Breaking the Fast

Finally after more than two weeks, I broke my movie fast on Saturday. By myself, since no one was available (or awake enough). I'm amazed I didn't fall asleep, and I'm really glad the movies got better and better as the day went on.

Elektra
Jennifer Garner is hot, especially in her red leather outfit. Unfortunately, she only wears it twice in the entire movie.
I liked the characters of Tattoo and Typhoid Mary a lot. Tattoo is a guy who has tattoos (duh) all over his body which can come alive and attack people and shit. Typhoid Mary just spreads death and disease all around her - best illustrated in a scene where she walks through a forest and the plants all wilt and turn grey in her wake. I think I've seen her in comics before, but I don't remember Tattoo.
Had a nice fight scene near the end with big pieces of white cloth billowing around in slow-motion. Seen it a million times before in kungfu flicks, but it still looks cool as hell.
Garner did the ol' "I can't kill them because I've connected to them, and the little girl reminds me of myself, and the father is boring but kinda hot, so I have to kiss him" thing. Bo-ring.
Um, that's about it. I had zero expectations, and was happy to find it didn't suck as much as Daredevil. Enter with an empty mind, and disregard all the obvious setups and bland characters, and you'll have a good time. So yeah, one satisfied customer.

Kinsey
Surprisingly, a decent biopic. Bill Condon kinda slipped a little after his amazing Gods and Monsters, but it's still better than most of the clunky famous-guy's-life-story movies out there. The cast is pretty good, and manage to make the whole thing coherent and not feel episodic, which is one of the biggest complaints I usually have with biopics. I hated Ali for exactly that reason, and for the fact that I couldn't care about the character. Liam Neeson here imbibes Kinsey with humanity, such that you forgive his transgressions against the people around him.
After the movie, it's a sad thing to realize that nothing that much has really changed since Kinsey's time, even with all his efforts. Bigotry is still everywhere, and the Puritans are still in power too. Really, people, lighten up. It's just sex.

Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside)
Beautiful, touching, sensuous, poetic, life-affirming, sensitive, delicate, intelligent. These are but some of the adjectives I can use to describe this gem. In fact, "life-affirming" seems like a strange phrase to use when your main character wants desperately to kill himself, but nevertheless, it's applicable. Javier Bardem gets so much more emotional mileage out of his head and neck (he plays a quadriplegic who is paralyzed from the neck down) than most actors do with their whole bodies. The special effects, when they're utilized, are used to further the story both plot and emotion-wise. They really stand out precisely because they're not overused - when they appear, it's really a significant moment.
Director Alejandro Amenábar's got a good track record, with Open Your Eyes (the Spanish original of Vanilla Sky) and The Others under his belt, and the care that he takes with every scene shows. Every character here is not just a character, they're fully human, with all the frailties and nuances that entails, and the lovingly-crafted performances communicate all of that. Besides this, the storytelling is mature and doesn't talk down to the audience. If you watch it, notice how in one particular scene the reason behind Bardem's accident is conveyed through looks, gestures, and photographs alone, without any need for dialogue. That's beautiful storytelling right there.