Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

The latest episode of the podcast delves into the history of movie crews in New York, as told through hundreds of interviews by Michael Lee Nirenberg. His new book, Cinematic Immunity, is storehouse of lore, ranging from The French Connection to Do the Right Thing to Wolfen to Peewee’s Playhouse.

Michael (who also works as a scenic artist) was a lot of fun to chat with, and in a way his episode makes a fascinating pairing with my interview with James N. Kienitz Wilkins. His film, The Misconceived, employs a game engine and motion capture to tell its story of two classmates crossing paths after many years. It’s a funny, visually fascinating, and pungently sharp movie which recently opened First Look at the Museum of the Moving Image and is coming to Anthology Film Archives.

I’m also sharing my most recent conversation with Amy Taubin, where we talked about The Christophers, the latest from Steven Soderbergh... whom I also interviewed for BOMB Magazine. It’s all connected and there is order in the universe somewhere!

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw,

Nic

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THE PODCAST

Michael Lee Nirenberg on his new oral history about New York filmmaking crews, Cinematic Immunity

Amy Taubin on The Christophers, Ken Jacobs Tributes, Kontinental ’25, her New Directors/New Films pick, Elvira Notari, Crimson Gold, plus Fiume o Morte!

James N. Kienitz Wilkins on The Misconceived

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at iTunes, Spotify, and so on.

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

My latest reviews for The New York Times were the brain-busting pairing of Hamlet, a dynamic new adaptation starring Riz Ahmed, and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

For BOMB, I had a wonderful time talking to Steven Soderbergh about The Christophers, his new movie starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel as painters entangled in intrigue, and about his process generally.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

Gone in 60 Seconds (Criterion) The 1974 original model

Sound of Falling (MUBI) A Cannes sensation last year

Lumière, le cinéma! (Criterion) I wrote about this and the Lumières generally for The Financial Times. It’s a whole new ball game with these restorations.

See You Next Tuesday (MUBI) Reviewed this back in the day—nice to see it resurfacing

A Scanner Darkly (Tubi) Apropos of The Misconceived, mentioned on my podcast with James N. Kienitz Wilkins

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event or screening.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Documentary Magazine, Air Mail, BOMB, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and screenings I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

This week I’m happy to welcome ol’ pal Margaret Barton-Fumo back to the podcast! She talks about a couple of music movies she’s written about, plus some other recent viewing. I heartily recommend listening to Margaret’s show No Pussyfooting on East Village Radio!

On the writing front, I have a feature at The Financial Times that included talking to MVP Julia Loktev, director of My Undesirable Friends: Part One—Last Air in Moscow. I also had a blast chatting with the director of Fiume o morte! for the Metrograph Journal. All that’s below!

Finally, last week I was invited for a wonderful event at Maxwells Trading in Chicago related to The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki—more below.

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

THE PODCAST

Margaret Barton-Fumo on Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, Breaking Glass, Paying for It, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, plus early Mira Nair

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at the usual podcast places (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

For The Financial Times, I wrote a feature about My Undesirable Friends: Part One—Last Air in Moscow and two other recent documentaries showing resistance in action, including interviews with Loktev, David Borenstein (co-director of Academy Award winner Mr. Nobody Against Putin), and Felipe Bustos Sierra (director of Everybody to Kenmure Street).

Opening soon at Metrograph, Fiume o morte! reenacts the improbable rise of proto-Fascist poet Gabriele d’Annunzio and his 1919 takeover of an entire city. I had a wonderful time talking with the film’s director, Igor Bezinovic, for Metrograph Journal. With a special guest appearance...

My latest review for The New York Times is Fantasy Life, a double comic portrait in anxiety and gloom.

And just opened this weekend: Living the Land, a portrait of rural life in a rapidly changing China, which I reviewed when it premiered in Berlin last year.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

My Undesirable Friends: Part One–Last Air in Moscow (MUBI) The year’s best documentary hits streaming

The Unholy Three (Tubi) As featured on the Chicago Film Society episode

Chess of the Wind (Criterion)

Marty Supreme (HBO MAX) As reviewed in Sight & Sound

Resurrection (Criterion) Here’s my interview with the director, Bi Gan

THE BOOK

Last week I had an incredible event at Maxwells Trading in Chicago, teaming up with Perpetual Books for a book chat about Hayao Miyazaki and a delicious tailor-made dinner. Big thanks to mastermind and interlocutor James Hughes and gratitude to the ingenious chefs and lovely attendees!

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event or screening.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

As recently featured on Margaret’s show, No Pussyfooting, on East Village Radio.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Documentary Magazine, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and screenings I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

Welcome back to the program. This week I present a lovely trio of episodes: filmmaker Christian Petzold on Miroirs No. 3 (and zombie movies), programmer/editor Clyde Folley on his VHS series on Criterion, and a welcome debut from Screen Slate writer Patrick Dahl on his favorite discoveries of the past year.

I also had a delightful time doing a positively zany array of writing.

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

THE PODCAST

Clyde Folley on VHS Forever: Videoheaven, 52 Pick-Up, Re-Wind, The Big Hit, Ring, Clerks, Lost Highway

Christian Petzold on Miroirs No. 3, now in theaters

Patrick Dahl on People’s Park, Remember My Name, Margaret, The Pigeon Tunnel

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at the usual podcast places (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

For the Times, I reviewed Sergei Loznitsa’s excellent latest film, Two Prosecutors, about a state attorney investigating the case of a tortured prisoner during Stalin’s purges. Critic’s Pick.

Also for the Times, I reviewed the bloody thriller Dhurandhar the Revenge, the sequel to the record-breaking Dhurandhar, continuing the story of an undercover Indian operative who rises to become a gangland leader and political force in Pakistan.

For Screen Slate, I wrote up James Benning’s Eight Bridges, his new work of landscape art which left me in a state. It premiered at the Berlin film festival and screened in Doc Fortnight at MoMA.

