Lubitsch's Angel, 1978

I wrote this paper on Ernst Lubitsch's 1937 Angel when I was 22 years old, for a 1978 Steve Mamber class at UCLA. As usual with my early film writing, I'm embarrassed by the paper's youthful arrogance and excessive zeal for categorization. But the current Lubitsch retrospective at Film Forum prompted some friends to ask me for writing on Angel (one of my very favorite films), and I'll never have the chance to go into this much detail again. Below are scans of the original paper, with some of Steve's sensible criticisms still visible. I took the liberty of omitting a useless introductory paragraph.

James Bridges

In a comment on my last post, dm494 asked for a blurb on James Bridges' Mike's Murder that I wrote in 1984 for the Los Angeles Reader. I don't think much of the blurb, but here it is, along with a second blurb on Bridges' 1985 Perfect.

2016 Manhattan One-Week-Run Premieres

Here are my favorite films that played at least one week in Manhattan for the first time in 2016, in approximate order of preference:

1. L'avenir (Things to Come) (Mia Hansen-Løve, France)
2. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, USA)
3. The Apostate (Federico Veiroj, Uruguay/Spain)
4. Fireworks Wednesday (Asghar Farhadi, Iran)
5. Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse (My Golden Days) (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
6. For the Plasma (Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, USA)
7. Francofonia (Aleksandr Sokurov, France)
8. Mia Madre (Nanni Moretti, Italy)
9. Short Stay (Ted Fendt, USA)
10. A Hologram for the King (Tom Tykwer, USA/Germany)
11. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
12. The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer, USA)
13. Fatima (Philippe Faucon, France)

Edward Yang's 1986 The Terrorizers received its first NYC theatrical run this year, and would be on this list if it felt anything like a 2016 film. (Fireworks Wednesday is ten years old, but it passes.)