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:

A Monster Calls

J.A. Bayona, the director of the brilliant The Orphanage and the visually daring The Impossible, brings this adaptation of Patrick Ness’ novel A Monster Calls.

As a young boy navigates his feelings about his mother’s illness and the nightmare he’s been having, he summons a monstrous tree to help him cope, damaging himself and the people and things around him.

A stirring film filled with brilliant animated sequences and multiple boxes of tissues stuffed within its storied fable. A modern fairy tale that works on several levels.

Hidden Figures

The story of three black women who helped NASA launch the space program’s manned orbit launch. Hidden Figures is a sugarcoated history lesson that goes down easy and fills you with hope.

Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae as those three women, the film extols the virtues of these strong, capable women who not only made inroads for women in scientific fields, but specifically for women of color. Their story is inspirational and perfect for our current environment.

All three women are fantastic with Kevin Costner delivering his best performance in years. Theodore Melfi’s direction is solid, even if not exceptional and the story waxes poetic about a very challenging time and shows that progress was being made even in the hallowed halls of NASA.

Rogue One

Situated between the first trilogy and the second, Rogue One tells the story of a group of rebels who infiltrate a Imperial installation to retrieve plans for the Death Star.

Felicity Jones stars as Jyn Erso, the daughter of an Imperial engineer who is responsible for the construction of the Death Star. Diego Luna plays the Rebel spy who must locate Jyn’s father and slow down or stop the Death Star’s construction. They are joined by a solid cast of characters playing the crew of Rogue One, the ship that will embark on the journey to retrieve the plans.

The direction is very plan and small details of the plot are out of place or ill-fitted. The situations are predictable, but engaging. All in all, this is a solid effort, ranking well above the prequel trilogy and just after the first two films of the original trilogy.

Moonlight

A superb cast populates this sensitive drama about a young boy who must grow into a man while wrestling with inner demons.

Surrounded by a drug-addict mother (Naomie Harris) and an absent father, Chiron (played by Alex Hibbert as a boy, Ashton Sanders as a teenager and Trevante Rhodes as an adult) must come to terms with his homosexuality in an environment hostile to such revelations.

With no role-models for love and compassion, it takes an unexpected stranger (Mahershala Ali), his girlfriend (Janelle Monae), and his lifelong friend Kevin (Jaden Piner at age 9, Jharrel Jerome at age 16, and Andre Holland as an adult) for advice or guidance.

Director Barry Jenkins carefully maps out his story across three separate time periods in Chirons’s life. They are distinctly separated, but well connected. This movie about trying to find yourself with the world around you doesn’t want to accept you is a central theme to the film. It’s all about the realistic, relatable journey.