And one final dispatch on some excellent nonfiction at the Berlinale, for Documentary Magazine.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

Pompei: Below the Clouds (MUBI) Gianfranco Rosi’s beautiful roving documentary about decline—at least that’s how I took it. Not available for a few more days but throw it on the queue

Baby Face (HBO MAX) Barbara Stanwyck (see above)

Sieranevada (Criterion) Roiling contemporary family drama which I liked when I saw it years ago at Cannes and thought had disappeared

52 Pick-Up (Criterion) As featured on my podcast with Clyde Folley about VHS Forever series on the Criterion Channel

Route One / USA (OVID) Robert Kramer directs. More RK’s on OVID

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Documentary Magazine, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

It’s been a little while since my last round-up, but I’ve been busy putting together another slate of podcasts for your delectation. This time I bring you filmmakers and films you should know about from the Berlinale—episodes on countesses and queens, coups and sieges, Mouse and Flies, Everybody Loves Bill Evans and Everything Else Is Noise, Angela Schanelec and Alain Gomis.

But before I even left for Berlin, I snuck in a couple of doozies with MOMI curator Michael Koresky and with Metrograph’s intrepid editors. And then I spoke with one of the contenders for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, Oliver Laxe, director of Sirat.

That’s all for now. Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

Share

THE PODCAST

Berlin 2026 – David Hudson on Rosebush Pruning, Red Hangar, Dao, plus a word for Mouse

Berlin 2026 - Jordan Cronk on Rose, Everything Else Is Noise, Dust, Doggerland, Tristan Forever, London

Berlin 2026 – Guy Lodge on Queen at Sea, We Are All Strangers, Nina Roza, Forest High

Berlin 2026 – Jonathan Romney on My Wife Cries, 17, Safe Exit, Chronicles from the Siege

Berlin 2026 – Rachel Pronger on The Blood Countess, No Good Men, The Radu Jude Short, The Fabulous Time Machine, The Cruel Woman

Berlin 2026 – Bilge Ebiri on Mouse, Moscas (Flies), Everybody Digs Bill Evans

Berlin 2026 - Eric Hynes on Chronicles of a Siege, Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), Soumsoum the Night of the Stars, Dao, Bucks Harbor

Oliver Laxe on Sirat

Metrograph editors Annabel Brady-Brown, Nick Pinkerton, Kelli Weston on Zelda Wynn Valdes, Paul Morrissey, and The Sound of David Lynch and Dean Hurley

Michael Koresky on the Year 2001 series at MOMI – A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Our Song, Mulholland Drive, Burnt Money, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Fat Girl, Moulin Rouge, and more

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at the usual podcast places (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

For The Financial Times, I wrote an obituary for Robert Duvall and an article about the Lumière Brothers, who got us all into this (cinematic) mess, on the occasion of a new documentary, Lumiere! Le Cinéma, showing soon at the Museum of Modern Art and beyond.

For The New York Times, I reviewed The Inquisitor, a stirring documentary about the esteemed congresswoman and professor Barbara Jordan, who died 30 years ago.

I’ve written other articles that will publish down the road, so I’ll share a festival review for an excellent film that’s now getting its U.S. release: Kontinental ’25, opening March 27.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

Gugusse et l’Automate (Library of Congress) Lost Méliès film is found! Whole, cool story here. Also, funnily enough it’s about AI-will-kill-us-all!

Ring (Criterion) Good old Ring-y!

The Death of Stalin (MUBI)

Faces (Criterion) Good old Faces-y!

The Color of Olives (Palestine Film Platform)

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I’m a contributing editor at Screen Slate, which recently won a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle. Previously, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

I don’t really know how it happened but I went to Sundance and then compulsively talked about movies that screened there. It’s all below, recorded in podcast form. What movie was my favorite? Easy: listen to all eight episodes and find out.

I did take a break to chat with Simón Mesa Soto, Colombian director of the very fine new film A Poet. His movie opened last week and has been delighting audiences. See it!

Thank you to all my supporters. Stay warm! Or maybe you’re already someplace warm, I don’t know, nobody tells me anything.

Nic

Share

THE PODCAST

Simón Mesa Soto on his new film A Poet

Sundance 2026 - Amy Taubin on the festival, plus a preview of John Wilson’s The History of Concrete

Sundance 2026 – Sam Adams on Josephine, Wicker, The Moment, Kogonada’s Zi

Sundance 2026 – Tim Grierson on The Invite, The Weight, The Friend’s House Is Here, plus All About the Money

Sundance 2026 – Abby Sun on Closure, Cookie Queens, To Hold a Mountain, Seized

Sundance 2026 – Siddhant Adlakha on Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, When a Witness Recants, Undertone, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, plus Buddy

Sundance 2026 – Amy Taubin on Shame and Money, Bedford Park, Filipiñana, Public Access, If I Go Will They Miss Me, Who Killed Alex Odeh, Silenced

Sundance 2026 – Chloe Lizotte on Night Nurse, Homemade Gatorade and other shorts, Public Access Redux, plus A Rotterdam Surprise (The New James N. Kienitz Wilkins Movie)

Sundance 2026 – Eric Hynes on Carousel, One in a Million, Frank and Louis, The Lake, Time and Water

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

I wrote about the Sundance Film Festival for The Financial Times again. Highlights, etc. Here is the article in question.

Speaking of Sundance 2026, I interviewed two filmmakers: David Shadrack Smith, director of Public Access, about public access television, and Sinead O’Shea, director of All About the Money, about James “Fergie” Cox Chambers Jr. and his projects.

And then I did a few reviews: The Moment, starring Charli xcx; The History of Concrete, John Wilson’s debut feature; and The Invite, dinner party fun with Olivia Wilde, Penelope Cruz, Ed Norton, and Seth Rogen.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

Peter Hujar’s Day (Criterion) As featured in my podcast with Ira Sachs!

Homemade Gatorade (YT) As featured in my Sundance podcast with Chloe Lizotte!

Dead Presidents (Criterion) Haven’t seen in a while. Let me know how it holds up

Boys Go to Jupiter (HBO MAX) Animation delights

Gold Diggers of 1933 (Criterion)

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Previously, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

It feels a little odd to wish everyone a happy new year with the country in the state that it is. But, happy new year – and what I can offer at the moment are new podcasts and new articles, including an interview with another great auteur, Gus Van Sant, about his life and his new film Dead Man’s Wire.

Before the break, I had a marvelous time recording an episode at Metrograph in front of an audience, following a handpicked screening of a Japanese rarity. I’m looking forward to the next time, and meanwhile, I chatted with members of the excellent Chicago Film Society, which was a lot of fun too.

I’ll be covering the Sundance film festival soon so there will be more episodes on that front soon enough.

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw.

