Mystery, Alaska | The ALASKAthon

-Note!- My blind spot entry for this month will be posted on Letterboxd.com, as was last months (12 Angry Men). I want to get used to and make you get used to my blind spot entries and possible (mini) reviews appearing on that platform. Just wanted to make sure you know.

Even though it should be the cinephile's highest aim to be able to approach each genre and subgenre without prejudice, we all have our own little preferences when it comes to the films we watch. Last year, I started keeping a diary on what decades I watch most films from and what suffer most of my ignorant teenage - of course I found my viewing habits concentrated on the last 5 or so centuries. With the 2000s and 2010s taking a lead that is much too strong in my eyes. But it's not only that (sub-contious) skirting of old films that dictates my film viewing habits - much more prominently and, I have to admit, self-consciously, I omit war and sports films.

Insomnia | The ALASKAthon

I've decided to finish the left-up work and continue the ALASKAthon as a final installment on this blog. Maybe it's because I cut my toe and am thus excluded from most fun summer activities or maybe it's because I just don't want to leave my blog as a half-baked mess. Better to end things neatly if you really have to end them. 

Wendy and Lucy | The ALASKAthon

- Chris from Movies and Songs 365 also reviewed Wendy and Lucy -

In the ideal case, an independent movie is more than just a movie produced by a small studio or on a small budget. It's a movie that aspires to walk off the beaten path, to swim away from the mainstream as we like to say. To achieve this, independent films can tell stories that big studios find too risqué to produce, explore themes that won't please a large percentage of the shrinking amount of moviegoers. Or it can use uncommon ways to bring its message across, play with the technical side of filmmaking or choose the long way instead of the easy one. 

In the last weeks, I have been lucky to experience many of the aforementioned techniques or paths an indie film can choose. I had the chance to see Linklater's brilliant interpretation of a coming of age film, Boyhood, to luxuriate in Ayoade's twisted stylistic rhythm in The Double and to experience the orgasmic fusion of low-budget South Korean filmmaking and Captain America gone dirty in Snowpiercer - among others. This week's film choice for the ALASKAthon is another indie movie that takes a different perspective on a certain story than a big studio would have abandoned - a very unusual perspective, indeed. 

Au Revoir to Cannes 2014 | Blue Is the Warmest Color

Yesterday was the last day of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. It was also the day that I saw last year's Palme d'Or winner La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2 or Blue Is the Warmest Color for the first time.

Do you remember the time when a beautiful, fresh French face made a short but effective appearance in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris? Back then, it was still questionable whether there was more behind that intriguing smile. Not anymore - last year, Léa Seydoux (the actress behind selfsame smile) was awarded the Palme d'Or along with her director Abdellatif Kechiche and co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos. The two ladies are the only women to have won the award beside Jane Campion. Blue Is the Warmest Color is indeed a very feminine film that explores women in various ways. Firstly, there is the most apparent theme - homosexuality. The films main character, Adèle, finds out that being with men doesn't give her the same sort of satisfaction as being with a woman does. More so, there is one particular woman that Adèle falls head over heels in love with: the artistic and charming, blue-headed Emma. The two spend several years together as Adèle finishes high school and starts studying to be a teacher. Meanwhile, Emma is becoming an acclaimed artist and doesn't have as much time for her girlfriend anymore. After Adèle cheats on Emma with a male colleague, the two break up, leaving Adèle cold and lonely. 

Musical Chairs (2011) | The Thin Line Between TV-Trash and Guilty Pleasure

With tv-shows gathering more viewers than many films and producing higher quality than ever, the bad reputation of the tv-film is nowhere near upgrading itself. For centuries, tv-films have been regarded as the black sheep in the world of film - and there is a reason for this. One half of the tv-films I watch are German, the other half are Disney Channel movies - and few of them are rememberable for cinematic quality. Tv-films have low budgets and lower pressure than the next blockbuster, they are filled with clichés, stereotypes and most of the time don't have to be seen from beginning to finish. They are escapism in snack form - a little bit of adventure to finish up your ordinary work day.

