As a movie, Purple Rain isn’t much, honestly—basically a series of melodramatic (and often misogynistic) vignettes about a pouty brat (Prince) acting like a sour piece of shit to everyone in a five-mile radius (The Revolution, Apollonia) as a coping mechanism for having an abusive father (Clarence Williams III). But as a document of Prince’s talents as a musician and a live performer, (and to a lesser extent, Morris Day’s charisma and the Time’s chops), Purple Rain is like an atomic bomb powered by funk-rock fusion, whose radioactive fallout changed pop culture forever. SQUAWK! Hallelujah. by Bobby Roberts