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:

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

In its fifth outing, the venerable Mission: Impossible franchise is still beating with the heart of a warrior. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are joined again by Jeremy Renner in this new plot that takes Ethan Hunt and his colleagues deep undercover as rogue agents trying to thwart a rogue nation from continuing its deadly endeavor.

Joining the newly-formed quartet are a delightfully subdued Alec Baldwin and a fiercely magnetic Rebecca Ferguson as the try to thwart Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). The premise is perfectly complex, never missing an opportunity to reinvent itself over the course of its two-hour-plus running time. The Usual Suspects scribe Christopher McQuarrie teams up with Cruise for the fourth time as a writer and second time as a director to give audiences a thrilling, action-packed spy thriller that ups the ante for both the Bourne and Bond franchises.

Ferguson is reminiscent of a young Ingrid Bergman with the appropriately named Ilsa Faust. She adds some needed depth to this typically testosterone-driven affair, infusing it with a sensual competence that destroys gender barriers for this type of role. While the film overuses her sexiness as a visual tool, the film gives her plenty of room to create the most vibrant character in the film. The franchise could definitely use a recurring female character and Ferguson might just be the actress to give it that touch.