Actor Anthony Ramos has been planning for this next move for quite some time. With parts in films like “In The Heights” and the popular musical “Hamilton,” he’s poised to be more than simply a Latino action star, but an action star imbued with a little Brooklyn and Puerto Rican flavor, as he demonstrates in “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts.” It is his second leading part but his first in such a large-scale franchise.

Continue reading ‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’: Anthony Ramos Talks Representation In Franchises & Getting His Driver’s License For The Film [Interview] at The Playlist.

A cold open introducing how a Transformer ends up on earth. An extended introduction to a nifty, somewhat nerdy girl into gizmos and gadgets. A fateful path crossing between man and machine of the Autobot variety. An unexpectedly tender bond forms. A collision course with their mechanical foes bent on destruction. A battle where just that ensues.

If that sounds familiar from 2018’s “Bumblebee,” the only film in the “Transformers” series to receive net positive scores from critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, you’d be correct.

Continue reading ‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’ Review: Latest Fighting Robots Sequel Proves The Franchise Is Out Of Gas at The Playlist.

After the release of “Bumblebee” there had been suggestions that Paramount Pictures would be move past the established Michael Bay “Transformers” films to more traditional designs of the Autobots/Decepticons. Enter “Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts,” directed by Steven Caple Jr. Paramount brought in the “Creed II” director to helm an Optimus Prime centric pic with Anthony Ramos (“In The Heights“) and Dominique Fishback (“Swarm“) as the human leads with a wave of familiar and new sentient alien robots to make fans happy.

Continue reading ‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’ Trailer: The Autobots Return For A New Adventure In 1994 at The Playlist.

Black creatives’ struggle in the media world can often feel quite stark. “Swarm,” the new Amazon prime series from the collective minds of Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, is in its first week of release at the time of writing. While doing the usual google research for this review, I typed in “Swarm” TV news and headed along to the news tab. My eyes rolled so far into my head; you could have sworn Paul Bearer was standing beside me holding an urn.

Continue reading ‘Swarm’ Review: Dominique Fishback Owns & Janine Nabers & Donald Glover Reorient ‘The King Of Comedy’ Through A Black Lens at The Playlist.

All it takes is a very basic search on social media to find that fandoms can be taken to the extreme in some scary ways. Obviously, as a film and TV outlet, we have covered things such as Zack Snyder’s fans threatening executives over silly DC superhero films. Then there are Marvel fans obsessed (to an almost unhealthy degree) with their favorite characters. Not all fans are like this, but there are definitely groups that take things way too far.

Continue reading ‘Swarm’ Trailer: Fandom Is Taken To The Extreme In New Series From Donald Glover & Janine Nabers at The Playlist.

About two years ago, Donald Glover signed an overall deal with Amazon Studios. And now, his first output from that deal is ready to go: “Swarm,” which premieres at SXSW next month.

Co-created by Glover and showrunner Janine Nabers, “Swarm” follows Dre, an obsessive young fan of a popstar very similar to Beyoncé. Over its seven episodes, the show dives into Dre’s life, fandom, and the dark and unexpected places it leads her.

Continue reading ‘Swarm’ Teaser: Donald Glover & Janine Nabers’ Upcoming Prime Video Series Explores The Dark Side Of Fandom at The Playlist.

The SXSW Conference and Festivals, which runs March 10-19, 2023, just announced the second wave of the 2023 Film & TV Festival Lineup, including all Visions, Global presented by MUBI, 24 Beats, and Festival Favorites, plus numerous additions to Headliners, TV Premieres, Narrative and Documentary Spotlight, and other sections. The Festival also announced that Janine Nabers and Donald Glover‘s “Swarm” and Lee Sung Jin’s “Beef” will be the Opening and Closing Night TV premieres.

Continue reading SXSW Film & TV 2023 Adds Donald Glover’s ‘Swarm’ & Emma Seligman’s ‘Bottoms’ Among Second Wave Programming at The Playlist.

What’s going on with the ‘Transformers’ series? Well, ever since Michael Bay left the series, it’s been a bit adrift. Once a billion-dollar performer at the box office, audience interest seemingly waned by the time the fifth film arrived, and “Transformers: The Last Knight” did about half the amount of business as the previous film. The “Bumblebee” spin-off was well-liked by critics but couldn’t even crack $500 million worldwide at the box office, perhaps giving Paramount pause about the series’ lifespan.

Continue reading ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Trailer: Power Is Primal In New ‘Transformers’ Spin-Off at The Playlist.

Samuel L. Jackson is unforgettable in the new Apple TV+ series “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” even when he’s silent, slumped in a lawn chair, and fading away in a monumentally cluttered apartment. With the help of excellent aging makeup and delicate prosthetics, Jackson gives a precisely physical, everyman performance that feels like his own “Forrest Gump.” Surrounded by canyons of stuff — triggers to his past lives — his aging, brittle character wrestles with dementia while sporadically being triggered by memories that poetically talk about Black America in the 20th century.

Continue reading ‘The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey’ Review: Samuel L. Jackson Shines In An Enigmatic Journey Through Time & Memory at The Playlist.

In the three decades since Samuel L. Jackson entered Hollywood, his on-screen persona has become one of the most familiar in movies. Regardless of the role, you can typically count on Jackson to be tough, cranky, and self-assured. But it’s not often he plays a character as emotionally vulnerable as that at the center of his latest project.

READ MORE: The 70 Most Anticipated TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2022

“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” an upcoming six-episode limited series from Apple TV+, was adapted by popular crime fiction writer Walter Mosley from his 2010 novel about a dementia-addled misanthrope who pieces together the details of a murder.

Continue reading ‘Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey’ Trailer: Samuel L. Jackson Fights Personal Demons In Upcoming Apple TV+ Series at The Playlist.

In a world with new anthology series with star-studded casts coming seemingly every month or so, a show really has to do something special to impress audiences. And while “Modern Love” already released a successful first season, the anthology is going even bigger with the A-list names that are populating the stories being told in Season 2.

READ MORE: ‘Solos’: A Corny, Pandemic-Influenced Melodrama That Feels Like Tone-Deaf Celebrities Singing “Imagine” [Review]

For those that haven’t watched “Modern Love,” the series is pretty straightforward—telling stories about love in all its complicated forms.

Continue reading ‘Modern Love’ Season 2 Trailer: Kit Harington, Minnie Driver, Lucy Boynton & More Star In Amazon’s Anthology at The Playlist.

The new “Transformers” movie has only just begun shooting, but Paramount Pictures wants to let the world know that they’re still spending all the money on this franchise. Today Paramount held a virtual Production Kickoff press conference event for the new film titled “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” complete with a virtual tour of their lot and an information-filled conversation with the director, Steven Caple Jr., producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, and the film’s stars Anthony Ramos (“In The Heights“) and Dominique Fishback (“Judas and the Black Messiah“).

Continue reading Paramount Unveils ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ Coming Summer 2022 At Virtual Event at The Playlist.

There have been some signs that Paramount Pictures might be taking a different angle with future “Transformers” movies post-Michael Bay as previously seen with Steven DeKnight‘s quirky 1980s-set “Bumblebee” taking a much less noisy approach and allowing audiences to settle in rather than being bombarded with incoherent explosions. 

READ MORE: Angel Manuel Soto To Direct A New ‘Transformers’ Film From ‘The Defenders’ Writer Marco Ramirez

Their latest installment is on the cusp of production and already has a prime summer release date of June 24, 2022.

Continue reading ‘Transformers’: Paramount Taps ‘Judas & The Black Messiah’ Star Dominique Fishback For A Lead Role In Next Movie at The Playlist.

Several months ago, it was reported that b was set to star in a new Apple TV+ series, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.” The series, much like almost every Apple TV+ project, is yet another attempt by the streamer to use an A-list star to attract viewers. But now, we know who’s starring opposite Jackson and who is behind the camera, leading us to put ‘Last Days’ near the top of our most anticipated TV list.

Continue reading Ramin Bahrani To Direct Samuel L. Jackson’s ‘Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey’ Apple Series; Dominique Fishback Joins Cast at The Playlist.

Martyrs demark the African-American experience. The documented lineage began with Emmett Till’s murder, his ravaged visage strewn across Jet Magazine’s issues, and continued through Medgar Evers’ assassinations, the four girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and a cruel, etc. Fred Hampton, the gifted Chairman of Chicago’s Black Panther chapter, occupies a space in this timeline. Located just after Malcolm but before the ceaseless stream, we see today.  

READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated 2021 Sundance Film Festival Premieres

Hampton only lived until twenty-one.

Continue reading ‘Judas And The Black Messiah’: Daniel Kaluuya Is Electric In Flawed Hampton Biopic [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

In “Project Power,” a new supercharged, high-concept Netflix film and oblique run at the superhero genre; 1) disposable black and brown people in New Orleans are used as guinea pigs for a new experimental street drug that gives users unpredictable and fleeting superpowers for five minutes; 2) a sympathetic cop uses those same narcotics to “level the playing field” in a city riddled with crime and corrupt superiors who pass on amplified bad guys to secretive feds or men in black without accountability; 3) a white teacher tries to humiliate a black student who also moonlights as a teenaged street dealer by night; 4 Marvin Gaye songs play on the soundtrack to indicate the everyday struggle is real for BIPOC.

Continue reading ‘Project Power’ Tries To Make Spaces For Black Faces, But Gets Lost In Empty Overblown Style [Review] at The Playlist.

While “Lady Bird” connected with large swaths of audiences, on its way to a mountain of awards recognition, the truth is that the film will never be mistaken for a “diverse” film. However, with “Night Comes On,” actress-turned-filmmaker Jordana Spiro has created a film that provides what many projects in the coming-of-age genre don’t provide — an authentic portrait of a young, queer black woman desperate to find meaning.

Continue reading Jordana Spiro’s ‘Night Comes On’ Is A Beautiful, Revenge-Filled Spin On The Coming-Of-Age Genre [Review] at The Playlist.

You don’t need great performances for a great movie, we suppose — Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s mesmerizing 2016 documentary/art piece “Homo Sapiens,” for instance, doesn’t feature a single human being on screen and is still excellent. But on the whole, the two things go hand in hand: it’s impossible to imagine “Lawrence Of Arabia” without Peter O’Toole, “Star Wars” without Harrison Ford, “Cabaret” without Liza Minnelli, or “Tokyo Story” without Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, to name but a few.

Continue reading The Best Performances Of 2017 at The Playlist.