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:

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Espionage is a very popular genre in film today with no fewer than three major spy franchises making regular films and countless other small features, remakes and comedies competing for attention at the box office. It’s no surprise that one of Television’s more popular such series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was ripe for big screen translation, but it ultimately can’t hold a candle to the other TV-to-screen adaptation also released this year, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

Set during the Cold War, an American spy (Henry Cavill) and a Russian agent (Armie Hammer) are forced to work together to protect a young auto mechanic from East Germany (Alicia Vikander) as they infiltrate a major crime syndicate led by the ruthless heiress (Elizabeth Debicki) as she attempts to build an atomic bomb and sell it to the highest bidder.

Director Guy Ritchie has done quite well for himself in the adaptation medium, having turned Sherlock Holmes into two successful feature films starring Robert Downey Jr. Those films, which oozed style, gave the audience hope that his adaptation of another period drama, one admittedly later in period, would be similarly awash in design exuberance.

The film doesn’t quite have the level of richly detailed excess that Sherlock Holmes possessed and often looks like it’s stuck in a modestly vivid, but ultimately disappointing version of the 1960’s. The performances are mediocre at best with the four principles all doing acceptable, but not exemplary work.