01
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Why this pick
A tense, music-soaked chamber drama centered on a formidable Black performer, using a single charged session to expose humor, pride, trauma, and the costs of a life in song.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2016 1h 37m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill
DramaMusical
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, try these.
01
02
Bessie
Why this pick
This blues biopic shares the intimate, bruised portraiture and performance-driven power of Billie Holiday's final-stage reminiscences, with Queen Latifah giving Bessie Smith a similarly forceful voice.
03
Lackawanna Blues
Why this pick
Like a filmed theatrical performance, it turns a richly voiced storyteller's memories into an intimate world of music, jokes, and hard-lived community history.
04
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Why this pick
Its archival intimacy and unsparing emotional focus make it a strong companion for a performance framed by memory, wit, pain, and the artist behind the legend.
05
Lady Sings the Blues
Why this pick
A lush, dramatic earlier screen portrait of Billie Holiday, driven by Diana Ross's musical presence and the same tragic pull between public performance and private struggle.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
It's 1959 in a seedy bar in Philadelphia, and Billie Holiday is giving one of her last performances interlaced with salty, often humorous, reminiscences to project a riveting portrait of the lady and her music 4 months before her death.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Audra McDonald
Lady Day
Shelton Becton
Jimmy Powers
George Farmer
Bass
Clayton Craddock
Drums
Roxie
Pepi
Debra Crowe
Bar Patron