Documentary
Rod Lott
All the love audiences have for the Oscar-nominated Searching for Sugar Man (which I wasn't crazy about) is what I feel for Paul Williams: Still Alive.

Drama
Phil Bacharach
John Hughes, for all the love people heap on his ’80s teen movies, was far too easy on high school. Maybe your high school experience was different than mine — and, if so, congrats. For many of us, however, those years were a marathon of self-pity, heartache, passion and anything else you’d find on an album by The Smiths.

Horror
Rod Lott
Lake Placid: The Final Chapter has swam to video shores, losing the numeral “4” somewhere along the way. Haven't seen Lake Placid 2 or 3? Didn't know they existed? Ooh, you are going to be so lost!

Drama
Rod Lott
Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is my least favorite of the director’s half-dozen films. That said, he has yet to make a bad one.

Drama
Rod Lott
In a short career largely dominated with genre films — from Final Destination 3 to this past summer’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — Mary Elizabeth Winstead always has exuded a certain something. But nothing that ever suggested the level of performance she delivers in Smashed.

Thriller
Rod Lott
Following a half-dozen Perry Mason movies into the Warner Archive store are the half-dozen Philo Vance films that make up his Murder Case Collection. While S.S. Van Dine’s “dilettante detective” is nowhere near as well-known today as Erle Stanley Gardner’s attorney-at-law, this is the better set by bounds.

Action
Rod Lott
Not only is The Sweeney one of the best TV-to-film adaptations in history, but quite possibly the best adaptation of a TV series you’ve never heard of ... unless you’re British.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Better than the hit novel on which it’s as faithfully based as budgetary issues allow, John Dies at the End is one of those movies that tries really hard to be a cult movie. In this case, however, the goal has been met; I suspect that, as with most of director Don Coscarelli’s work, from Phantasm and The Beastmaster to Bubba Ho-Tep, we’ll still be discussing this one decades later. That’s not to say it’s without faults.

OKG7 things to do
Gazette staff
Paul McCartney is playing Bricktown! Well, sorta. At 7 p.m. Thursday only, Harkins Bricktown Cinemas 16 at 150 E. Reno screens 1980’s Rockshow. The classic concert film depicts McCartney and Wings’ 1975-76 world tour. The 141-minute film includes 30 live songs and an exclusive 12-minute interview with the former Beatle himself. Tickets are $5-$9. Call 231-4747 or visit rockshowonscreen.com.

Thursday

Hey! Read This:
• James McCartney interview