Quick reflection on my at-home bluray rewatch of the immersive Carol: There's a pleasurable, painful tension in this movie between how so much is on the surface--intentions, possibilities, the past--and how so much is mediated in the way characters are framed or boxed into windows, doorways, and the like. This tension conveys what it feels like to live in a world of explicit and implicit regulations. Some movies are great for having a scope that kicks us out of our…

Whiplash begins as a movie about two seemingly different men: 19-year-old conservatory first-year Andrew Neyman and respected, feared studio band teacher Terence Fletcher. In their first encounter, Andrew even wears a white t-shirt and jeans in contrast to Fletcher’s sleek and serious all-black getup. As the movie goes on, however, it turns out Andrew and Fletcher are actually quite similar.

Whiplash boils down to a story about how uncompromising, desperate, and petty masculinity can be. The movie is at its…