Gerald Peary’s new documentary For the Love of Movies: The History of American Film Criticism begins with a somewhat ominous observance for those who write or read about cinema: “Today, film criticism is a profession under siege. According to Variety, 28 reviewers have lost their jobs in the last several years.”

As news media continue to shift away from the printed page to the electronic page, and as studios rely less and less on the considered writings and opinions of learned film critics to spread the word about their latest releases, there could be no more appropriate time to celebrate those people of letters whose words are devoted to moving pictures. Throughout November and December, we’ll present a number of great movies that provoked particularly inspired and influential essays. At each screening, we’ll provide a complimentary copy of the review with each ticket.

Although American film criticism is evident as early as 1911, this survey takes us back only as far as 1937, when the lean and tough writings of Otis Ferguson (whose bright career was cut short by his death in WWII) appeared in praise of fast-paced and efficient genre films, like the MGM thriller Night Must Fall. The most important US film critic of the immediate postwar years was undoubtedly the gifted James Agee, who wrote lovingly of films that celebrated small-town family life, like Meet Me in St. Louis, a film that concentrates on “making the well-heeled middle-class life of some adolescent and little girls in St. Louis seem so beautiful that you can share their anguish when they are doomed to move to New York.”

While The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther dominated with his post for more than a quarter century, his two biggest contributions were in championing important foreign releases like Kurosawa’s Rashomon and inspiring a whole generation of film critics to rebel against what they saw as his rather conventional tastes. That generation included New York-based writers Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, whose own argument over the auteur theory spawned two separate groups of cinephile acolytes.

The ’70s saw the move of film criticism to television with the birth of a weekly review program featuring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, but both critics continued to write voluminous columns for their respective Chicago daily newspapers. Meanwhile, Siskel and Ebert’s generation also includes a number of critics with unique styles and great passion for the movies, like Dave Kehr, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Stuart Klawans, who have largely remained devoted to the written word.

Another such critic is the Boston Phoenix’s Gerald Peary, who joins us in person on December 11 to present For the Love of Movies, his briskly paced and entertaining history of nearly 100 years of American writing about cinema. –Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department

Screenings: A films are at 8 p.m. unless otherwise listed.

Sunday, November 1, 7 p.m. | Bosley Crowther

RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa, Japan 1950, 88 min., Japanese/subtitles)

Thursday, November 5 | Members’ Movie Night | Jonathan Rosenbaum

THE CIRCLE (DAYEREH, Jafar Panahi, Iran 2000, 90 min., Farsi/subtitles) Members admitted free.

Sunday, November 8, 7 p.m. | Gene Siskel

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (John Badham, US 1977, 119 min.)

Thursday, November 12 | Roger Ebert

GATES OF HEAVEN (Errol Morris, US 1978, 85 min.) preceded by WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE (Les Blank, US 1980, 20 min.)

Sunday, November 15, 7 p.m. | Otis Ferguson

NIGHT MUST FALL (Richard Thorpe, US 1937, 117 min.)

Thursday, November 19 | Pauline Kael

HUD (Martin Ritt, US 1963, 112 min.)

Tuesday, November 24 | Dave Kehr

GIGI (Vincente Minnelli, US 1958, 116 min.)

Thursday, December 3 | Stuart Klawans

CHRONICLE OF A DISAPPEARANCE (Elia Suleiman, Palestine 1996, 88 min., Arabic/Hebrew/subtitles)

Sunday, December 6, 7 p.m. | Andrew Sarris

THE COLLECTOR (William Wyler, US 1965, 119 min.)

Thursday, December 10 | Gerald Peary

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE, Sylvain Chomet, France 2003, 80 min.)

Friday, December 11 | Rochester Premiere | Gerald Peary in Person!

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM (Gerald Peary, US 2009, 81 min., Digital Projection)

Thursday, December 17 | Jack Garner

VOLVER (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain 2006, 121 min., Spanish/subtitles)

Saturday, December 19 | James Agee

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (Vincente Minnelli, US 1944, 113 min.)

Tuesday, December 22 | Dave Kehr

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (Vincente Minnelli, US 1951, 115 min.)

Bid adieu to 2009 with four nights of classic comedy double features, leading right up to New Year’s Eve. December 28 brings a pair of Woody Allen mockumentaries, Take the Money and Run and Zelig. Truly iconic Charlie Chaplin will put a smile on your face on December 29 with two of his masterworks, City Lights and Modern Times. On December 30, take a trip back to summer 1984 and celebrate the 25th anniversary of two of the biggest, funniest blockbusters from the Reagan years: Ghostbusters and Gremlins. On the big night, December 31, enjoy an evening of anarchy when we present four of the best-loved short films by The Three Stooges (don’t worry, it’s an all-Curly selection), followed by Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx in A Night at the Opera.

