Nathan Fielder is a master of the look, or, rather, of the Look. That capital-letter stare is the visual center of Fielder’s new series, “The Rehearsal,” on HBO Max. It’s the stare in which parents hold children, teachers hold students, judges hold the accused. It’s the look of mastery itself—the optical grip that makes subjects squirm. It’s the look of power. But Fielder’s subjects are volunteers, and they submit to his power in anticipation that he will do them some good. In “The Rehearsal,” Fielder’s idea is that behavior is predictable and that he himself is good at predicting it. His...…Nathan Fielder is a master of the look, or, rather, of the Look. That capital-letter stare is the visual center of Fielder’s new series, “The Rehearsal,” on HBO Max. It’s the stare in which parents hold children, teachers hold students, judges hold the accused. It’s the look of mastery itself—the optical grip that makes subjects squirm. It’s the look of power. But Fielder’s subjects are volunteers, and they submit to his power in anticipation that he will do them some good. In “The Rehearsal,” Fielder’s idea is that behavior is predictable and that he himself is good at predicting it. His...WW…

The first movie première that I ever attended was the one for Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” at the Ziegfeld, in the fall of 1980, thanks to a friend with connections. I was a recent college graduate on my first job (in commercials) and a Scorsese-phile on the basis of the three films of his that I’d seen: “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” and, above all, “New York, New York,” none of which prepared me for the blend of austerity and fury, abstraction and physicality in “Raging Bull,” which I’ve considered, ever since, a high point of Scorsese’s work. Strangely, I didn’t rewatch the film for...…The first movie première that I ever attended was the one for Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” at the Ziegfeld, in the fall of 1980, thanks to a friend with connections. I was a recent college graduate on my first job (in commercials) and a Scorsese-phile on the basis of the three films of his that I’d seen: “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” and, above all, “New York, New York,” none of which prepared me for the blend of austerity and fury, abstraction and physicality in “Raging Bull,” which I’ve considered, ever since, a high point of Scorsese’s work. Strangely, I didn’t rewatch the film for...WW…