Musical Chairs fits in to much of the criteria I just summed up, yet it has something else to offer as well. Telling the story of a group of people in wheelchairs who decide to start ballroom dancing, it's a typical feel-good, joy-of-life story that is supposed to be inspirational and uplifting. There's a couple of love stories involved, many typical rom-com elements and characters bounding to stereotypes. But Musical Chairs manages to make its character just realistic enough, the dialogue just cheeky enough and the story just fresh enough to be different from the rest of its tv-film siblings. The performances range between okay and really good, especially leading lady Leah Pipes makes the struggle and the fear of her character seem relatable instead of whiny. Some of the side stories are very cute while others are a bit unnecessary, so the runtime could've been cut with 15 minutes or so. But it's not like the film ever gets boring. You know where it's going but still, you are invested in the journey of these characters and the execution of the plot. Furthermore, the visuals look less cheap than expected and some shots have a cinematic quality to them, while the sound design is delicious. It's okay that most of the soundtrack is composed of the same ballroom track then and that there is your usual dose of melodramatic slow-motion.

This isn't the renaissance of the tv-film or the rise of feel-good films but an enjoyable flick that won't hurt anyone and really does add some adventure to your ordinary day.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

2011 • USA • English

director Susan Seidelman

author Marty Madden

★ Leah Pipes, E.J. Bonilla, Laverne Cox

FINAL FRAME | STRAWBERRY

Beyoncé, eat your heart out!

My Big Fat Indian Drama Overdose

Try to imagine 'Bollywood' in one picture. What do you see? Is it, by any chance, a massive, colorful jumble of different spices and beautiful people you think must be too white to be Indian, embroidered with glistening pearls and golden sequins? If so, you are not wrong- but you're not exactly right either. 'Bollywood' is often used to describe a certain kind of film. Genre is the wrong word, but something among the lines of how indies or arthouse represent a certain kind of film. 'Bollywood' reflects a certain trend that has been predominating a big chunk of the Indian and Hindi language film industry, always. But something I like to point out whenever someone asks, and whenever someone doesn't, is that 'Bollywood' is not equal to Indian cinema and that yes,
 - there are good Indian dramas
 - there are good Indian dramas that feature song-and-dance and most importantly,
 - there are good Indian dramas that don't feature song-and-dance.

Song-and-dance in this context also represents any other trademark most people associate with Indian films (or Bollywood), like over-acting, strange side plots, strange side characters, extravagance and a long runtime. This month, I have seen a comparatively big amount of Indian drama of different quality, style and purpose- films that had been hovering on my DVD shelf for too long. My big fat apologies to the cool friend who borrowed me these and a few other films last summer, it has taken me far too long to watch them. All of these films had caught my interest either recently or a very long time ago and are on the 1001 Indian films you have to see before you die list that I've been secretly putting together for about two years. No, it's not done yet. Each of the films proved to be worth the watch, some more than others, but most of all it has been delightful to delve back into the rich and different world of Indian cinema for so long at a time. Here's what I take away from this adventure in a serious land.

Benvenuti to Cannes 2014 | 8½

Yesterday was the first day of Cannes and it was the first time I saw a film with the intriguing title of 8½.

I'm not talking about that blending mode or the amount of films Fellini had made up until 1963 - or am I? 8½ premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that year and it became an instant success. 41 years after its release, it was honored by being selected for the official poster of the festival and it became one of the two films I decided to watch in order to forget I wasn't attending the festival. 8½ is a strange film that plays with your perception of reality and the world of dreams and also is fully aware of its sexiness as a black-and-white Italian film. Never again have the screens of our cinemas experienced such stylishness and they perhaps never will. Marcello Mastroianni strolls the hotel hallways, Dolce Vita beaches and film sets in a film set like a God who just so happens to pay us peasants a visit while also maintaining an oddly fragile flavor in his character. Obviously (question mark?) he represents director Fellini himself, who - according to film bibles - directed himself out of an existential crisis with this film. Fellini blends the oddity and dreaminess of La Strada with the hedonism from La Dolce Vita into some of the most delicious, intriguing cinematic mush I have tasted yet. (Or did I just say that because those are the Fellini films I have seen?). Beside the clever script, abstract imagery and intellectually stimulating dialogue, it's also, surprisingly, the sound that makes 8½ stand out in cinematic history. Whether it's the buzz from the door, the clicking of polished heels on marble or that all-Italian beach swoosh, the sound of this film sweeps you away and draws you in at the same time. 