Nic

THE PODCAST

Live at Metrograph! Mark Asch on Eight Hours of Terror, Marty Supreme, Ella McCay, The Housemaid, and more

Chicago Film Society’s Rebecca Lyon and Cameron Worden on The Unholy Three, Heather McAdams, Bob Balaban’s Parents, Proto-Beavis and Butthead, By the Bluest Sea

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

I interviewed Gus Van Sant for my latest at W Magazine. I think his new film Dead Man’s Wire is quite good (and sort of misunderstood/slept on?). Anyway, like many I grew up watching his movies and it was fascinating talking through some of his autobiography.

This week I wrote up Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly for The New York Times—tricky in the sense that this is a reconstruction, but splendid on the big screen!

And a while back in Berlin I interviewed the director of a kind of behind-the-scenes documentary, All I Had Was Nothingness, about Claude Lanzmann and Shoah for Documentary magazine. It’s the centerpiece of the New York Jewish Film Festival.

Also opening this week is Sound of Falling, whose director Mascha Schilinski I talked to in Cannes last spring.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (HBO MAX) Add to Your Queue? Yes!

Longing (Goethe on Demand) I also just like typing “Goethe on Demand”

Moonlight (HBO MAX)

The Big City (Criterion) Satyajit Ray directs

Meshes of the Afternoon (Criterion) I mean just watch Meshes of the Afternoon!

In Our Day (Metrograph/Kanopy) Hong Sangsoo directs

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I’m a contributing editor at Screen Slate, which recently won a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle. Previously, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

After a busy December, I have plenty to share today—new podcast episode, new interviews, even a new obituary (sadly). The new episode is another look at the past year’s highlights with fellow critics Beatrice Loayza and Adam Nayman.

It’s been a special year personally with the publication of The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki—big thanks to anyone who picked up a copy! Lately I’ve been working on another project, an anthology of interviews with Frederick Wiseman—years in the works but with a horizon in sight. Who knows what else the new year will hold?

Finally, I’ve put a little poll below because why not? I’m grateful for all the readers and listeners of The Last Thing I Saw, with a special thanks to all my supporters who make the podcast possible.

May you have a happy and healthy 2026!

Nic

THE POLL

THE PODCAST

Beatrice Loayza and Adam Nayman on 2025 in Movies: The Testament of Ann Lee, Sinners, Dracula, Bugonia, Eddington, Hamnet, and much more

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Some writing I did.

I had a wonderful interview with Jim Jarmusch, who has a lovely new film out, Father Mother Sister Brother. This was another piece for W Magazine, where I have more fun in the pipeline.

For Screen Slate, I helped compile the annual year-end feature, including the Favorite First Viewings, with entries from its terrific contributors as well as Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), Kahlil Joseph (BLKNEWS: Terms & Conditions), Eva Victor (Sorry Baby), Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez (Invention), Carson Lund (Eephus), Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice), Agnieszka Holland (Franz), Isabel Sandoval (Moonglow), Lav Diaz (Magellan), and Ross McElwee (Remake).

For Sight & Sound, I reviewed Marty Supreme, which is now in theaters.

Also for Screen Slate, I interviewed Bi Gan about his dazzling new film, Resurrection, which is really like five films in one.

And I wrote an obituary of Rob Reiner for The Financial Times.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Some streaming ideas.

Calcifer Yule Log (HBO MAX)

The Mastermind (MUBI)

Life (YouTube/Neon) Jafar Panahi’s delightful short film, which originally apeared in the pandemic omnibus The Year of the Everlasting Storm

Afternoons of Solitude (MUBI)

Amazing Grace (TUBI)

Anomalisa (Criterion)

Eyes Wide Shut (TUBI)

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at nicolas.rapold@gmail.com.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!) and the editor of the forthcoming Frederick Wiseman: Interviews. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The Financial Times, Sight & Sound, Screen Slate, The New York Times, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications where I’ve also written include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, including both retrospectives and premieres—so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

The Last Thing I Saw is coming to Metrograph for a live recording! Tickets are now on sale for the December 13 event, and I hope to see all of you there.

We’ll be talking about what we’ve been watching, the best movies of the year, pie-making do’s and don’ts (tentatively), lore, and who knows what else! I’ll be joined by the estimable critic Mark Asch, who was my editor in my formative years.

The Metrograph event includes the recording and—to provide the full Last Thing I Saw experience—a screening of a film previously mentioned on the podcast. Actually the full experience would probably involve my cats napping next to the mic, but they had a dinner engagement.

This week, I also want to congratulate Screen Slate and its mastermind, Jon Dieringer, on receiving a special award from The New York Critics Circle. I’m always singing the praises of Screen Slate and its wonderful omnivorous readership, and the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to pitch in with their year-end coverage. Hooray!

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

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THE PODCAST

This week I’m pleased to welcome back series regular Bruce Bennett, writer and (as he puts it) recovering critic, to discuss his recent viewing.

Bruce Bennett on Charley Varrick, The American Revolution, Technicolor Weekend at Chicago Film Society, The Shootist

PLUS: Here’s a special selection of episodes from films in the news.

Jafar Panahi on It Was Just an Accident

Julia Loktev on My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow

Tim Grierson on One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Wake Up Dead Man: Knives Out 3

Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Barton Fink (Criterion)

Losing Ground (Criterion)

Only Yesterday (HBO MAX)

Pictures of Ghosts (Criterion)

Clifford (TUBI)

THE BOOK

Holiday gift suggestion! See below.

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is now available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences.

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

For the week of Thanksgiving, The Last Thing I Saw gives thanks for... Amy Taubin! I’ve posted our latest episode, which covers a whole slate of strong fall movies (see below). So don’t miss it!

And I covered another festival, this time the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (aka IDFA). There I talked with Abby Sun, editor-in-chief of Documentary Magazine, about a number of films that went on to win prizes.

And finally, mark your calendars for a special Metrograph event: a live recording of The Last Thing I Saw! Saturday, December 13.

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

THE PODCAST

Amy Taubin on Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Mr. Scorsese, Cover-Up, BLKNWS, Kontinental ’25

Abby Sun on new nonfiction at IDFA 2025: A Fox Under a Pink Moon, December, Silent Flood, The Kartli Kingdom, Air Horse One

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

On the occasion of The American Revolution coming to PBS, I interviewed Ken Burns for W Magazine. Excellent viewing even if you have preconceptions about Ken Burns documentaries—if only because right now we’re in danger of going through the American Revolution in reverse.

