Jesse Schotter
@schotter.bsky.social
Modernism, film, fiction. Professor at Ohio State.
Age verification? I played Ladder on my parents’ Kaypro computer.
July 30, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Age verification? I played Ladder on my parents’ Kaypro computer.
My last one I've already post a few months back about, but holy shit is Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World great. Hilarious, soul-crushing, formally experimental in multiple ways--no film has better captured the hellscape of late capitalism.
July 5, 2025 at 2:31 AM
My last one I've already post a few months back about, but holy shit is Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World great. Hilarious, soul-crushing, formally experimental in multiple ways--no film has better captured the hellscape of late capitalism.
I couldn't get in to Apichatpong Weerasethakul films until I saw Memoria. His most accessible film--not saying much!--it keeps eluding one's comprehension, changing and transforming itself until an astonishing climax. Shoutout to his brilliant Syndromes and a Century too!
July 5, 2025 at 2:27 AM
I couldn't get in to Apichatpong Weerasethakul films until I saw Memoria. His most accessible film--not saying much!--it keeps eluding one's comprehension, changing and transforming itself until an astonishing climax. Shoutout to his brilliant Syndromes and a Century too!
So absolutely grounded and convincing in its naturalism that it almost becomes symbolic, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu involves a medical attendant taking a dying man from hospital to overcrowded hospital. An astonishing performance by Luminița Gheorghiu, in 2 of the films in my top 20!
July 5, 2025 at 2:24 AM
So absolutely grounded and convincing in its naturalism that it almost becomes symbolic, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu involves a medical attendant taking a dying man from hospital to overcrowded hospital. An astonishing performance by Luminița Gheorghiu, in 2 of the films in my top 20!
Concealing an astounding amount of ethical and formal complexity beneath its simple surface, Jafar Panahi's No Bears is an absolute miracle. Its meta layers--a filmmaker who is and is not Panahi making another film--only add to its intellectual and emotional power. Funny, heartbreaking, furious.
July 5, 2025 at 2:19 AM
Concealing an astounding amount of ethical and formal complexity beneath its simple surface, Jafar Panahi's No Bears is an absolute miracle. Its meta layers--a filmmaker who is and is not Panahi making another film--only add to its intellectual and emotional power. Funny, heartbreaking, furious.
Jose Luis Guerin’s In the City of Sylvia. Inspired very loosely by Vertigo, this is a gorgeous, almost dialogue-free celebration and critique of the aesthetic and erotic pleasures of looking, one that subtly links its present narrative to a long tradition of Western art, from Petrarch to Manet.
June 29, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Jose Luis Guerin’s In the City of Sylvia. Inspired very loosely by Vertigo, this is a gorgeous, almost dialogue-free celebration and critique of the aesthetic and erotic pleasures of looking, one that subtly links its present narrative to a long tradition of Western art, from Petrarch to Manet.
Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light: an essay film about Chile’s Atacama Desert, threads interviews with astronomers, anthropologists, and mothers of the disappeared into an intellectually demanding and emotionally overwhelming meditation on trauma and memory. Everyone should watch this.
June 29, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light: an essay film about Chile’s Atacama Desert, threads interviews with astronomers, anthropologists, and mothers of the disappeared into an intellectually demanding and emotionally overwhelming meditation on trauma and memory. Everyone should watch this.
So much dipshittery it couldn’t fit in one post!
May 30, 2025 at 3:06 PM
So much dipshittery it couldn’t fit in one post!
You think you know just how much of a dipshit Bernie Kerik was, and then you read his obituary…
May 30, 2025 at 3:05 PM
You think you know just how much of a dipshit Bernie Kerik was, and then you read his obituary…
Biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at the Ohio Statehouse, despite the rain.
April 5, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at the Ohio Statehouse, despite the rain.
“We are currently clean on op sec.”
March 26, 2025 at 9:57 PM
“We are currently clean on op sec.”
Mulholland Drive (2001)
March 15, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Check out the Integrated Schools podcast—now playing and streaming locally in Columbus!