I think I know what the title stands for now: the 8½th heaven.

8½

1963 • Italy • Italian/ English/ French/ German

director Frederico Fellini

authors Frederico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi

★ Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee

FINAL FRAME

„What is this flash of joy that's giving me new life?“

Blind Spot Fixed: Léon, The Professional

Life has taught me that it's always easier to just give your thumbs up to something than to back off and share your doubts on it. Add to that the fact that I can't really get angry - like, ANGRY angry - and think fighting is sort of useless, and you have me slightly afraid of the reactions to this post. Let's cut to the slack: I wasn't the biggest fan of Léon, my April entry to the Blind Spot series. It's a movie I've been aware of for a long time now and I've been close to picking it up several times on flea markets and the like. As all of the movies I chose for this blogathon, it's one of the highest ranked films on IMDBs Top 250 that I haven't seen until now - and this is a list I have only had good experiences with so far. Not that Léon was a bad experience. In fact, I acknowledge it to be a good, solid film with an unusual story and great characters. Still, I'm not a fan.

Big League Blogathon | Field of Dreams

What makes a life truly worth living? Few people living a privileged first world life - and I'm not talking about the top 10.000 - are satisfied by simply existing. Most of us, if not all of us, want to be remembered in some way, go down in history you may say. We want to be someone, to fulfill some sort of purpose in our life, a reason for a different future than one lacking a past that included us. 

Field of Dreams is a movie about this strange human struggle for validation and how people often have very different views on what makes a life worth living. In the middle of the attention, there's hippie-turned-farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) who has built up an idyllic existence with his born-and-bred country girl wife Annie (Amy Madigan) and their daughter Karin. One day he hears a voice telling him to build a baseball field in his back yard, which he does - and as if things couldn't become stranger, the ghosts of old baseball players start appearing on the field. Confused, Ray goes on a quest to find his all-time favorite author Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) to help him understand the messages he's receiving and the purpose of his Field of Dreams. Terrence Mann was an activist writer back in the 60s and 70s and so certainly lived a life worth living in many ways, however he retreated from the public when he felt people weren't listening to him anymore.

Blind Spot Fixed: American History X

I can't discuss American History X - which, just to give you an impression, should land somewhere up in my Top 10 films of all time - without discussing my initial expectations for it. Along with Once Upon a Time in the West, this was the movie from blind spot list that I expected least from, mainly because I knew the least about it. The title had always made me think of some slightly preachy yet solid, typical 'universally good movie' about Malcolm X and black oppression. At least I was slightly right about that last one, but surprisingly there is no trace of Malcolm X in this movie at all. Lincoln may have been mentioned, which brings me to my first point: Movie buffs have been talking a lot about racism in the last two years with Lincoln and 12 Years a Slave being released and overall cherished. These were two movies that left me very cold and didn't trigger much of the aspired emotional reaction in me, which has convinced quite a few people I talk to about movies that I am a racist (jokingly... I hope). For example, one of these people was very surprised when I told him that I had actually fairly enjoyed this year's Fruitvale Station, me being a racist and all. I can't wait to tell him what I think of American History X (hint: it begins with M and ends with ASTERPIECE)*.

Blind Spot Fixed: Apocalypse Now

Choosing 12 films out of the hundreds of 'must-sees', 'masterpieces' and 'classics' that waited like blank sheets of paper for me to put my stamp of opinion on was a difficult task in itself. The fortunate person I am, the first film I chose proved even more difficulties. The main one: there exist two versions of it, the shorter one being 'only' 153 minutes long. Still, the 200+ minutes 'Redux' (what does that word even mean) cut might be much better than the original one, think of Blade Runner. Luckily, my helpful blogathon host Ryan McNeil immediately responded with the wise recommendation of the shorter cut - apart from the expected 'You're in for a treat', which he knew because everyone except me has seen these films already. In I went then, used to the 90-110 minute features I have stuffed myself with this whole past month. And you know, I've come to realize that watching movies is quite similar to doing sports - you've got to alternate. Now I do ballet, so 'Don't just do the allegro and ignore the adagio' would be my personal interpretation of the lesson that the Apocalypse Now experience taught me. I guess it translates to 'Don't forget to build up your muscles when training for a marathon'. 

