Veronica Mars (2014)

I went into “Veronica Mars” with not just a blank canvas, but a mistaken impression. I thought the cult hit TV show with Kristen Bell (“Frozen”) followed a high school journalist with a Scooby Doo bent. My error. Bell’s Mars is, in fact, an ex-private investigator who worked as a teen for her father (Enrico Colantoni) who dug dirt in a tiny California town. Now 10 years on, Veronica has ditched the PI life and the West Coast for law and New York City. On the cusp of a big interview, she gets called back home to help an ex (Jason Dohring) accused of murder. Of course Veronica is reluctant to return, but we know she will and we know she will stay, but forget the “we knows.” Writer/director Rob Thomas serves us great characters, a rare small town that vibes authentic, and a slash at the misery of high school reunions. Yes, a reunion coincides with the murder. Far too much? Thomas knows and has fun. The dialogue is playful -- Colantoni has the best lines -- without getting high on its own smoke, a la “Juno.” Not enough to get me on the show, but solid entertainment. B+

Ravenous (1999)

“Ravenous” is as wildly offbeat onscreen as its behind-scenes history (rewrites, cast revolts, multiple directors) indicates. It veers shocker, horror, satire, comedy, drama, fantasty, and all-out Midnight Movie nuts. It is split open dripping guts on the floor. Oh so apt for a blood-soaked cannibal tale set in the 1870s California that marries Cormac McCarthy brooding to Stephen King camp, and featuring Guy Pearce as a haunted soldier and Robert Carlyle as … let’s call him mysterious. Pearce is a faux hero who took a dive in battle and is relegated to a western outpost with other rejects –- bookworms, stoners, drunks, and fundamentalists -– who are visited by man (Carlyle) who spins a tale of escaping a terrifying camp of cannibals. Our soldiers unwisely take action. I’ll stop there. Antonia Bird –- third hired director –- serves up a movie that’s all body parts, none a head, with Carlyle diving in madly with glee, and Pearce scrambling to keep up. The fight scenes are underdone, the comedy crashes into indigenous lore, but not a moment is boring. When a dead character reappears, you could fit a thigh in my mouth. B

House of Wax (1953) and House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Vincent Price, with his abyss of a voice and those dead-stare eyes that play like daggers, remains the King of Horror Movies in my book. He has no successor. Two of his earliest flicks are “House of Wax” and “House on Haunted Hill,” with Price as an oddball NYC artist driven to sinister deeds after his wax museum is torched and he builds anew with a shocking sicko canvas, and then as a rich mystery host to a party at a haunted California mansion that promises $10,000 to any guest who survives a creepy lock-in. “Wax” -– itself a remake remade many times -– is classic with its ghoulish madman taking bodies, alive and not, and how the camera just sits on wax faces as they melt in fire. The then-new 3-D gimmicks may once have dazzled but now only seem silly, but never mind that. Imagine 1950s kids screaming horror at this nasty fun tale. “House” is too wink-wink meta, from its dumb opening to the nudge-nudge fourth-wall-busting asides. Sure it has several scares, and Price struts around deflating every other man within range, but even for corn, it’s all quite lame and forgetful. Not “Wax.” Wax: A- House: B-

Fruitvale Station (2013)

I cannot recall a more timely film in recent years. Seemingly every week in some U.S. city, police and vigilante pricks (Zimmerman) are gunning down unarmed black men at a clip not seen since … pre-1960? It just happened in Charlotte, and it’s the cold plot behind true story “Fruitvale Station.” We open with cell phone footage: 22-year-old Oscar Grant is shot point blank in the back New Year’s Day 2009 by a transit cop. He dies hours later. We then flashback to Oscar’s (Michael B. Jordon) final day as he desperately steers away from peddling drugs, works his way back into the graces of his girlfriend and daughter, and helps celebrate his mother’s (Octavia Spencer) birthday. It is she who suggests Oscar and his pals take the train that night. Writer/director Ryan Coogler’s drama is full of gut-puncher tragic moments like that, but also too syrupy scenes where Oscar plays chase with his tot in slo-mo magic hour light. The best moments come when they show Oscar as just a guy, any guy, struggling to correct course, thinking he has time, not knowing he does not. One day, maybe, films like this will be of the past. A-

Savages (2012)

Oliver Stone returns with “Savages,” a grisly flick that follows drug dealer best friends who sell California’s most-in-demand weed. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is scared-by-war ex-military, while Ben (Aaron Johnson) is a hippie botanist with a penchant for mission work. They are yin and yang, with O (Blake Lively), the surfer girl drug addict they share an ocean-side home and bed with, in circle’s center. “Savages” gets to its title fast as a Mexican drug cartel (led by Salma Hayek) busts in with a do-or-die business proposal. This is a nasty and sickly funny production, hallucinogenic as anything Stone has made. Yet gun-shot holes pop loud as a double-barreled ending serves ludicrously tragic followed by ludicrously pat, while much dialogue grinds as when O speaks of Chon: “I have orgasms, he has wargasms.” Huh? Loved: How Hayek and her thugs look on perplexed as the gringos piss away life and family. Hated: Hayek deliciously serves up the notion that the guys love each other more so than O, and the revelation is left dead and forgotten like the myriad bodies that fill this tale. The “Butch Cassidy” references only hinder. B-