Movie Nation

Nicolas Cage is — hands down — the best, most-committed and most-fun voice actor in animated films today. Fight me.

His hilarious, empathetic and occasionally gonzo turn made the cave-family comedy “The Croods” a surprise delight back in 2013. Credit the recording-studio direction or competition with that Canadian cut-up Ryan Reynolds and future Oscar-winner Emma Stone if you want, but there was utter magic at work, bringing those animated characters to life.

That’s just as true with the sequel. “The Croods: A New Age” has some of the derivative limitations of the first film — the faint whiff of riding “Ice Age’s” coattails. But the players make their slapsticking, pratfalling, punking and pranking characters breathe, live, love and care.

And they let us care, too. Just a little.

Grug (Cage) and his family — wife Ugga (Catherine Keener), warrior tomboy Eep (Stone), lunkish son Thunk (Clark Duke), Gran (Oscar winner Cloris Leachman) and feral, grunting girl-child Sandy (Kailey Crawford) finally stumble into their “paradise,” the “tomorrow” that foundling teen Guy (Ryan Reynolds) always talked about.

Turns out, the hunter-gatherers have stumbled into the Land of Plenty created by the Bettermans (cute). They’re people from Guy’s past who settled down, discovered farming and irrigation and sort of Swiss Family Robinsoned their way to mythic Paleolithic bliss.

But civilization has made the Bettermans –Dawn (Leslie Mann) and Phil (Peter Dinklage) a tad uptight. One might say…snooty?

“Forgive our condescension.”

That’s going to create conflict with the gorging, gross live-off-the-land/smell-like-the-land Croods.

“It’s called a shower. You should TRY it!”

Throw in the fact that Guy’s childhood gal-pal Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran of the recent “Star Wars” trilogy) is in the mix, a third wheel in the Eep/Guy teen romance, and Ugg’s whole “The pack stays together” ethos and all sorts of conflict has entered the picture — civilization vs. primal “nature,” collective caring/thinking vs. “individuality,” “taming” (breaking) nature vs. living in harmony with it.

Yeah, this could get deep. Thank heavens it doesn’t.

The comic action comes from the various outside fantastical and deadly species that menace “the pack” into “the kill circle.” The comedy comes from sight gags and zingers about an era when life was “brutish, nasty and short.”

“If no one’s died before breakfast, that’s a win.”

I got a kick out of the pretentious Phil’s “power of higher thought” discoveries of “the man cave” (a sauna) and the like. Privacy? Guy explains to Eep that that would mean the end of the Crood family/pack “sleep pile.”

Privacy means “you only smell the feet you WANNA smell!”

The assorted species in this imaginary world are worth a chuckle — wolf spiders, kanga-dillos, vulture rats. You’ve got to dig the film’s tough girl-powered preserve-the-pack mindset.

“Today is a good day to DIE” toothless/hairless Gran spits as they form their defensive “kill circle.”

And first scene to last, we can revel in Cage’s utterly convincing envy, fear, primal fury and primitive appetites as Ugg, a caveman/dad with one mission, who only gets confused when there are distractions from a father’s Job One.

“Ok. Nothing’s tried to kill us for ten minutes. We’ll camp here.”

Yes. “Revel in” Cage’s wonderful voice acting, setting the tone for everybody else in the movie going all-in just to match his commitment. Or you could just fight me.

MPA Rating: PG for peril, action and rude humor.

Cast: The voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Cloris Leachman, Leslie Mann, Catherine Keener, Kelly Marie Trann, Clark Duke and Peter Dinklage

Credits: Directed by Joel Crawford, script by Ken Hageman, Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan. A Dreamworks production, a Universal release.

Running time: 1:35

A terror threat to New York has been identified, but all the police want to do is frame a local mosque run by an ex-con.

A rich family has arranged a change at the top. But murdering the patriarch doesn’t leave the field clear. A prodigal son lives on the streets, a crackhead who plays the ukulele for a fix, and gives his love and devotion only to Smooch — the pitbull he’s taken on as his best friend.

Those are the not-terribly-original but promising prospects set up by writer-director John Marco Lopez for the latest film to wear the title “Paradise City.” But don’t be fooled by the self-consciously artistic touches, the somewhat drab black and white cinematography, the dueling flashback and flash forward stuffed into the prologue, the judicious over-use of dramatic slow-motion.

This thing’s something of a muddle.

But it’s a fine vehicle for character player Hassan Bradley. He’s Brother Nasim, the ex-con who leads a tiny, start-up mosque in Manhattan, preaching love and street wisdom to any who will hear.

