“New York Love Stories” on the Criterion Channel

Courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

Joan Micklin Silver’s romantic comedy Crossing Delancey (1988) opens in a dimly lit bookstore on the Upper East Side. “They want to pull us down and make something clean and tall and obscenely profitable arise out of our ashes,” the bookstore’s owner tells a group of literary luminaries assembled for a fundraiser. “But we are here! . . . New York’s last real bookstore will be around for a good long time.” 

Our heroine, Isabelle Grossman (Amy Irving), is an employee of this last real . . .