March 3, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Check out the Integrated Schools podcast—now playing and streaming locally in Columbus!
Having just taught The Conversation last week, this one hurts.
February 27, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Having just taught The Conversation last week, this one hurts.
1. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude, 2023)
This blew me away. Scathing, despairing, hilarious, formally and conceptually brilliant. An exhausted PA for an industrial film company sits in traffic as she traverses Budapest trying to find participants in an ass-covering
This blew me away. Scathing, despairing, hilarious, formally and conceptually brilliant. An exhausted PA for an industrial film company sits in traffic as she traverses Budapest trying to find participants in an ass-covering
January 2, 2025 at 9:18 PM
1. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude, 2023)
This blew me away. Scathing, despairing, hilarious, formally and conceptually brilliant. An exhausted PA for an industrial film company sits in traffic as she traverses Budapest trying to find participants in an ass-covering
This blew me away. Scathing, despairing, hilarious, formally and conceptually brilliant. An exhausted PA for an industrial film company sits in traffic as she traverses Budapest trying to find participants in an ass-covering
2. The Land (Youssef Chahine, 1969)
A landowner exploiting peasants in upper Egypt. Gorgeous blocking and shot composition, a novelistic texture in which each character seems completely clear and distinct, and an anguished but somehow hopeful political consciousness. Relevant and extraordinary.
A landowner exploiting peasants in upper Egypt. Gorgeous blocking and shot composition, a novelistic texture in which each character seems completely clear and distinct, and an anguished but somehow hopeful political consciousness. Relevant and extraordinary.
January 2, 2025 at 9:06 PM
2. The Land (Youssef Chahine, 1969)
A landowner exploiting peasants in upper Egypt. Gorgeous blocking and shot composition, a novelistic texture in which each character seems completely clear and distinct, and an anguished but somehow hopeful political consciousness. Relevant and extraordinary.
A landowner exploiting peasants in upper Egypt. Gorgeous blocking and shot composition, a novelistic texture in which each character seems completely clear and distinct, and an anguished but somehow hopeful political consciousness. Relevant and extraordinary.
3. The Terror and the Time (Rupert Roonaraine, 1979)
An obscure one, from Guyana. Part rapidfire documentary on the independence movement, part Third Cinema-style montage linking Guyana with Kenya and Vietnam, part gorgeous, solarized images accompanying poems by Martin Carter. Altogether brilliant.
An obscure one, from Guyana. Part rapidfire documentary on the independence movement, part Third Cinema-style montage linking Guyana with Kenya and Vietnam, part gorgeous, solarized images accompanying poems by Martin Carter. Altogether brilliant.
January 2, 2025 at 9:04 PM
3. The Terror and the Time (Rupert Roonaraine, 1979)
An obscure one, from Guyana. Part rapidfire documentary on the independence movement, part Third Cinema-style montage linking Guyana with Kenya and Vietnam, part gorgeous, solarized images accompanying poems by Martin Carter. Altogether brilliant.
An obscure one, from Guyana. Part rapidfire documentary on the independence movement, part Third Cinema-style montage linking Guyana with Kenya and Vietnam, part gorgeous, solarized images accompanying poems by Martin Carter. Altogether brilliant.
4. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2001)
Never been able to get into Hou before, but this was great: a gorgeous, impressionistic portrait of youthful drift, with time and chronology breaking down into dreams, club reveries, and traumatic half-remembered scenes.
Never been able to get into Hou before, but this was great: a gorgeous, impressionistic portrait of youthful drift, with time and chronology breaking down into dreams, club reveries, and traumatic half-remembered scenes.
December 31, 2024 at 7:16 PM
4. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2001)
Never been able to get into Hou before, but this was great: a gorgeous, impressionistic portrait of youthful drift, with time and chronology breaking down into dreams, club reveries, and traumatic half-remembered scenes.
Never been able to get into Hou before, but this was great: a gorgeous, impressionistic portrait of youthful drift, with time and chronology breaking down into dreams, club reveries, and traumatic half-remembered scenes.