one of my absolute favorites!

Best movie ever!

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

What would it be like to live in the middle of a swamp, in a post Katrina or post apocalyptic world? What if you saw this world from the imagination/reality of a child. That's where I arrived when I opened my eyes to the film, Beast of the Southern Wild. The film opens in a celebration with the people of the "Bathtub", a community living in the middle of the Mississippi delta, inside of a levee. This community is a hodgepodge of races, cultures, the eclectic, and the strange. The narrator of this unusual story is Hushpuppy, a tough, spunky, and independent six year old girl, who is raised by her equally tough but slightly off father, Wink.As I watched this film, I couldn't tell where realty crossed to fantasy or when fantasy reawakened again to reality. In between listening to the heartbeat of every animal she came upon, or hand fishing with her father, Hushpuppy envisioned the escape of prehistoric beasts, released from melting polar ice caps. For her, the universe had to always be in balance, and the escape of these beasts represented just that. The film moved as it were visual poetry, weaving in and out of realism and the fantastic mind of a child. I wonder if adults would have the flexibility to still absorb or understand the idealism of such an imagination.For a first time effort, director and writer Benh Zeitlin runs full blast into a visually stunning, epic, and artistic piece. It's also hard to believe that the stars of the film, Dwight Henry(Wink) , and the truly amazing Quvenzhané Wallis(Hushpuppy) were just regular people discovered in Louisiana. This film will either disappoint with its confusion, entrance you with its artistry, or leave you longing to understand its meaning. But whatever you take from this film, I hope that you would appreciate the remarkable talent of Quvenzhané Wallis, in a performance that I hope will be awarded come Oscar time.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is an odd, one-of-a-kind story that tells of the relationship between a young black girl and her hobo-style father. The two of them live a hand-to-mouth existence in a kind of shanty town in the Louisiana bayous, but when their world comes crashing down due to a flood they must embark on a journey of survival.I had no idea what to make of this love-it-or-hate-it movie but I enjoyed up enjoying it, for what it's worth. The lack of reason or explanation of events is a little irritating for a viewer who likes concrete facts, but the style of the thing, all magic realist, is quite entrancing. It turns that the fantasy elements of the story involving the huge aurochs is secondary to what turns out to be an intimate story of the little girl and her father. Non-actor Dwight Henry's intense performance makes the film although Quvenzhane Wallis deserves kudos for bringing to life an enchanting central character.

I will begin by saying that I went into this film with an open mind. I was expecting a good movie, some people had told me it was great and some had said just OK. I also have watched this a total of three times just in case I wasn't picking up on something. So, when I say with absolute certainty that this movie is absolute filth I say this from an unbiased position. Some small independent films do a good jib of portraying the raw emotion of the struggle of people through their use of new and unprofessional actors. Let me be clear, this is not one. Each actor does his or her own work bringing the entire film down by offering unnatural lines delivered dryly. All in all, they are extremely unconvincing in their parts. And, if we talk about this using "The Method" then these actors should be really good because this is their life, but it is far from the case. This film whirls you into a dizzying array of shots and weird angles shown from the perspective of a small child. But, this film does just that, it makes the viewer dizzy by using solely hand-held techniques that offer nothing other than nausea. Also, being told from the view of a young child could be an effective story telling technique if done well. Sadly, this film just comes across as unintelligent and portrays the world in a way that disregards all other factors. It fails to even recognize that it is told as if from a young girl, which just seems lazily done and confusing. Adding to this overall negative effect is the weird buffalo things. This film disregards all science and focuses on scare tactics to push its left wing propaganda concerning climate a change on viewers by showing a terrified, cute little girl who is helpless in the shadow of these beasts. They also characterize the people in "The Shower" as beasts. This is because they are self centered and narcissistic and believe that they are impervious to everything. This belief that they are better than their "evil system" is exactly what makes this movie so bad. As an expert film critic, I do not recommend the waste of time that is this movie.

Sometimes films make you think, others make you cringe, some make you laugh and then there are the beasts of the southern wild which leaves you with a wide smile, complete. It is not necessary sometime to fully comprehend things specially the first time around sometime you just need to sit down in the gallery stare at the 20 foot canvas with oil and after a while it will make you cry, perhaps smile after another couple of minutes. But you will be in awe and can't take your eyes off it. This film is precisely that masterpiece. It is poetic, it is surreal and beautiful. This quote is pretty much the whole film for me : "I hope you die and after you die I'll go to your grave and eat birthday cake all by myself."There are a lot of fantasy films coming out specially after special effects are so mature and there are a lot of scifi too but often they don't make you feel something they worry too much about explaining themselves after covering up the loop holes and fixing things adding detail, layers upon layers of detail and in that forgetting the basic reason why we started watching the magic of moving pictures to feel, to fantasize to be in awe. This one just does that, think of it as the wild things are meet one of the projects Brit Marling was involved in (the sound of my voice, another earth, the east) and perhaps the realism fantasy mashup in Neill Blomkamp's district 9.Hushpuppy is a wild child of the swamp with a hot tempered (now sick) father and his teachings of independence and a community full of hill billies. This is an adventure with the floods, the wild and the quest to keep it all together and okay. The film explores the beautiful and somewhat explosive relationship between hushpuppy and her father still mourning the loss of hushpuppy's mother (who left them) all while he fights his disease, the floods and authority in this beautiful drama often narrated in the voice of hushpuppy. If anybody deserves an Oscar it's the child star Quvenzhané Wallis. With such a hard character to play full of emotions and swinging emotions for that matter she pulls it off like a piece of cake. Not even once you feel that she is acting it comes so naturally to her, brilliant brilliant performance I can't recall the last time I saw a child star be so brilliant. Benh Zeitlin for a director does not feel in any way amateurish feels like anything but a feature film debut.