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You know what’s not bad? “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.” Dumber than a box of lugnuts, but superior to the Michael Bay-directed schlocktaculars that ran as long as 165 minutes. The new “Transformers” movie clocks in at 117 minutes, a lot of them pretty zippy.
The year is 1994. Anthony Ramos of “In the Heights” portrays Noah Diaz, an Army vet and electronics expert whose little brother (Dean Scott Vazquez) copes with sickle cell disease. Money’s tight. Their mother (Luna Lauren Vélez) works hard to keep the family afloat. This time Noah’s the one who discovers: that car he just stole? It’s an Autobot, from the planet Cybertron, reporting to noble interstellar warrior Optimus Prime, who’s about to face Earth’s latest nonpolitical calamity: the planet-sucking Unicron.
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