Tag: Michael Potts

REVIEW: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom [2020]

Jared Mobarak

I got my time comin’ to me. It’s all there in the opening scene. Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) belts “Deep Moaning Blues” to a full house in Georgia as her band accompanies from the back of the stage. Toledo (Glynn Turman) and Slow Drag (Michael Potts) hit their notes with feeling, keenly watching the subtle yet damning chaos about to unfold. Not only is trumpeter Levee (Chadwick Boseman) angled to serenade young Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige)—Ma’s “girl”—while Cutler (Colman Domingo) shoots a disparaging, fatherly look of judgment, he also dares…

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FANTASIA16 REVIEW: Let Me Make You a Martyr [2016]

Jared Mobarak

“You can’t fight fate” There’s a lot more to Corey Asraf and John Swab‘s debut feature Let Me Make You a Martyr than meets the eye. It looks like your run-of-the-mill revenge thriller with its prodigal son (Niko Nicotera‘s Drew Glass) returning home after an extended stay away to right the wrongs of the past. His adoptive father Larry (Mark Boone Junior) is a drug supplier, sex trade entrepreneur, and who knows what other heinous crimes that set up whatever unknown incident happened to fracture their relationship—something neither can come…

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