For Documentary Magazine, I was proud to interview the directors of the top award-winner at IDFA, A Fox Under a Pink Moon: Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhalaghi, a teenage Afghan artist who is a dazzlingly talented sculptor and painter.

More to come, but that’s what’s available to share right now!

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

You Can Count on Me (Criterion) Saw this again relatively recently at the Paris

The American Revolution (PBS)

Belly (TUBI)

Phoenix (MUBI)

Identikit (TUBI) “Elizabeth Taylor stars as a disturbed woman who arrives in Rome on a mission to find the most dangerous liaison of all.”

THE BOOK

Looking for a holiday gift? The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is now available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. Many thanks to my brilliant designers and editors—it’s a beauty!

And the book tour of screenings and signings keeps rolling on with a recent lovely event at the Barrymore Film Center in Fort Lee, ground zero for film history. My thanks to programmer David Schwartz and the audience for joining me for Porco Rosso and Miyazaki chat.

Contact me if you’re interested in setting up an event!

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

My director podcasts for this mailing range from maximalist to minimalist: Radu Jude on Dracula, a wild film with a mind of its own, and Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day, the mesmerizing account of a day in the life of photographer Peter Hujar. Both are in theaters now.

I also speak with Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times about some big films now available on streaming, The Perfect Neighbor and A House Made of Dynamite, among other topics. And then I welcome Michael Leader of the podcast Ghibliotheque to sample some of the films in The Animation Atlas, the new book he co-wrote with Jake Cunningham.

Delightful! Thank you for your unstinting support of The Last Thing I Saw.

Nic

THE PODCAST

Radu Jude on his new film Dracula, plus One Battle After Another, shooting his next film, and more

Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day

Alissa Wilkinson on The Perfect Neighbor, Is This Thing On, A House of Dynamite, Diane Keaton, Frankenstein, Sphere

Michael Leader of Ghibliotheque on The Animation Atlas

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

For The Financial Times, I wrote an obituary for Diane Ladd.

For Sight & Sound, I reviewed Anemone, a new film starring Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Ronan Day-Lewis.

And for The New York Times, I reviewed the mighty Baahubali: The Epic, a kind of abridged re-release from S. S. Rajamouli, who directed RRR (which I also reviewed for the Times).

More to come, but that’s what’s available to share right now!

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

The Dead (Criterion) You know, from the James Joyce story

Life After (PBS) Streaming free. Reid Davenport’s latest, which I wrote about for Sight & Sound out of Sundance

Mountainhead (HBO MAX) Comes up in my podcast with Alissa Wilkinson. Vexing.

Who by Fire (OVID)

Being John Smith (Le Cinema Club) Sharp work of experimental memoir, part of a month-long series

Also, two films from the podcast are on Netflix: A House Made of Dynamite and The Perfect Neighbor

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is now available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. Many thanks to my brilliant designers and editors—it’s a beauty!

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

At the New York Film Festival I took the opportunity to talk to a few of the many amazing filmmakers in town. So I lead with those conversations below in the podcast update—all of them incredible experiences, and unavoidably, addressing our daunting current moment. (Note that Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident opens imminently: October 15!)

I also caught up with critic Robert Daniels and chatted about his NYFF viewing, and before that, gabbed about some delightful Pre-Code Hollywood movies with Nitehawk programmer Cristina Cacioppo and writer-filmmaker Caroline Golum.

And for all my New York readers, tonight there’s another screening for my book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki at IFC Center, so come on out!

Thank you for all the support!

Nic

Share

THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is now available for order in bookstores or at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. Many hanks to my brilliant designers and editors—it’s a beauty!

Encore Presentation! IFC Center is showing Miyazaki’s rarely screened directorial debut, the zippy action-adventure Lupin 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro. Showtime is (checks notes) tonight October 14 at 7:00pm – see you there!

THE PODCAST

Jafar Panahi on It Was Just an Accident

Kleber Mendonça Filho on The Secret Agent

Sergei Loznitsa on Two Prosecutors

Robert Daniels on Good News, Anemone, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, The Love That Remains

Pre-Code Parade with Cristina Cacioppo and Caroline Golum: Supernatural, Night Nurse, Million Dollar Legs, and more

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

For The Financial Times, I wrote the obituary for Diane Keaton, and earlier, Robert Redford. The greats continue to leave us... R.I.P.

My latest interview for W Magazine is for their Originals issue: Ken Burns, who has directed a truly essential six-part documentary, The American Revolution. Read, and watch when it airs November 16. No kings indeed.

More to come, but that’s what’s available to share right now!

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Cloud (Criterion) Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest now on streaming. My review

They Live (Criterion) Essential John Carpenter, in dazzling wide-screen.

Certain Women (MUBI) With Kelly Reichardt’s next film, The Mastermind, opening this week, here’s her exquisitely told 2016 bundle of stories

Sorry, Baby (HBO MAX) This isn’t available till October 30 but add it to your queue. I spoke with the writer-director-star Eva Victor for a Filmmaker cover story and on a truly rewarding The Last Thing I Saw episode

What Lies Beneath the Sky (A Nos Amours) A curious Chantal Akerman-voiced rarity

Uncut Gems (HBO MAX)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

(Looking up from book I am reading by the fire) Oh hello there! How nice of you to visit. Please, have a seat. You see, I’ve written a little book. The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki. I do hope you enjoy it. I’ve been talking about it at screenings. Oh, it’s been grand. (Silence, except for the crackling of the fire and a distant, dyspeptic cat.)

Goodness, where are my manners! Here, help yourself to some links (proffers bowl of links regarding The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, available now for electronic purchase). There are also some links to my latest writing and podcasts and whatnot. One Battle After Another, Father Mother Sister Brother, A House of Dynamite—and much more. Lovely stuff. (Coughing fit.)

What’s that? Yes, this is a public library. I’m not sure they’re aware of the fire, no. Or the cat. Cats.

Time to go? Of course. Bye now! Thank you for all the support!

Nic

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THE BOOK

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is now available all for order at your online store of choice. My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. Many thanks to my brilliant designers and editors—it’s a beauty!

Come to the next screening for the book! IFC Center is showing Miyazaki’s rarely screened directorial debut, a zippy action-adventure with the unwieldy title Lupin 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro. I’ll be doing a chat afterwards and signing books (and hopefully explaining who Lupin is, not that you need to know). Showtime is October 1 at 7:00pm – see you there!

So far we’ve had lovely events at the Museum of the Moving Image and at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Thank you to the audiences and all my friends there for a wonderful time!

