Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Atomic Blonde

Many actresses have delved into the action genre, a realm that men have often held dominion over. Of those few women, one of the best at creating robust characters whose lives we want to examine further is Charlize Theron. With her solo action debut Aeon Flux, Theron tried hard to convince us that the film was worth caring about, but a dreadful execution didn’t help in the slightest. It wasn’t until Mad Max: Fury Road that she had a role truly deserving of both her charismatic star quality and her acting talents. It was a standout performance. Now, she’s back at the helm of the genre and proving perfectly adept in the field with Atomic Blonde.

As the Berlin Wall is set to be torn down, a British secret agent arrives in Berlin to locate a list of agents that may have fallen into Russian hands. As she tries to uncover the twisted plot that threatens to expose her and several prominent agents, the various players mobilize to take her down in this slow-boil espionage thriller. Also involved in the affair are James McAvoy as a MI:6 agent who appears to have gone native, Sofia Boutella as a French agent with dangerous photography skills, Eddie Marsan as a German bureaucrat who possesses the list both in watch-form and in memory, Toby Jones as an MI:6 agent debriefing Theron’s Lorraine Broughton, and John Goodman as a C.I.A. chief.

This Cold War spy story feels draw directly from the period and proves a natural fit for the tumultuous times. Theron gives one of her best performances while McAvoy is a thrilling addition. Stunt coordinator-turned-director David Leitch has crafted a swift-moving ride that features one of the single best fight sequences ever conceived, a 10-minute stairway battle that looks incredibly impressive, but feels slightly out of place with the rest of the film thanks to a too-natural soundscape. While the hyper-stylized setting may seem straight out of James Bond, Broughton is far more reminiscent of the likes of Jason Bourne, a gritty contemporary drama that focuses on swift shifts in plot to carve out a dark, crushing feature that’s exciting through much of its run time.

Purple Rain

One of history’s greatest musical artists tried his hand at acting with the 1984 music drama Purple Rain, for which he composed the legendary soundtrack. Set at the legendary music club First Avenue, the film centers around The Kid (Prince), an up-and-coming music superstar caught between bickering and abusive parents and a nightclub that wants invention rather than drama. As he fights for the love of a young woman, the Kid must battle internal squabbling with his band The Revolution and the malicious intentions of another First Avenue act: Morris and his band The Time.

Prince’s acting ability is questionable. The early scenes are mawkish, but become more realistically grounded as the film progresses. They never escape the pretentious preening of a music icon, but the touch upon the hard truths of physical and emotional abuse both as the abused and the abuser. The Kid is emotionally vacant thanks to his rocky home life, so he treats the potential new love of his life, Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero), with childish gimmicks and inherited abuse. There’s a dark undertone to the film that always bubbles under it, though it’s displayed through a violet-hued lens that almost excuses the actions of the characters involved, not because the actions are excusable, but because of the undercurrent of love that rides below the surface.

Kotero is abjectly terrible, as is most of the rest of the cast, including Morris Day appearing as a smarmy version of himself. This is a film that needed to succeed whether it was any good or not and for the most part, it’s a serviceable drama. Director Albert Magnoli who never managed to direct a hit again, doesn’t add much to the production, relying on underedited concert sequences and never trying to elicit more than perfunctory surface emotions from his stars. Yet, in spite of his lack of directorial style, Magnoli manages to hit on some interesting questions about abuse and the tensions of rising to fame.

The reason the film succeeds as much as it does, though, is the utterly brilliant soundtrack Prince has created for it. With iconic tunes like the title track and “Let’s Go Crazy,” Purple Rain is a visceral, bountiful, and gorgeous piece of music. These songs are haunting and exciting with some of Prince’s best and most iconic guitar riffs. While the album featured the song “When Doves Cry,” it is heard only briefly and without lyric in the film itself. Yet, even without that classic tune gracing the film itself, everything culminates beautifully in the third act performance of “Purple Rain,” an mournful tune that captures the essence of the film’s dark themes and fits as a perfect emotional conclusion to The Kid’s story and a fitting celebration of success, breaking through personal and professional roadblocks.