Bruce Bennett returns for another rollicking assortment of fine, under-watched films

Rollick with us as we crate-dig through 1950s cinema

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

An early Happy Halloween to all who observe! This week, Bruce Bennett returns to the podcast, which means another incredible conversation full of insights and movies to file away and watch later. As always it’s hard to pigeonhole the selection but broadly speaking we mine the 1950s for unsung films by known and under-known auteurs, e.g., Seijun Suzuki, J. Lee Thompson, Fred Sears. (By total coincidence I notice Film Forum is currently showing a selection of 50s highlights — though definitely not these.)

There’s also another assortment of streaming picks and some recent writing of mine (including what to me has been a bafflingly overlooked new release). Stay tuned for more episodes on films new and old but always, hopefully, good.

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

Yours,

Nic

THE PODCAST

Bruce Bennett on Eight Hours of Terror, Ambush at Tomahawk Gap, Yield to the Night, Nuke Films

Bruce Bennett is a scriptwriter, story producer, musician, and a “recovering film critic” who contributed regularly to the Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, and elsewhere.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.

RECENT WORK

For The New York Times, I reviewed Silver Dollar Road, a crushing documentary about a black family in North Carolina who are fighting off developers trying to push them off their land. It’s directed by Raoul Peck, adapting a ProPublica story, and I’ve been baffled by the meager attention given to the film. Critic’s Pick.

For Screen Slate, I wrote about Priscilla, the new Sofia Coppola film about Priscilla Presley, for a round-up. It opens this Friday.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

Eight Hours of Terror (Criterion) as seen/heard on The Last Thing I Saw

Silver Dollar Road (Amazon Prime)

What Happened Was... (MUBI)

The Addiction (Criterion)

Boxcar Bertha (Amazon Prime)

Mysteries of the Unknown featuring Julianne Moore

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc. by writing me at nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine. (Plus dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) For notes on my superfun programming experience, drop me a line.

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.