“You are the cause of what you cause…Alcohol is POISON, my brother!”

He has to ask new recruits to his congregation one thing that has little to do with the Koran.

“Are you a cop?”

One brother that he seemingly doesn’t suspect is the suspiciously observant Farouk (Kareem Savinon). As Johnny Colon, he’s working undercover for the Islamophobic “special crimes” unit run by Murdoch (Sticky Fingaz), the pride of the commssioner (Gordon Joseph Weiss).

Farouk/Colon is the one who spies the manic junky stealing from the mosque after Nasim has kindly invited him in to come in, clean up, eat and feed his dog. Little does he know that the homeless guy is young Alastair Holmgren (Chris Petrovski, not bad), heir to a freshly-deceased real estate mogul and sought by that mogul’s famous, ruthless, published and T

TV-friendly sister, Bianca (Laura Kamin).

The plotting is a strong suit of “Paradise City,” along with some very nice work by Bradley. The problems come from much of what spins out of that plot.

Scene after scene is static, slow to ignite — Alastair’s drug-desperate convenience store robbery — or failing to come to a point at all.

There’s little urgency to the film or any of the characters, even with law enforcement certain something is about to happen any minute, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral is among the possible “wiped off the map” targets.

Even Murdoch’s mania for that one mosque seems artificial, not something we’d believe in a near-lockdown emergency. Many is the character who acts illogically, in defiance of common sense or her or his self-interest.

And writer-director Lopez (“The Hudson Tribes”) keeps pausing to let us see a pastoral flashback — a beautiful family picnic that ended in tragedy — always in slo-mo.

There’s enough here that you can see the movie that might have been. But “Paradise City” gets in its own way so often that it falls well short of paradise, or coherence for that matter.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Chris Petrovski, Sticky Fingaz, Laura Kamin, Hassan Bradley, Kareem Savinon and Gordon Joseph Weiss

Credits: Written and directed by John Marco Lopez. An LPZ Media release.

Running time: 1:37

Nobody’s traveling much these days. But the movies can add to your bucket list of destinations once the pandemic has been beaten back.

“Sing Me a Song” hits various movie-watching platforms Jan. 1

Disney’s new version of “Black Beauty” makes the famed fictional horse a wild Western mustang and moves her from 19th century England to modern day America.

But writer-director Ashley Avis doesn’t shy away from the dark undertones of Anna Sewell’s sentimental girl-and-her-horse tale. In modernizing it, Avis (“The Trouble with Mistletoe”) also modernizes Sewell’s ahead-of-her-time view of a horse’s life — kindness and bonding mixed with animal cruelty, seen in the way a horse changes hands many times over its lifetime. She picks up on the fact that too many who want this plaything don’t want any part of the lifetime commitment and expense that would make the horse’s quality of life bearable.

Oscar winner Kate Winslet narrates “Beauty’s” life story, growing up in a herd out West, curious about the humans who intrude on their wilderness, a curiosity that brings callous cowboys and a helicopter roundup that ends with most of the herd corralled and “it was all my fault.”

Iain Glen is the horse whisperer who saves the gorgeous, furious black filly, a “strike horse,” from the slaughterhouse. John takes her “back east,” to New York (the part that looks like mountainous South Africa) where the Birtwick Stables he helps run does a bit of mustang “rescue” work.

He isn’t getting anywhere “breaking” the horse when his newly-orphaned niece (Mackenzie Foy of “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms”), sullen and embittered by her loss and resentful of her uncle, befriends the mare and gives her the name “Black Beauty.”

But Jo has barely just “partnered” (rather than broken) the horse when outside forces send Beauty on her odyssey of modern horse ownership. She’ll be a show jumper, a national park rescue ranger’s ride, and a draft horse while her first love — Jo — finishes growing up, pining for and searching for her missing Black Beauty.

Winslet’s narration anchors the story in Sewell’s world, the horse’s eye-view of human-horse interaction.

“I decided humans must be very lazy. They always want to be carried about by something.”

Uncle John (Glen, of “Game of Thrones” and “Downton Abbey”) is the human philosopher of the tale, detailing the humane way of “partnering” a horse, quoting the poet that there’s “No secret so great as that between a rider and his horse.”

Foy doesn’t give us the big emotions her role calls for. Still waiting for the long-haired model to come into her own as an actress.

Claire Forlani is the imperious rich woman whose bratty daughter will abuse Beauty, and Hakeem Kae-Kazim is the intrepid ranger who treats the horse like the tool that (to him) it is.

And if you know anything of the most widely-criticized misery horses face in modern America, you can guess where the third act is going.

With its obvious melodrama, obviously misleading “locations” and even more obvious big stunts, “Black Beauty” doesn’t transcend its sentimental children’s entertainment origins.

But Avis more than does the novel justice. And parents might find themselves as moved as the film’s intended viewership by this story of a horse’s hard life made better by the girl who loves her.

MPA Rating: unrated, G-worthy

Cast: Mackenzie Foy, Claire Forlani, Iain Glen, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Calum Lynch and the voice of the voice of Kate Winslet.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ashley Avis, based on the Anna Sewell novel. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:49

Long before the streaming services made the label “made for television movie” respectable, there were stand-outs in the stepsister genre that showed you didn’t need Hollywood backing to make a good movie. Spielberg’s breakout “Duel” is the best known example.

But PBS, keeping to its enlighten/educate mission, turned out quality films on important hot-button subjects via its series, “American Playhouse.” That’s where “The Killing Floor” found its home, an early work of resonant power from African American actor-filmmaker Bill Duke, who would go on to direct lots of TV and some solid genre films, “A Rage in Harlem” and “Hoodlum.”

“The Killing Floor,” newly restored for Film Movement, is a well-researched, swirling period piece about the real people who integrated Chicago’s stockyards and unions in events leading up to the city’s post-World War I race riots of 1919.

It’s a rough-hewn film, crudely incorporating newsreel footage of the day with grim, unblinking cattle slaughterhouse footage of today and leaning far too much on voice over narration to tell its story of one member of the African American diaspora who came to Chicago from Mississippi to find himself in the middle of a labor struggle and a racial one.

But it’s impressive in its detail and startling in its ambition, and thanks to capturing a legion of actors about to become famous — from Alfre Woodard and Dennis Farina to Ted Levine, Mary Alice, Stephen McKinley Henderson and John Mahoney — beautifully acted.

Damien Leake is Frank Custer, a sharecropper who leaves behind his wife (Woodard) and family to seek work in the Big City during the Great War. He and his traveling partner Thomas (Ernest Rayford) are startled on arrival to see that “colored folk had built their own city.”

That city-within-a-city in Southside Chicago included a support system, where the YMCA provided job counseling/placement through M. Cheeks (August Wilson favorite Stephen McKinley Henderson). That’s how the guys end up at the sea of cattle and meat processing known as The Stockyards, an eight-story killing machine where “they didn’t waste NOTHING” — tail to hides, steaks to brains.

Duke shows us about as much of this as PBS would allow in 1984.

Frank gets his start mopping blood off the floor, and trying to keep his head down as the Poles and Slavs who dominated the workforce bellyached that “there’s as many of them as there are of cattle.” “The Great Migration” was underway, and war or no war — white jobs were being threatened.

Frank finds himself befriending the Pole Bremer (Clarence Felder). That’s how he’s recruited for the meat packing union. And that’s how he finds himself going toe to toe with the “packers” (corporate, represented by Mahoney) and with older workers like the jaded Heavy (Moses Gunn).

Thomas? He takes one beating (for being “mouthy”) too many and decides the Army’s for him. As it turns out, he returns to town just in time for all the wage pressure/job shortage/racism stuff to come to a head.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s a clumsiness to the integration of different film stocks and the reliance on voice-over to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. “Floor” looks too much like a “TV movie” of the day for its own good. It’s not a great film, but it’s a lot more than an interesting artifact.

But I was startled by the clarity of the story which Duke finesses from the over-eager and overly earnest Leslie Lee/Ron Milner script, which throws a whirlwind of characters, conflicts and events at us hoping that we’ll keep up.

Woodard’s trademark sexy-earthiness is obvious, even early on. Gunn was already an accomplished character actor, and Farina was — I think — still a cop when he took this role, years away from “Crime Story” and “Get Shorty.”

The leading men are quite good, if not dazzling in that pop-off-the-screen way that points towards stardom.

The presence of Henderson, of “Fences,” places the film within that broader depiction of African American working class struggles that were playwright August Wilson’s raison d’etre. This historical piece is Wilson-esque, if not polished and pungent enough to pass off as one of his own.

But considering the timing — making this in the middle of Ronald Reagan’s war on labor and on African America — “The Killing Floor” plays like a landmark far more important than its “history on a budget” look.

MPA Rating: unrated, some violence, animal slaughter, racial slurs

Cast: Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Ernest Rayford, Moses Gunn, Clarence Felder, Mary Alice, Dennis Farina, Ted Levine and John Mahoney

Credits: Directed by Bill Duke, script by Leslie Lee, Ron Milner, story by Elsa Rassbach. An American Playhouse film, a Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:58

We pretty much don’t have soap operas to kick around any more. But that favorite trope of drama’s most melodramatic art form remains. Amnesia still pops up in movies, long after most soaps, and movies like “Memento” and “50 First Dates” seemed to exhaust its last possibilities of novelty.