THE PODCAST

With the New York Film Festival coming up, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another in theaters now, and many others on the way this fall, it’s time to share some episodes!

Tim Grierson on One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Wake Up Dead Man: Knives Out 3, The Lost Bus, Hedda

Venice 2025: Chloe Lizotte on A House of Dynamite, Dead Man’s Wire, Claire Simon, Wayne McGregor, Le Souffleur, More Late Fame

Venice 2025: Jordan Cronk on The Smashing Machine, Late Fame, Nuestra Tierra, Below the Clouds, Barrio Triste, and more

Toronto 2025: Edo Choi on The Christophers, Wavelengths, The Currents, Two Pianos, Nouvelle Vague, plus Tuner

Venice 2025: Guy Lodge on Father Mother Sister Brother, The Testament of Ann Lee, The Wizard of the Kremlin, Rose of Nevada

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

The Financial Times featured The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki in its latest recommendations round-up. Previously, Air Mail has chosen The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki as a “BEST” pick. Empire magazine wrote it up (no link), too. The book is now available for purchase.

For MVP Screen Slate, I wrote about the Venice Film Festival. There was no space to talk about everything, so fortunately, I wrote about the documentaries in particular for the very fine Documentary Magazine. And I reviewed Jim Jarmusch’s Golden Lion winner Father Mother Sister Brother for Sight & Sound. (Speaking of Doc Mag, they’re looking for an assistant editor.)

For Filmmaker, I interviewed two filmmakers who had films in Venice: master essayist Ross McElwee, who made perhaps his most wrenching film yet, Remake, about his son, and the artist known as Stillz, making his feature directorial debut with Barrio Triste.

And then the interviewer became the interview-ed, thanks to two excellent critics: R. Emmet Sweeney spoke to me for his very fine substack Old New, and earlier, Saul Austerlitz for Ministry of Pop Culture, selected The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki for their inaugural Book Club.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Popeye (Criterion) It’s Robert Altman’s Popeye. Starring Shelley Duvall and Robin Williams.

The Parallax View (Criterion) Recently re-watched The Manchurian Candidate, which was rather more messed-up than I remembered, but then this one-ups its ending (and has an all-timer opening—the fall of democracy)

Union (Criterion)

Ghost Trail (MUBI) I remember this being a cool slow-burn thriller when I saw it at Cannes lo like a couple of years ago

Night Nurse (HBO MAX)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (available now!). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

Joyful times! The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki arrives in stores this week on Tuesday, September 16. I have more to say below about the book and screening/signing events, which I hope all of you can attend! Plus podcast and picks, below.

Thank you for all the support,

Nic

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THE BOOK

Hooray! My new book, The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, is coming out on September 16, and you can pre-order now! My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service... all of Miyazaki’s lovely animated films are in here—their inspirations, their craft, their influences. And thanks to my brilliant designers and editors at Quarto, it’s an absolutely beautiful book!

So I hope you can pick up a copy (and why not one more for friends and family—I’m just spitballin’ here!). The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is available all over the place, for order at your local bookshop or online store of choice.

THE EVENTS

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki is a book about movies, so I’m showing some movies! We’re kicking things off on Saturday, September 20, at the glorious Museum of the Moving Image, with a very special screening of a major influence on Miyazaki’s work plus a book signing. I hope you join us! I’ll say a few words. Make a day of it at MOMI (which also has a Terence Davies retrospective!).

Then it’s off to the lovely Jacob Burns Film Center for a screening of Miyazaki’s delightful Porco Rosso, featuring a flying ace who happens to be part pig. I’ll be signing books again and chatting about this and that. This one’s Sunday, September 21, and oh what a Sunday it shall be.

Big thanks to all my readers and listeners all these years—I sincerely hope you can join us and celebrate the book!

Below: The book party for The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki?

THE PODCAST

I still have podcasts to share! I’ll assemble a longer selection later but here’s a few for starters.

Amy Taubin on My Undesirable Friends, Highest 2 Lowest, Terence Stamp, Chantal Akerman, What Could Go Wrong, The Pitt

Venice 2025 with Glenn Kenny on Frankenstein, Bugonia, No Other Choice, Jay Kelly, After the Hunt, Broken English, Lo Spettro

Toronto 2025 with Mark Asch on Christy, Maggie’s Secret, Claire Denis’s The Fence, Sacrifice

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

My new book, The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, is coming out on September 16, and you can pre-order now.

Air Mail has chosen The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki as a “BEST” pick.

And it was an absolute honor to be a guest on the stellar podcast Ghibliotheque talking about my book with animation authority Michael Leader!

And late-breaking addition, my Toronto film festival report for The Financial Times.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

My Neighbor Totoro (HBO MAX) How can I not lead with this one this week? It’s a film that grows with you, like so many of Miyazaki’s works do—you see it from a different age, you see a different movie

Flow (Criterion) I promise I won’t only recommend stuff I’m working on but... I had a great time writing the booklet essay for this handsome Criterion Collection edition!

All the President’s Men (Criterion) Feels good to watch this

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Metrograph) 20th anniversary. Weird how it faded from view

Friendship (HBO MAX) Tim Robinson comedy I saw at Toronto last year and here it is

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (publishing September 16, 2025). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

Recently I went to the Locarno Film Festival, and before I knew it, I had recorded five episodes of The Last Thing I Saw and nearly melted. A fun characteristic of Locarno is that there is no shade anywhere. No matter the time of day or where you are standing outdoors, the sun will find you and strike you down. Happily there were good movies, new and old, thanks to a typically strong retrospective.

I’m also sharing my chats with Will Sloan, who wrote a book about Ed Wood, and Mark Asch, who taught me about Tour de France in the course of talking about F1.

Last but not last, I remain the author of a book called The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, which comes out September 16. Why not pre-order a copy? Live a little!

Movies!