Apocalypse Now is not just a long film - it's  a long war film. Happy times. War films need to be long, seems to be the general consensus. I don't think so, actually, I think war films can work perfectly fine with a running time below 2h. But indeed, Apocalypse Now is a movie that needs room to unfold itself in order to build up its eerie and disturbing atmosphere. Surprisingly, the plot isn't that important - nor are its holes. Basically, it's about great actors delivering great performances in an impossible environment, framed in the most fascinating way you can imagine (Oscar nod: deserved). If you really *have* to have a synopsis though; half-crazy Captain Willard (Michael Charlie Martin Sheen) is sent on a secret mission to exterminate Colonel Kurtz's (Marlon Brando) insane reign over a group of insane people near the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. The film currently ranks #1 at the website moviemistakes.com and deservedly so. You can't expect anything else from a cut-down from more than 200h worth of filmed material, filmed in 16 months though. Famous production history? I didn't know S about this film's production history. However, it was one of the most interesting things I read since researching Blade Runner.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying

a HOW I LIVE NOW review

Growing up 21st century's Europe has its perks - technology redefines the limits of communication, consumerism and culture, we can travel without having to do little more than showing our passports and politicians seem busy sustaining peace in our own little world as well as the Middle East. It becomes difficult to differentiate between documentations of the World Wars and movies like Independence Day, both depicting horrible, life-threatening situations and ending on a happy note (more or less). I for one find it incredibly hard to believe that my own grandmother fled (mainly by horse waggon) from what was once Pommern (the eastern part of Germany) to the north, and had to work under more or less slavery-like conditions for the Russians. Hell, I can't even fathom there was once a great wall separating Eastern and Western Germany - that fell only 6 years before I was born! However, once in a while, I am reminded of the actual danger that still surrounds every living creature in this world; the animal-esque war of survival that is hidden beneath health care, unemployment benefits and supermarkets. Watching How I Live Now was one of those experiences that made me realize there is a threat of war in my life and the lives of the people surrounding me, and that our little bubble of peace, equality and freedom of the mind could burst any day. 

Fabulous Filmic Fashion and more: SPRING BREAKERS

FABULOUS FILMIC FASHION is back with a bang, providing you with the hottest summer wear from the coolest flick of this year so far. And probably a lot bit of non-fashion related raving. Spring Break Forever, Bitches.

Harmony Korine's layered, colourful and inspiring portrayal of the annual American celebration of hedonism entitled 'Spring Break' is by far my favorite movie of the year so far. Since his latest movie is the first I've seen and on the way to become my favorite of 2013, I can't help but notice how similar these circumstances are to my introduction to Wes Anderson through Moonrise Kingdom last year. If you remember, it was one of those instant favorites that soon led to an obsession, making me watch every single one of Anderson's movies (even though they're not that many).

Much like Moonrise Kingdom, Spring Breakers is a very stylish movie with visuals that are almost painfully beautiful, the bright colours burning their way through your retina into your heart. A small and interesting difference between the two movies may be that while there's one incontestably heavenly creature in Moonrise Kingdom and the rest are rather quirky beauties, in Spring Breakers each of the four main characters is an incontestably heavenly creature (look-wise anyways) and Alien is a rather quirky... beauty.

Bully - Be Nice or Die

The embarrassing discovery of a misspelling on the banner for this months' LAMB MOTM, whose name I mistook for being "Buddy", could be seen as a foreshadowing of my experience of actually watching this movie. Bully, although only one consonant away from it, is anything but a movie called "Buddy".

Based on a real story and the book written by Jim Schutze, BULLY centers around a group of lazy teenagers that do little less than sleep with each other. One of the kids is Bobby, who treats his "friends" like s*it, especially his childhood best friend Marty. One day, Marty's new girlfriend Lisa decides that the Bully must die. No one disagrees.

