"Beasts of the Southern Wild''

This is sheer poetry on screen: an explosion of joy in the midst of startling squalor and one of the most visceral, original films to come along in a while. The story of a little girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) living with her daddy on a remote, primal strip of eroding land in the southernmost reaches of the Louisiana bayou is so ambitious and so accomplished, it's amazing that it's only director Benh Zeitlin's first feature. His film is at once dreamlike and brutal, ethereal yet powerfully emotional.

By AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire.

Credit: Jess Pinkham/Fox Searchlight