Top Ten Films You MUST See This Summer8 of 10
#8: The summer of 2012 will be remembered for about 1,038 people as the summer that Beasts of the Southern Wild came out. It's my strong contention that some good portion of that number will, in later years, cite it as an influential, if not THE influential film for them, the one that flipped the switch.
Director Benh Zeitlin brings a stunning, unsentimental sense of place, people and time, combining it with a score (that he co-wrote) that amplifies the entire experience to the near mystic. The performances are raw, nearly feral, particularly Quvenzhané Wallis . She plays Hushpuppy, a six-year old girl who lives in "The Bathtub," on the other side of the Delta levee, with her mentally unbalanced, alcoholic father, Wink. As the ice caps melt, the waters rise, Wink falls ill, and prehistoric creatures called aurochs stalk the land, Hushpuppy confronts an unfeeling universe and we watch a work of art.