As movie fans eagerly await the return of Buzz and Woody to the big screen (and Santa Claus down the chimney), the Dryden has assembled three delightful movie “toy stories” for the whole family, showing as 2 p.m. matinees on the first three Sundays in December. Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure (December 6) is a thrillingly animated big-screen adaptation of the Johnny Gruelle stories. Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers (December 13) parodies G.I. Joe dolls with more than a touch of anti-war satire. Laurel and Hardy star as toymakers Ollie Dee and Stanley Dum in the first and best screen version of Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland (December 20).

A relatively new movement in American independent cinema, so-called “Mumblecore” films have been marked by their ultra-low budget productions, improvisatory acting and plotlines, and stories with an emphasis on interpersonal relationships. Most important, the films have all been made by a true community of artists, a “Mumble Corps” of directors who help out by serving as cast and/or crew for the films of their comrades.

If the movement has a founding center, it’s most likely Andrew Bujalski, whose first two features, Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation, have screened previously at the Dryden, and whose sound editor coined the term Mumblecore. The formerly East Coast-based Bujalski appears in person at the Dryden on November 7 for the screening of his third feature, Beeswax, which was filmed in his new home of Austin, Texas, the current Mumblecore filmmaking capitol where Bob Byington’s Harmony and Me (December 4) was also shot. Harmony’s screening also includes a Dryden visit from writer-director Byington. Lynn Shelton’s Humpday (November 13), shot in Seattle, WA, is another offshoot in this new development in independent filmmaking.

While all three films share an affection for the natural rhythms of slacker-speak, the sweet and entrancing Beeswax offers the least situation-driven of the stories with its tale of close twin sisters, each on her own decidedly different journey toward adulthood. Macho bonding is the target of Shelton’s very funny Humpday, as two ostensibly straight buddies commit to having sex with each other for the purposes of an “art project.” Equally hilarious, Harmony and Me uses a tale of lost love as an excuse to tie together a series of character sketches beautifully delivered by a cast that includes Justin Rice, Kevin Corrigan, Pat Healy, and Byington (who also appears in Beeswax).

In addition to these Mumblecore movies, the Dryden has a plethora of exclusive screenings in November and December, including Pablo Larrain’s brutally compelling Tony Manero (November 14). The Yes Men Fix the World (November 20 & 22) documents the latest activities from the noted media pranksters and corporate shame-sters. Oscar®-nominated Austrian thriller Revanche (November 21 & 22) is a precisely told tale of revenge and one woman’s sexual awakening. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette provide the voices for the title characters in the Australian animated movie Mary and Max (November 27 & 29). The greatest concert film you’ve never seen, Soul Power (November 28 & 29) brings James Brown, B.B. King, and other great R&B acts to the big screen. Nutso 1977 Japanese horror-fantasy Hausu makes its long-awaited Dryden debut (December 5). Bronson (December 12 & 13) is a breathtakingly choreographed piece of cinematic violence from the director of the Pusher trilogy. Tetro (December 18 & 20) is the latest from acknowledged cinematic master Francis Ford Coppola.

For anyone who came of age in Reagan-era America, the loss of Michael Jackson last summer followed in quick succession by writer-producer-director John Hughes truly feels like the end of an era. Comparisons of Hughes to J.D. Salinger might seem hyperbolic, yet for those of us who grew up in the 1980s, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off defined teen angst the way Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye did for multiple generations of youth. Hughes’s teen films were a perfect representation of the decade.

In summer 1983, two hugely successful comedies with scripts by Hughes were released, Mr. Mom and National Lampoon’s Vacation, paving the way for his career as the complete filmmaker. Vacation was based on Hughes’s own 1958 road trip with his family, and is the first screening in this memorial series on November 4. The uproarious Sixteen Candles (November 11) was Hughes’s debut as a director, and featured Molly Ringwald’s star-making performance as Samantha Baker, who experiences the lowest possible lows and highest possible highs in one action-packed 16th birthday—all of which leads to that question for the ages, “Dong, where is Grandpa’s automobile?”

Hughes’s much-loved, and largely serious, follow-up The Breakfast Club (November 18) details a social experiment involving a day-long detention shared by a basket case, a jock, a delinquent, a geek, and a popular princess. Less than six months after Breakfast Club’s release, the prolific Hughes delivered a cartoonishly absurd comedy with Weird Science (December 2). Another half-year later, now the overseer of a veritable factory of filmmaking, Hughes handed over the directorial chores on the seriocomic Pretty in Pink (December 9) to Howard Deutch while he prepared to handle the reins on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (December 16).

A kind of companion piece to Vacation’s family trip from hell, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles details the even more painful circumstance of traveling long distances with an obnoxious stranger due to inclement weather. Starring Steve Martin and John Candy, Planes marked a turning point for Hughes in that it was the first of his films released where the story revolved entirely around adult characters. It also was the first of his sentimental family comedies set during the holidays, which makes it the perfect film to watch on Thanksgiving Eve, November 25. –Dinah Holtzman, Assistant Film Programmer, Motion Picture Department