Beasts of the Southern Wild Might Be the Best Movie of the Year

Very rarely am I utterly speechless after a movie. But I don’t know what to say about the inexplicably gorgeous, completely haunting, gut-wrenching and soulful film Beasts of the Southern Wild except that I loved it. The story and the lead character — played by 6-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis— dug down into the very core of me and flayed everything open, leaving a raw, pulsating joy. It’s tough to say what the movie is about; love, strength, survival, beauty, self-reliance and the very fabric of the universe, for starters. But that only begins to cover it. When you’re done gawking at the abs in Magic Mike, you can see real magic in Beasts.