“32 Weeks” is an indie drama about a young woman who went to a party, had a car wreck on the way home, and can’t remember much of anything from the past eight months. And if it doesn’t cover much in the way of new ground, it’s still a smartly-conceived vehicle for drama, melodrama and a couple of decent surprises.

Cole (Nicole Souza of “Against the Night”) remembers giving a violin lesson. After that? Nada. And even before that is foggy, going back months and months.

Luckily her BFF Hannah (Nicole Rainteau) goes back further than that. Summoned to her bedside, the tears transition to jokes before too long. There’s nothing for it but to dive into her Facebook friend’s list, figure out who might jar her memory and who she’d rather forget.

Was she in love? Did she have a bad breakup? Hannah has answers, well some of them. Cole will have to piece that together, bit by bit.

Simon (Scott Bender) is the guy most eager to help out. They hadn’t dated long, and things might have been over, according to Hannah. But he puts himself at her beck and call — taking her to “our favorite restaurant,” the beach, a record store, anything to bring it all back.

“He’s seen you naked,” Hannah jokes. The fellow who hosted the party (KiDane Kelati) the night of her accident can’t make her remember “vodka pong,” and playing “Never have I ever” rattles her.

But Cole’s muscle memory kicks in when she picks up her violin again. Putting Bach on a turntable at the record store gives her flashbacks. Music is her “trigger.”

Producer (“The Last Movie Star,” Burt Reynolds’ swan song) turned writer/director Brian Cavallaro keeps things light during the early acts of this short, if not exactly brisk mystery thriller.

The tug of war over Cole’s memories — What “secret” is she missing? What does she need or want to forget, or desperately need to remember? — plays out with texts, “revisits” to the scene of dates and the like.

Souza is properly confused and assertively curious. She makes us wonder if Cole is going where she dare not go, even as we’re as interested in her past as she is.

“Is it OK if I just don’t remember everything, just make peace with it?” she asks her neurologist.

Cavallaro treats flashbacks, which give away events from Cole’s past, as whiplash-fast montages, each flashback attached to “12 weeks” or however long ago this event happened. They flesh things out, even if most of them don’t add much to the story.

The story doesn’t unfold particularly gracefully, advancing in fits and starts. The “serious” turn for the third act is abrupt, even if we’ve sensed it was coming.

But the picture plays, the amnesia crutch the plot leans on never gives way and the players, especially Souza, keep us invested and interested until the last mystery of those missing “32 Weeks” is revealed.

MPA Rating: unrated, sexual situations, violence

Cast: Nicole Souza, Nicole Rainteau , Scott Bender, Cameron Tagge, KiDane Kelati and Hannah Kleeman

Credits: Scripted and directed by Brian Cavallaro. An Indie Rights release.

Running time: 1:22

Noemí is out of sorts when we meet her. She confides in her mouthy, free-spirit friend Rosa, worried about what’s going on “with my body” after “the pills (in Spanish, with English subtitles).”

There it is. She’s pregnant, unsure of what issues are going on, why the abortion pills didn’t work.

And in Argentina, a woman’s got to be careful which clinic she goes to for answers. It’s illegal. The “Vatican” one she shows up in, by accident, is pretty quick to call somebody in uniform when the nurse figures out what she’s done.

But that’s not what “Noemí Gold” is about. Dan Rubenstein’s light-touch Argentine drama is a moody amble through Noemi’s psyche, her predicament and the life that goes on around it.

Catalina Berarducci is Noemí Goldberg, 27 and with a freshly-printed MA in architecture, living la vida tranquila in Buenos Aires. Rosa (Martina Juncadella) is her faintly-annoying but hip friend, living with her, slipping out for girl boxing, not necessarily giving her the best advice.

Rosa, we gather, got the name of the clinic wrong. But as she atones for that by helping Noemí make a Plan B (abortions are legal), there’s all this other stuff going on to distract Rosa from her predicament. Still, having tactless, indiscreet friends and a faithless lover doesn’t help.

An aloof “influencer” cousin — David — has flown in to stay with her and promote whatever products he’s supposed to plug as he posts whatever they’re doing wherever they’re doing it. He’s glued to his screen constantly, even when they go canoeing or visit their grandmother.