If you're searching for a discomforting and unsettling experience, with anything in it that could be described as sick, inhuman, immoral or similar - except cannibalism - you'll hit the jackpot with Bully. It's a story that has a lot of ingredients I love in movies, some I like, and some that make for interesting, challenging watches but I know will upset me in a bad way. The first group (ingredients I love) are the teens and the splash of coming-of-age. In this case however, they don't really come of anything, although they go through some typical coming-of-age phases and actions. There is also the crime element - who doesn't love a good crime story? In this case however, we already know who did what, why and how, so it's more of an insight scoop on the crime. Ingredients I like are the psychologically disturbing elements and character treats, the social commentary/ criticism and Los Angeles setting. But now to get to the core of it all: ingredients I do like but don't enjoy. These are thought-provoking and discomforting in a great way, something I need to experience once in a while but really rather wouldn't sometimes. That's hard drugs, a loooooooot of sex including rape (I'm not prude or anything, The Dreamers is one of my all-time favorite movies, but I don't think anyone would really enjoy the scenes in Bully), teenage pregnancy and prostitution. And we're not talking Pretty Woman prostitution, but the Mysterious Skin/ Christiane F sort of thing. 

So where does all of this leave me with Bully? This is not a movie I enjoyed. It's a movie that made me want to dig a big black hole in the garden and hide in it - either that or surround myself with sunshine, rainbows and innocent little children for a month. I would want to re-watch Bully anywhere in the vicinity of the next, say, 10 years. That being said, I do think it's a great movie, and in that way, it was an enjoyable experience. One that tested and probably crossed my boundaries and made me face some conflicts and perceptions of life that I don't usually consider. It's a well-directed, well-scripted, well-acted movie and I have nothing to complain about it whatsoever. So in the end, I appreciate the fact that this depressing and thought-provoking indie got chosen to be the LAMB Movie of the Month, because I got the chance to watch something I had never heard of and maybe would've never seen otherwise.

BULLY

2001 • USA/ France • English

dir. Larry Clark (1st watch of mine) 

written by David McKenna & Roger Pullis

★ Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner + more (incl. Michael Pitt)

FINAL FRAME: STRAWBERRY

Dynamic Duos Blogathon: Charlie Chaplin and Claire Bloom in LIMELIGHT

Originally, I wrote a longer, more insightful post on the relationship between Calvero (Charlie Chaplin) and Terry (Claire Bloom) in Limelight but now at 2AM I find out that it's somehow been deleted by blogger. Well, (sh)it happens.

Briefly, what I had written was how Limelight is my favorite Charlie Chaplin movie because it's so beautiful and thoughtful and amazing, and that I love the various facets of the relationship between the descended star and the ascending star. If, for whatever reason, you haven't seen the movie yet, do so soon. Here's a little sneak peak:

Obstruction 1/5: A Positive Review of a Movie I Dislike

Bored by the unchallenging everyday (or for me rather every week) task of blog writing, Nostra from myfilmviews.com has created his perhaps most ambitious blogathon yet. Over the span of 5 months, the 5 Obstructions Blogathon is going to challenge film bloggers by presenting them with a different obstruction each month - hence the title. If you face the obstruction and succeed, you'll move on to the next round, otherwise you will be punished, simple as that.

Obstruction #1: Write a positive review of a movie you don't like OR write a negative review of a movie you like.

To me, the latter one was too easy. Ripping a movie - anything - apart, is much easier than praising something or explaining things that you like about it. So I'm going with the former possibility and I'm writing about one of the (luckily) few movies that I've seen in the past few months that I've disliked a lot. Here goes my positive review of 'HowFarObsessionsWithActorsWillMakeYouGo' aka Afterschool, the 2008 directorial debut of Antonio Campos.

Mixtape Movies: Coming of Nostalgia

The awesomest of all awesome blogathon-creators, Andy from Fandango Groovers, once again saves me from thinking up ways to fit a lot of movies I want to write about into one post. His latest creation is the Mixtape Movies blogathon, where we can assemble 6 movies that have something in common - a theme - and write about that. One of the 6 movies is a wildcard, a movie that stands out from the rest in some way or another.

This blogathon just came out of nowhere into my blogroll and truly saved my day of blogging. I just don't find the time to write about all of the awesome things I'm watching and the moment, and find it incredibly difficult to fit them all into one post that's not just a series of mini-reviews. So here we have the perfect solution for my misery. I guess I'm sort of cheating in a way anyhow, since 5 of these movies are connected in a  very obvious way, but who cares - let's get started. Oh, and since my poor sister, who's in the hospital at the moment, borrowed my laptop, you're not going to get any photoshop in this post.

