Romney, a veteran critic of the festival circuit who regularly files for Screen Daily. For this year’s blockbuster Cannes lineup, he joins the podcast to talk about a strong batch of films that we haven’t heard about yet. That includes two Iranian movies: A Hero from Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi, and Hit the Road, from Panah Panahi. Plus there was a curious new movie co-directed by Miguel Gomes, who you might know from Arabian Nights; a new Jacques Audiard movie, Paris 13th District; and a highly unpredictable Russian film called Petrov’s Flu. It’s a mix of adventuresome films that we’ll definitely be hearing more of down the road. You can support this podcast and read show notes with links at: rapold.substack.com Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets Photo by Steve Snodgrass