Nic

Share The Last Thing I Saw

THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

Ep. 334: Mark Asch on F1, Tour de France, American Hunter, Revelations of Divine Love, Afternoons of Solitude, plus 92 in the Shade and Al Green

Ep. 335: Will Sloan on Ed Wood - Made in Hollywood USA, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and more

Ep. 336: Jordan Cronk on Locarno 2025: With Hasan in Gaza, Mektoub My Love, Blue Heron, Balearic, Phantoms of July

Ep. 337: Keva York on Locarno 2025: Dracula, Legend of the Happy Worker, plus The Seasons

Ep. 338: Jessica Kiang on Locarno 2025: The Best of the Postwar British Retrospective + Becoming

Ep. 339: Jordan Cronk on Locarno 2025: Dry Leaf, Mare’s Nest, Le Lac, Sorella di Clausura, Two Seasons Two Strangers

Ep. 340: Ehsan Khoshbakht on Locarno 2025's Great Expectations retrospective of postwar British cinema

Mark Asch is the author of Close-Ups: New York Movies and a contributor to Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, Filmmaker Magazine, the Criterion Collection, and other publications.

Jordan Cronk is founder of the Acropolis Cinema screening series in Los Angeles. His criticism has appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, MUBI Notebook, and other publications.

Ehsan Khoshbakht is a London-based Iranian festival director, filmmaker, and screenwriter. He co-directs Il Cinema Ritrovato, a festival of classics and restorations, in Bologna, Italy.

Jessica Kiang is a critic, essayist and programmer. She is an international film critic for Variety, a member of the selection committee at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the international programmer at the Belfast Film Festival.

Will Sloan is the co-host of The Important Cinema Club and the author of Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA (OR Books). His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Hazlitt, NPR, Cinema Scope, Jacobin, Toronto Life, and many others.

Keva York is a New York-born, Melbourne-based writer and film critic.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

My new book, The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, is coming out on September 16, and you can pre-order now.

The must-see documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow is out in theaters so here’s my interview with the director, Julia Loktev, last fall during the New York Film Festival. Last week I wrote it up for W Magazine’s “Best Documentaries” feature.

For Sight & Sound, I wrote a short review of Together a while ago and it’s now live.

My latest New York Times review was a movie about a zoo in Ukraine where they evacuated the animals, on account of the ongoing Russian invasion.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Three on a Match (HBO MAX)

This Is Not a Film (Metrograph)

Pedicab Drivers (Criterion)

So I Married an Axe Murderer (Criterion)

Clouds of Sils Maria (MUBI)

Lost Highway (Criterion)

THE END

Here I may end with a song from a film at this year’s Locarno festival.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer, and the author of the book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki (pub date: September 16, 2025). My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

This week I have a special announcement: a new book! That’s right, I wrote a book called The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki, and it comes out September 16. It’s about the inspirations, sources, and personal history behind the work of Hayao Miyazaki, who directed Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and most recently The Boy and the Heron, to name just a few.

Over the years I’ve found that the movies and directors I feel most strongly about aren’t always the ones I end up writing up on assignment. So it was a joy to get to write at length about Miyazaki’s movies, which always feel like the best kind of dream journeys to me—super-vivid, roiling with deep-seated feelings, and never quite landing where or how you think they might.

So I encourage (beseech?) you to pre-order a copy. (Which is apparently even better than buying the book the day it comes out, or on a subsequent day, though those are also excellent ideas.) I’ll have a bit more to say as the publication date approaches, but right now I’m getting the word out, so do tell your friends, family, pets, complete strangers, radish spirits, etc.

That would be enough for any update, but just one quick addendum: I was lucky enough to interview filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa on The Last Thing I Saw, so that’s here too.

Thanks for listening, thanks for reading, thanks for all of your support!

Nic

THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

Ep. 333: Kiyoshi Kurosawa on his new film Cloud, life, lighting, casting, and the last thing he saw

Cloud is the new film by director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the director of Cure, Pulse, and Tokyo Sonata, among many others. The story follows an internet reseller (Masaki Suda) who becomes targeted for murder by a band of customers whom he has played a little too fast and loose with. It’s suffused with the air of menace that the director excels at creating, but situated in an actual cutthroat world of internet resellers, who go on the hunt, leading to some unpredictable set pieces. Kurosawa has said it’s partly inspired by a true story of an internet-inspired killing, and partly by his desire to shoot an action movie, particularly with characters who are (relatively) ordinary people. He talks about that and other topics (including recent viewing) on the episode.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Well, there’s this book I wrote—The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki—which you can pre-order now.

Also: the shattering Ukraine documentary 2,000 Meters to Andriivka (from the director of the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol) is coming to theaters, so here’s my review from Sundance.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Spirited Away (HBO MAX) Get in the Miyazaki mindset with this absolutely magnificent movie - or Princess Mononoke or Howl’s Moving Castle or any of the others on here

The Day the Earth Blew Up (HBO MAX)

The Shrouds (Criterion) The latest Cronenberg - here was my review from its Cannes premiere

Killer of Sheep (Criterion)

Flow (HBO MAX)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold [at] gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

It’s hard to be in a very celebratory mood this July 4th weekend, and indeed more than a few movies on my latest podcast with Amy Taubin feel tinged with a certain mood of impending doom. You can listen below to our chat—which includes her very cool reading of Twin Peaks: The Return (and rounds up a few Tribeca festival titles to keep on your radar).

I also had the pleasure of interviewing the director of one of my favorite movies this year, Sorry, Baby, which I saw at its premiere at Sundance. I spoke with Eva Victor first for the cover story of the latest issue of Filmmaker magazine, and again for a delightful episode of The Last Thing I Saw.

And while we’re catching up, I’m sharing here my episode with David Schwartz about his MoMA series A Theater Near You (which has a few more days of screenings!).

Onward and, one hopes, upward,

Nic

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THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

Ep. 332: Amy Taubin on Cloud, Tribeca (I Was Born This Way, Happy Birthday, Shadow Scholars), Twin Peaks, Outrageous, plus Mountainhead

Ep. 331: Eva Victor, writer-director of Sorry, Baby, on the film’s influences and her recent viewing

Ep. 330: David Schwartz on A Theater Near You series at MoMA + Nitrate Picture Show 2025

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are widely available (iTunes, Spotify, etc.).

RECENT WORK

Here’s my cover story for the new issue of Filmmaker magazine: an extended interview with Eva Victor, writer-director of the excellent Sorry, Baby. I don’t think it’s entirely available online so why not buy an issue or subscribe to this absolutely sterling publication!

And a heads-up: I wrote an essay for the Criterion Collection edition of Flow, the Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature, which was great fun to do. It comes out in September but here’s a link to what’s on the edition.

My latest review for The New York Times is Albert Serra’s first feature-length documentary, Afternoons of Solitude. It’s about a bullfighter and it’s a pick.