Mette's Movie Mixtape:

Coming of Nostalgia

My list is inspired by my several viewing of the ingenious 2010 teen-rom-com Easy A, a glorious weekend of watching (almost) all the movies mentioned in it and my chronic suffering from the Peter-Pan-Syndrome.

Watching The Star Wars Trilogy - For the First Time in My Life

Yes, it's me. The only person who hadn't seen Star Wars... until a few days ago! I have had the trilogy in the back of my head for years, but simply couldn't get over my idea of sci-fi not being "my piece of cake". In fact, I had been very fascinated by Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, so I don't know why the hell I couldn't accept that sci-fi was indeed one of the thickest layers in my piece of cake. But prejudice isn't easy to overcome, and I had to wait for the right kind of Doctor to arrive until I finally got it.

Across the Universe Podcast Eps 2: Gatsby? What Gatsby?

Across the Universe: The Chicks With Accents Podcast is brought to you by Nikhat Zahra from Being Norma Jeane, Sofia Teixeira from Film Flare and my own humble self.

In episode 2 we discuss a new release that we've all been anticipating for various reasons. Almost like a reflection of the general consensus of this movie, each of us has a different opinion on the outcome of Baz Lurhmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but we all agree on two things: Leonardo DiCaprio looks stunning once again after his entertaining yet less visually pleasing performance in Django and he certainly deserves that long-overdue Oscar.


0:32- Chick-chatter
3:10- Feedback
9:00- Interesting Movie of the Fortnight
31:00- General Discussion on The Great Gatsby
74:14- Plugs and Goodbyes

Music:
Jay Z and Kanye West - No Church In the Wild
Lana Del Rey - Young and Beautiful
The Beatles - Across the Universe


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

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Write to us at: acrosstheuniversepodcast@gmail.com
Find us on iTunes: search for Across the Universe

Let Me Tell You a Story: Kahaani

IMDB | TRAILER

Another movie that dares to center its story around a strong female character, Kahaani was a surprise hit that Indian audiences loved even more than similarly "daring" English Vinglish. 

The female hero, Vidya Bagchi, is played by one of India's most talented actresses of our times, Vidya Balan. The London-based NRI (non-residant-Indian) computer programmer is searching for her husband, who has been missing ever since he went to Kolkata/ Calcutta for an assignment. Advanced in pregnancy, Vidya roams the streets of the crowded city that is busy with preparations for the yearly celebration of the goddess Kaali. Even though she finds a helpful companion in police inspector Rana, - who soon falls for the stubborn beauty - Vidya finds that it's not going to be easy to find her husband: there is no trace of him in the city whatsoever.

 

Surely, Kahaani wouldn't have been the same movie without the strong performance of Vidya Balan, just like English Vinglish couldn't have worked as well as it does with any other actress than Sridevi in the lead. Vidya brings just the right amounts of strength and vulnerability to her character, who seems both lost and determined in the narrow streets of Kolkata. No supporting character or actor stands a proper chance beside her, although Parambrata Chatterjee is sweet in the role of the innocent police inspector. The brilliant character actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui also has a small role that manages to capture the viewer in his short screen time. But what really makes Kahaani stand out, especially among other Indian films of the thriller/ mystery genre, is the well-told story. We don't know more than Vidya does, and the short flashback clip rather confuses than helps solve any of the mysteries. There's also a twist that I dare say nobody ever saw coming, which makes the female hero even more special - but no spoilers at this point. People have praised Kahaani for delivering a surprisingly exact and realistic portrayal of the city of Kolkata itself, which is often depicted in a less coaxing way. The movie doesn't conceal the flaws and the dirt of the city, but it gives a more multisided impression of the city and thus is very far from the so-called "poverty-porn". Indian mythology is cleverly woven into the plot yet there's no patriotism - a welcome exception. This way, Kahaani finds a balance between many extremes that Indian movies like to use and finds a good balance between a suspenseful plot with western inspirations and an Indian "soul". The only drawback is the still rather long running time of two hours - I felt that some parts could've been edited out in order to keep up the pace.

STRAWBERRY

Kahaani is a must-watch for fans of Indian cinema, since it delivers a felicitous mixture of many currently trending elements of the industry. The lack of song-and-dance and the Hollywood-inspired narration may also please an audience outside the Indian film scene. 

This post is part of the "2012 Bollywood Essentials".