The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 390: James N. Kienitz Wilkins on The Misconceived

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Destined to be one of my favorite movies of 2026, The Misconceived is the latest feature from James N. Kienitz Wilkins, a filmmaker who’s always boldly playing with film form, ideas around authenticity and class, and how we talk about cinema. The Misconceived centers on a carpenter, Tyler, who once wanted to be a filmmaker and whom we now join renovating the country cabin of a college classmate, Tobin, who has found success as an artist. On paper it's an "indie drama" of class tensions and resentments—but it's filmed using motion capture, a computer graphics game engine, and naturalistic, scathingly funny dialogue streaked with savvy movie and critical references. I was delighted to speak with Wilkins about The Misconceived, the benefits of motion capture, the post-2016 political morass, cinephilia, and much more.

The Misconceived opens the First Look 2026 at the Museum of the Moving Image (which runs April 23 to May 3) and then plays at Anthology Film Archives in May.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 389: Amy Taubin on The Christophers, Ken Jacobs Tributes, Kontinental 25, her New Directors pick, Elvira Notari, Crimson Gold, plus Fiume o Morte!

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s Amy Taubin Time! I’m delighted to share another conversation with Amy Taubin, covering new releases and repertory selections. Among the new films included are The Christophers (directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel), Kontinental 25 (Radu Jude), Fiume o Morte! (Ivan Bezinovic), and from New Directors New Films 2025, Chronovisor (Kevin Walker and Jack Auen). Taubin also discusses the city-wide tribute to the late Ken Jacobs, aka The Whole Shebang, screening across New York, as well as a documentary about pioneering filmmaker Elvira Notari. Plus, as some cultural counterprogramming to the news: we revisit a pivotal Jafar Panahi film from the 2000s, Crimson Gold.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 388: 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

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week, friend of the pod Margaret Barton-Fumo returns to talk about her recent writing on music-related movies. A critic and the host of the show No Pussyfooting on East Village Radio, she’s been writing booklets for Fun City Editions as well as contrib, and this time she brings a pair of movies about young female singers who suddenly capture the imagination of the public: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982, directed by Lou Adler) and Breaking Glass (1980, directed by Brian Gibson). Then she talks about some recent viewing: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (directed by Nia DaCosta), and the Canadian independent film Paying for It (directed by Sook-Yin Lee, adapting graphic memoir by Chester Brown). And I chime in with my recent viewing of Mira Nair’s early documentary So Far from India (1983).

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 387: Clyde Folley on VHS Forever: Videoheaven, 52 Pick-Up, Re-Wind, The Big Hit, Clerks, Ring, Lost Highway

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week Clyde Folley comes back the podcast to talk about the VHS series he programmed on the Criterion Channel: VHS Forever! (Exclamation point mine.) The selected movies feature video stores or video-recording or anything related to VHS culture, spanning the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s—and culminating in Alex Ross Perry’s comprehensive video essay Videoheaven (which Folley also edited). Titles we discuss include: 52 Pick-Up (directed by John Frankenheimer), Re-Wind (Hisayasu Sato), The Big Hit (Kirk Wong), Ring (Hideo Nakata), Clerks (Kevin Smith), Lost Highway (David Lynch), and of course Videoheaven and its making.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 386: Christian Petzold on Miroirs No. 3

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Christian Petzold’s latest film, Miroirs No. 3, comes to theaters on March 20 with the story of a young pianist, Laura (Paula Beer), who starts her life over unexpectedly when an older woman finds her by the side of the road and welcomes her into her family. I’ll leave the plot outline at that—but when I sat down with Petzold last year at the New York Film Festival, he was eager to talk about how he thinks through narrative and how Laura’s tale echoes the destructive upheavals of history. I was also able to talk about cinematic echoes in Miroirs with the director of, most recently, Afire as well as Phoenix, Transit, and Barbara, who continues to tell beguiling stories about people reconstructing who they are.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass