Ma Rainey certainly feels theatrical, with the actors and their dialogue driving everything in the movie. It ends up working well here, thanks to an excellent ensemble led by a dynamic performance from Boseman. It will take an exceptional turn from Hopkins to unseat Boseman for best actor, and I hope this year's race isn't looked back on as awarding Boseman because he died, for this is a fantastic and deserving performance. It's great to see Boseman go against his usual typecast of a golden boy fighting through adversity, and he shows remarkable range from the emotional turmoil of his past to the energy he brings to his music. Davis is definitely good, though I don't think she was nearly as enthralling or rangy as Boseman. The entire ensemble is very good, with the piano playing Turman as my favorite supporting performance. The script is fine, and it does set the atmosphere and rapport among the players well, but largely repeats the same series of interactions with only a couple unique scenes. The direction was my biggest problem with the film - not that it was incompetent, but that no depth was added to the film beyond what's present in the dialogue. Several of the music scenes cut around haphazardly, and the blocking was extremely uncreative, with wide shots that hone in on a character's face with no depth to the shots or visual meaning. The dialogue captures the struggles of black people fighting their way through a white person's world, but none of the editing or blocking during this dialogue added to it any more than reading the words on a page. I will give credit for one scene which was extremely thematically interesting: the door. Boseman is convinced that the door is new, and we see him playing with it and trying to open it throughout the film. As he is dejected late in the movie, he pushes on the door, it won't budge, and eventually it opens, only for him to find that it leads to an empty, walled in space. Just for this metaphor alone I almost gave the film an 8 - this perfectly symbolizes Boseman's struggle in feeling like he has no hope or door to success, seems like he finds one, only for it to be blocked off all along. The ending makes some sense on a character level but I disliked the execution - it felt so absurd and unaware as to be implausible coming from Levee. Ma Rainey is definitely a good movie and Boseman is the definitive reason, but more compelling direction could have elevated this into an excellent one.