The guy who got Noemí pregnant is a rich brat, and an artist. Tacho’s “ghosted” her, so there’s nothing for it but to confront him at a performance art opening the women know he’s hosting. He denies being responsible, and rudely. But Rosa insists they stick around and wear him down. Rosa takes a stab at karaoke in a bar they all go to, changing the lyrics to Chicago’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” seems to get Tacho’s attention.

And then there’s Sol (Amelia Repetto), the neighbor/pal who likes her wine, her weed, and flirting with/debating American Mormon missionaries.

Through it all, Berarducci plays Noemí as puzzled and worried, but rarely letting her annoyance show and never letting anybody see her rattled.

Writer-director Rubenstein taps into a languorous Argentine vibe and never lets go of it. “Noemí Gold” limits its characters to the interpersonal relationships and lives. The “influencer” is the only one to have what you’d call a job. Everybody else just indulges in hobbies (boxing), dreams (art) and each other’s personal business. Relatives are paying the bills?

Not a lot happens, but on an intimate level, it does. Conflicts are rare, “problems” are mulled, glossed-over and solved without a lot of effort and even the people other people don’t get along with seem to get along, more or less.

Rubenstein’s character study suggests that it’s not all that great being “Noemí Gold” at 27. But all things considered, it’s not all that bad either.

MPA Rating: unrated, adult subject matter, drinking and drugs

Cast: Catalina Berarducci, Martina Juncadella, Amelia Repetto

Credits: Scripted and directed by Dan Rubenstein. A Topic streaming release.

Running time: 1:21

Cut through the cute that crosses into “cutesie,” tolerate the stereotypes and ignore the sentiment that claws at cloying, and “Team Marco” plays like a pleasant time killer of a comedy suitable for the whole family.

It’s a “things my Italian grandpa taught me on summer vacation” tale, a bratty child of divorce learning a little about life and a lot about bocce on the eve of his 12th birthday.

Marco, played by Owen Vacarro of “The House with a Clock in Its Walls,” is an iPad and xBox addicted tween determined to pound away at his favorite video game, “Atomic Rick,” in between school years.

“Atomic Rick” was developed by his dad, Richie, who ditched his mom (Anastasia Ganias) and moved to the west coast. “Rick” in the game looks like his Dad Richie (Louis Cancelmi).

And while Richie’s too busy to chat with his kid in person, he’s promised that if Marco masters the game and makes his way up to the top level, he’ll take him to a game convention at the end of the summer.

That’s all Marco thinks about, day and night, even at his grandma’s funeral, even after Grandpa, “Nonno” (Anthony Patellis of “The Sopranos”) burns up his kitchen and has to move in with them.

But Nonno sees a lot of problems when he settles in with his grandson. The kid has no friends. He’s practically agoraphobic, afraid of spending too much time outdoors.

“Mosquitoes carry WEST NILE!”

And his nurse-mom just indulges that, his imagined food allergies, the works. Her dad’s complaints about the kid fall on deaf ears.

“He spendsa-more time with hees tablet than MOSES!”

Events conspire to have Grandpa take on “babysitting.” Thus, does Marco’s “real” education begin, from the back of the old man’s Vespa and on the bocce courts of Staten Island.

“Bocce’s like’a life. It’s not about thinking. You have to FEEL it.”

“Life is ees deliciosa! You just have to bite it!”

Marco’s screen-free summer will not be tolerated — “What am I, Amish?” But what can he do but hang with Nonno’s posse and pick up “the world’s oldest game.”

The conversations with the old men are cute.

“So kid, gotta girlfriend?” “I’m 11!” “So? I was MARRIED when I was 11, divorced at 12!”

“I was fighting for Mussolini at 10!”

“We lie a lot,” Nonno allows.

I’m quoting a lot of dialogue here , because sitcommie as it is, it’s the best thing in “Team Marco.” The jokes about “a whole generation of zombies eating pizza bagels” and gags about tween screen addiction and Google Assistant in the house and grandpa’s inability to master a Keurig coffeemaker are were worn out before this picture went into production.

The same goes for the predictably sentimental touches and the “life lessons.” Meh.

But the kid is properly obnoxious and Patellis amusingly over-the-top. And their banter almost achieves comic lift-off.

If you’ve got three generations in your house for the holidays and need something everybody can watch, you could do worse.

MPA Rating: unrated, worthy of a G.

Cast: Owen Vacarro, Anthony Patellis, Anastasia Ganias

Credits: Directed by Julio Vincent Gambuto, script by Julio Vincent Gambuto and B.R. Uzun. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:32

Never seen a Billie Holiday doc, this looks terrific. A Dec. 4 release.