Ep. 363: Beatrice Loayza and Adam Nayman on 2025 in movies: The Testament of Ann Lee, Hamnet, Sinners, Dracula, Bugonia, and much more

Ep. 363: Beatrice Loayza and Adam Nayman on 2025 in movies: The Testament of Ann Lee, Sinners, Dracula, Bugonia, Eddington, Hamnet, and much more Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For a look at the films of 2025, I’m happy to welcome back two critics who have joined the podcast together before: Adam Nayman (The Ringer) and Beatrice Loayza (The New York Times, The Nation, Criterion Collection). Among the films discussed are The Testament of Ann Lee, Eddington, Afternoons of Solitude, Hamnet, Sinners, Dracula, The Housemaid, Sirat, the latest Avatar installment, One Battle After Another, Train Dreams, and... The Electric State. Plus: Adam and Beatrice’s picks for overlooked movies deserving of a second (or first) look. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 362: Bruce Bennett on Charley Varrick, The American Revolution, Technicolor Weekend at Chicago Film Society, The Shootist Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m happy to welcome back series regular Bruce Bennett for our latest debrief. Among the films he brings to the show are longtime favorite Charley Varrick (directed by Don Siegel, subject of a retrospective most recently at Metrograph); The American Revolution (directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt); and The Shootist (Siegel again, starring John Wayne in swan song mode). Bennett also talks about the wondrous annual Technicolor Weekend at Chicago Film Society. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 361: Amy Taubin on Richard Linklater’s Fall Doubleheader, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Mr. Scorsese, Cover-Up, BLKNWS, Kontinental ’25 Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the week of Thanksgiving begins, I give thanks for... Amy Taubin! She returns to The Last Thing I Saw to discuss some new releases, including key titles that have been making their way into theaters after screening in The New York Film Festival and elsewhere. Titles addressed by Taubin include: Richard Linklater’s double triumph of Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon; It Was Just an Accident, from Jafar Panahi; The Secret Agent, from Kleber Mendonça Filho; Rebecca Miller’s streaming series Mr. Scorsese; Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNEWS: Terms & Conditions; Kontinental ’25 from Radu Jude; the Seymour Hersh documentary Cover-Up, from Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus; and memories from the NYFF secret screening of Marty Supreme. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 360: Abby Sun on IDFA 2025: A Fox Under the Pink Moon, December, Silent Flood, The Kartli Kingdom, Air Horse One Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In November I make my annual visit to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and for the 2025 edition, I sat down again with Abby Sun, editor of Documentary Magazine. Among the movies we talked about were A Fox Under a Pink Moon (directed by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya), December (Lucas Gallo), Silent Flood (Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk), The Kartli Kingdom (Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Pebrel), and the short Air Horse One (Lasse Linder). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 359: Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I spoke with filmmaker Ira Sachs about his latest movie, Peter Hujar’s Day. It’s a fascinating chronicle of a 1974 conversation between New York photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz, whose asks Hujar to recount a day in his life in great detail, including visits by friends, an encounter with Allen Ginsberg (whom The New York Times assigned him to photograph for a portrait), Chinese food orders, and much else. Based on actual transcripts, it’s a beautiful demonstration of craft—the actors’, and the photographer and writer they play. Sachs talked about making the film with Whishaw and Hall, the apartment they shot in, the directors whose work inspired him, and the new movie he has been shooting. Peter Hujar’s Day is in theaters now. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 358: Michael Leader of Ghibliotheque on The Animation Atlas Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Michael Leader co-hosts The Ghibliotheque Podcast with Jake Cunningham, and we originally connected when my book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki was published. And so I was delighted to learn of The Animation Atlas, the lovely new book he and Cunningham wrote, which was published this fall. The Animation Atlas spans six continents in exploring the animation traditions of different countries through selected films, and of course I was eager to pepper Leader with questions. Leader, who is also curator of archive platforms at the British Film Institute, discusses films including Yellow Fever (directed by Ng'endo Mukii), the stop-motion work of Ladislas Starevich, KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans), Bubble Bath (György Kovásznai), Ne Zha 2 (Yu Yang), Boy and the World (Ale Abreu), Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (Haruo Sotozaki), and Time Masters (René Laloux). He also shares a few general thoughts on the global animation landscape today. The Animation Atlas: The Ghibliotheque Guide to the World of Animated Film by Jake Cunningham and Michael Leader is available for purchase now. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 357: Radu Jude on his new film Dracula, plus One Battle After Another, shooting his next film, and more Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Radu Jude’s latest film, Dracula, is a fervidly imaginative, joyously profane look at this enduring myth through multiple stories, riffing on past tellings, a dinner theater, Francis Ford Coppola’s film, a sweatshop run by vampires, assorted AI grotesquerie, and more. As a fan of Radu Jude’s work, I couldn’t resist another conversation with the multiple-award-winning Romanian director of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. He also dug into the history of the Dracula story in Romania and shared his recent viewing and reading, including thoughts on One Battle After Another. Dracula opens in theaters on October 29. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 356: Alissa Wilkinson on The Perfect Neighbor, Is This Thing On, A House of Dynamite, Diane Keaton, Frankenstein, Sphere Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the fall season gets underway and movies make their way to screens and streaming, I was happy to talk with Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic at The New York Times and author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. Among the titles we discussed were The Perfect Neighbor (directed by Geeta Gandbhir), Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper), A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow), and—in memory of Diane Keaton’s recent passing—Reds (Warren Beatty). We also think about the prominence of movies playing off mothers and fathers in extreme circumstances, such as Hamnet, Die My Love, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and the postpartum-inflected Frankenstein. Plus, I ask about Wilkinson’s trip to Sphere—just Sphere—in Las Vegas. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 355: Jafar Panahi on It Was Just an Accident Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This year during the New York Film Festival, I was extremely fortunate to speak with Jafar Panahi, director of It Was Just an Accident. The story concerns a prison survivor who runs into the man he believes to be his former tormenter, leading him to take action and reconnect with others. Panahi’s outstanding film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, after years of government bans of one kind or another on his filmmaking and freedoms. Through a translator I spoke with Panahi about It Was Just an Accident and especially the enduring philosophical issues raised by its characters living under a repressive regime. It Was Just an Accident opens in theaters on October 15. My thanks to the translator for making the conversation possible. (Please note that because of recording circumstances, the audio of my questions is only in English.) Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 354: Robert Daniels on Good News, Anemone, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, The Love That Remains Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In the last week of the 2025 New York Film Festival I was pleased to catch up with Chicago-based critic Robert Daniels, who is associate editor at RogerEbert.Com and a regular contributor at The New York Times. We talked about a few movies he had seen while attending NYFF, as well as an outstanding title from the Toronto film festival that’s coming up this week on Netflix. Films we discussed included Anemone (directed by Ronan Day-Lewis), Good News (Byun Sung-Hyun), Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper), and The Love That Remains (Hlynur Palmason). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass