Michael Angelella is a screenwriter, documentary scriptwriter and producer, author, journalist, and retired screenwriting professor.
He has written many screenplays. Some have been optioned, and some are still seeking the love they deserve. His produced feature film credits include Mother (1995), starring Diane Ladd and Olympia Dukakis, and Canes (2006), starring Michael Madsen and Edward Furlong.
On the documentary side, his extensive credits include writing for The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, and The Smithsonian Channel.
He has won many awards for his work.
About
In addition to his work in film, Angelella is the author of Trail of Blood (1979), a true-crime book that was published in the U.S. and in France
As a journalist, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including USA Today, Redbook magazine, Southwest Art, The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Magazine.
He earned his M.F.A. in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California.
His comic historical novel Village Idiots will be self-published via Writers of the West in 2026.
Teaching
Angelella is Professor Emeritus of Towson University’s Department of Electronic Media and Film, where he served as the department’s principal screenwriting professor and department chair. Teaching story development and screenwriting was one of the great privileges of his career, an opportunity to help students understand and appreciate how stories are well-told, and why good films endure.
Movies I Love
From the Author:
There’s a popular non-commercial, public radio station in Towson, Maryland, outside Baltimore, that plays a terrific mix of rock, alternative, blues, folk and world music. It’s called WTMD—89.7 FM on the radio and WTMD.org on the internet.
Photo: Standing next to a Japanese poster for Truffaut's 400 Blows at La Cinematheque Francaise in Paris.
For years, the station’s programming lineup has included a cool weekly feature called Silver Screen Radio, three-to four-minute movie reviews written and recorded by a lineup of film professors who taught at Towson University. After a long career as a freelance writer, I eventually joined the faculty there as well, where I taught screenwriting for nearly twenty years. So, when Alex Cortright, WTMD’s wonderful morning drive deejay invited me to contribute to the Silver Screen program, I happily accepted. With one caveat: I only wanted to write about movies that I’ve fallen in love with during my seven decades as a passionate, devoted cinema obsessive.
Fortunately, WTMD liked my pitch, and soon I was off and running with the help of two good friends—TU Professor Adam Schwartz, my recording producer extraordinaire, and Professor Kalima Young, my savvy Silver Screen Radio film review colleague. What follows, then, are reviews that I’ve written and recorded for WTMD since 2024. And I’ll be adding more to the list as I write them.
Obviously, it was often an impossible challenge to adequately express the love and wonder of what these movies mean to me in about 500 words. Yet inside that task I also found a blessing. The reviews were a chance for me to shine a grateful light on some of the countless movies that have given so much joy and meaning to my life.
And now, it’s a pleasure for me to share those movies with you. Movies I love. I hope you’ll find something here that you love, too.
Recent Reviews