Also, not available online, but the latest issue of Sight & Sound (Summer 2025) has assorted writing by yours truly.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

David (Metrograph) Nathan Fielder stars

Bad Day at Black Rock (Criterion)

Invention (MUBI)

Sinners (HBO MAX)

Twin Peaks: The Return (MUBI) And here is Amy Taubin’s knockout article as mentioned on the podcast

Scattered Clouds (Criterion) Mikio Naruse’s swan song

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

The Last Thing I Saw is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Live a little!

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

I’ve been escaping the drumbeat of awful news (No Kings protests being the hopeful exception) by going to the movies. A big help lately has been a terrific Mikio Naruse retrospective. I first encountered Naruse’s work at a Film Forum retro in 2005, and this summer, Japan Society and Metrograph have brought this essential figure of Japanese cinema back to screens. So for the latest episode, I spoke with the Metrograph programmer and past Last Thing I Saw guest Edo Choi about Naruse’s films.

Before that, I was delighted as always to have Michael Koresky on the podcast to talk about his latest book, which, as he explains, has some roots in a column he wrote when we worked together at Film Comment. You can also watch movies he’s programming at Criterion Channel. And read his previous book, Films of Endearment, if you haven’t already!

Plus the usual links to my latest work and to some movies.

Thanks for listening, and keep spreading the word!

Nic

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THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

Ep. 328: Michael Koresky on his new book Sick and Dirty about queer cinema and Hollywood censorship

Ep. 329: Edo Choi on Mikio Naruse at Metrograph: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and more

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at many other podcast places.

RECENT WORK

One of my favorite movies at Cannes was The Sound of Falling, and I was lucky enough to interview the director Mascha Schilinski, who went on to win (or co-win) the Jury Prize.

I also interviewed the director of Imago, winner of best documentary at Cannes, Deni Oumar Pitsaev, a pleasure to speak with.

My latest review at The New York Times was a rather odd movie called Sunlight but I had to give them some credit for committing to the bit.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Films by Mikio Naruse (Criterion) For those not in New York for the Naruse retrospective discussed on the podcast, here’s a good selection of his movies!

Sharmila Tagore, Wes Anderson, and film conservationist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur on Satyajit Ray (YouTube)

None Shall Escape (Criterion)

Misericordia (Criterion)

Cinemania (Le Cinema Club)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

Sly Stone, R.I.P.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

The Last Thing I Saw is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Live a little!

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

Welcome back, me!

Here are all the podcasts I recorded about the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. I saw a lot of good movies, and even the ones that I didn’t love, had plenty worth talking about.

New movies from Jafar Panahi, Kelly Reichardt, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Bi Gan, the Dardennes, Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, and more. Plus new voices like Mascha Schilinski!

And what a lineup of critics! I feel lucky.

Thanks for listening!

Nic

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THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

Ep. 313: Alison Willmore on Cannes 2025: Sound of Falling, Enzo, and a look at the 2025 lineup

Ep. 314: Eric Hynes on Two Prosecutors, Case 137, and Two Critics Week Highlights – Imago and Reedland

Ep. 315: Jordan Cronk on Sirat, Urchin, Her Will Be Done, and Directors’ Fortnight Highlights

Ep. 316: Robert Daniels on Eddington, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Raoul Peck’s Orwell

Ep. 317: Jonathan Romney on The Secret Agent, Nouvelle Vague, Exit 8, Once Upon a Time in Gaza

Ep. 318: Mark Asch on The Phoenician Scheme, Drunken Noodles, Lucky Lu, a dab of The Secret Agent

Ep. 319: Eric Hynes on Die My Love, The Love That Remains, The Chronology of Water, Imago

Ep. 320: Guy Lodge on Romeria, The History of Sound, Un Poeta, La Ola (The Wave)

Ep. 321: Alissa Wilkinson on Un Simple Accident, Pillion, Eleanor the Great, The Plague, Spike Lee

Ep. 322: Inney Prakash on Miroirs No. 3, Alpha, Magellan, Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest, The Girls, Homebound

Ep. 323: Jessica Kiang on Bi Gan’s Resurrection and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind

Ep. 324: Justin Chang on Sirat, Woman and Child, The Little Sister, Jeunes Mères, My Father’s Shadow, Palme Pensées

Ep. 325: K.J. Relth-Miller on Cannes Classics: Red Canyon, Saïd Effendi, Hardboiled, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, plus Merlusse

Ep. 326: Manohla Dargis on Cannes 2025: Sentimental Value, Eddington, The Mastermind, Resurrection, Homebound, The Secret Agent, Sirat, The Plague, Jafar Panahi, Scarlett Johansson

Ep. 327: Eric Hynes on Post-Cannes Catch-Up: I Only Rest in the Storm, The Last One for the Road, A Useful Ghost, Militantropos, plus Yes and Renoir

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at many other podcast places.

A big thank you to my brilliant guests!

Mark Asch wrote for Little White Lies, The Art Newspaper, Film Comment, and Inside Hook during the festival. He is the author of Close-Ups: New York Movies.

Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker and NPR's Fresh Air. He serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2024 for his work at the Los Angeles Times.

Jordan Cronk is founder of the Acropolis Cinema screening series in Los Angeles. His criticism has appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, MUBI Notebook, and other publications.

Robert Daniels is Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com, and has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reverse Shot, Screen Daily, and the Criterion Collection.

Manohla Dargis is chief film critic of The New York Times.

Eric Hynes is director of film curation and programming at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a critic with bylines in Reverse Shot, The New York Times, Film Comment, and other publications.

Jessica Kiang is a critic, essayist and programmer. She is an international film critic for Variety, a member of the selection committee at the Berlin International Film Festival, and the international programmer at the Belfast Film Festival.

Guy Lodge is the U.K. film critic for Variety and a regular contributor to The Guardian, Sight & Sound and the BBC Arts Hour.

Inney Prakash is curator of film at Asia Society in New York and the founder and director of Prismatic Ground, a film festival in New York City centered on experimental documentary and avant-garde film.

K.J. Relth-Miller is the director of film programs at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. She is an adjunct professor in the Film/Video department at CalArts.

Jonathan Romney is a critic who writes for Screen Daily and the Observer. He also teaches at National Film and Television School.

Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at The New York Times. Her new book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and America’s Dream Machine is available now.

Alison Willmore is a film critic for New York magazine and Vulture.

RECENT WORK

This was a big podcast month, as you can see, but I did review two big movies out of Cannes. One: Richard Linklater’s valentine to the New Wave, Nouvelle Vague, a behind-the-scenes comedy about Godard and company making Breathless. Two: Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, an art heist movie starring Josh O’Connor that turns into something else...

For The New York Times, I interviewed the actress Anamaria Vartolomei, whom you might recognize from Mickey 17 (see below) or Being Maria or The Count of Monte Cristo. She was also in Adam’s Interest, the opening film of Critics’ Week at Cannes.

Also for the Times, I reviewed a good and gnarly relationship drama from Japan, Desert of Namibia. Critic’s Pick!

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Mickey 17 (HBO MAX)

Certain Women (Tubi) Kelly Reichardt Directs

Mountainhead (HBO MAX)

Election (Criterion) Johnnie To’s Hong Kong crime drama

Personal Shopper (MUBI)

The Long Day Closes (Criterion)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

As May begins in rain, I’m looking forward to talking about the new movies premiering in sunny Cannes. But first, I’ll have at least a couple of chats to post that I’m also excited about.

Last week I spoke with regular guest R. Emmet Sweeney about what he’s been watching lately, and we begin with his remembrance of a wonderful filmmaker, Tomonari Nishikawa, who passed away. Links to his films are below (pictured above is one work created by burying 35mm negative film under fallen leaves).

I’m also posting my interview with Radu Jude, the Romanian director of Kontinental ’25 and previously Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. Even when you haven’t seen the movie in question, a Radu conversation tends to yield thoughtful (and funny) insights about filmmaking and the world.

Stay tuned for more. My thanks to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

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

Radu Jude is the director of Kontinental ’25, which will be released in North America by the distributor 1-2 Special. He also directed Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and previously won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.

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

R. Emmet Sweeney is an occasional film critic who produces physical media for Kino Lorber. His substack is Old New, and the remembrances of Tomonari Nishikawa can be found there.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at many other podcast places.

RECENT WORK

As mentioned, here’s that interview with David Cronenberg I was working on about The Shrouds, a story about man who invents a coffin camera, which Cronenberg considers a love story. He was as fascinating to talk to you as ever, and I’d like to think I have a few tidbits here that haven’t appeared elsewhere.

And in the spirit of the podcast interview with Radu Jude, here’s my review of Kontinental ’25 which I wrote when it premiered in Berlin.

I’m also sharing my Sight & Sound review of 2,000 Meters to Andriivka, the new film about the invasion of Ukraine from Oscar-winner Mstyslav Chernov (20 Days in Mariupol). Strong stuff, and it came to mind when watching Warfare.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

The Films of Tomonari Nishikawa (tomonarinishikawa.com)

eXistenz (Metrograph) Through the virtual looking glass with David Cronenberg, in 1999

Strange Days (Criterion)

Xiao Shan Going Home (Criterion) “Jia Zhangke’s raw yet revelatory student film”

Spree (MUBI) I confess I found this a lot to take in 2020, but I wonder how it plays now?

Rachel and the Stranger (MAX) A whole boatload of westerns/movies-set-in-the-old-West hit Max this month for whatever reason—here’s one, but there’s also Randolph Scott aplenty and The Naked Spur and Stars in My Crown

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

The Last Thing I Saw is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Live a little!

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

What better way to welcome the glorious springtime than a new chat with Amy Taubin on the podcast? Listen to our latest episode, which covers more than movies—books, gallery installations, TV series, the future of the planet, that sort of thing.

And just for my devoted readers, a bonus for this edition: an excerpt from a David Cronenberg interview I’m working on, talking about The Shrouds, now in theaters. Read on!

I’m also sharing an episode I posted earlier, with Jourdain Searles, a critic whom I’m always so happy to welcome on the podcast and who posts with an exceedingly sharp eye for films new and old.

That’s all for now. My thanks to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Nic

Share

THE PODCAST

[To play each episode, click the episode title, or click in the player below. Or find The Last Thing I Saw elsewhere...]

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

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

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are available at many other podcast places.

BONUS TRACK

David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds is now in theaters. It’s about an entrepreneur who, in his grief, invents a way of observing his dearly departed wife within her grave. I talked with Cronenberg in October 2024 during the New York Film Festival. Here’s an edited excerpt from the interview I’m working on.

Nicolas Rapold: How did the story’s concept of a “GraveTech” camera come to be?

David Cronenberg: It's very straightforward and it's in [the Vincent Cassel character’s] dialogue. When his wife is being buried, he wants to be in the box with her. He cannot bear that she shall be underground and impenetrable to him from that moment on. And I had that same feeling. It's absolutely how I felt. Obviously, it's not very practical for you to get into this box, which is normally built for one person. So what do you do? Well, if you're a sort of a tech entrepreneur, you go to tech for your solution to that, which I am not, so at that point he and I part ways. I'm not an entrepreneur and, you know, I don't own a restaurant in a graveyard. Although I probably should. I mean, the way independent film is going, it might be a better career choice at this point.

And it's interesting because at one point I think people thought that somehow you could be in contact with this person who was dead, after death. And I did see it in an early description of the movie from a journalist who had not seen the movie. And the estate of Philip K. Dick came after me. They were very polite. I had met the Dick sisters, you know? Because at one point I wanted to do UBIK. And in UBIK there's the idea that the brain somehow still has memories and can still be accessed. And they thought that maybe I had really kind of pilfered this from UBIK. But I told my producers, "Just send her the script, you know. She's very bright there. She'll see that it's not the same.” And that was the case.

But it's interesting, because in this case it's a little stranger than that, which is: you are accepting that this person is dead. You still don't want to let go. And because your relationship was so physical, it makes some bizarre emotional sense to follow what happens to their physical body. And so that’s basically it. And I had that feeling, but what I did about it was to make a movie.

NR: So there are no secret cameras in a grave.

DC: No. Although I do have a piece of sidewalk in Canada's Walk of Fame, and I really said, when I die, you should put me under that stone and use some Lucite or something that you can see through, so that people can watch me decay as they walk over me.

NR: They said yes, of course?

DC: Well, they haven't said no.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Volver (Criterion)

The Little Girl from Hanoi and When the Tenth Month Comes (Criterion) I first saw these many years ago at the Jeonju film festival where they bowled me over

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Criterion)

Grand Tour (MUBI)

In the Loop (MUBI)

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. You can get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. at

nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Financial Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the film series and one-offs I’ve programmed, revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.

Editorially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.