The Last Thing I Saw

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

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

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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

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

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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

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

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 412: Pierre Coffin on Minions and Monsters

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

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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

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

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass