I care about complete artistic statements in pop culture – the album, the film, the run on a comic book series by a single creative team, or the complete television series. When I wax nostalgic about a youth misspent listening to music, I dream of the seemingly endless series of near-perfect hip-hop albums from my high school years.*

I enjoy scenes from films and passages from books, but always felt like their meaning mostly came from their relationship with the larger whole. The scenes and passages that tend to linger over the years are the ones that are informed by (or inform) other scenes in the larger work.

But there are still some moments that I can enjoy as discrete statements of their own. Here are  a few from film and television:

Ocean’s Twelve, directed by Steven Soderbergh

Treme, Season 3, Ep. 2, directed by Jim McKay

Mad Men, Season 5, Episode 12, directed by Chris Manley

The Raid: Redemption, directed by Gareth Evans

More later.

*Note: I am not being an old fogey, I grant that every generation of high schoolers has an identical experience with the great albums of their time.