I'm not the movie reviewer type...but I'm still floating on a cloud of artistic ambiance. I was entranced in this movie. It felt like a screenplay--mixed with a painting and told with a poetic flair!

If you've ever seen Night of the Hunter...this movie had also a strong sense of how children..no matter how small, can face the biggest monsters in life. It takes place someone in the swamp of Louisiana ...a place called 'the bath tub' ....Hushpuppy is a young girl with no mother and a father who's health is failing and as the movie runs...he progressively gets worse. Her father, Wink, gives her many doses of tough love--but he's only preparing her for the times to come. The child stands up against rising tides, defending home and her people, and even stands up to these prehistoric ...pig creatures they have come to know as the aurochs.

It's a super strong movie. Hushpuppy is proactive all the way...a hero that all the people follow in the end as the tides yet rise again. She is a child ...yet fierce as she needs to be to even exist in such a tragic place.

Thumbs up on this one!

We lucked out and got to skype with the Director, Benh Zietlin after the movie. When the skype call answered ...he was there in a white tshirt. Tim said, "sorry to wake you" and Benh answered..."This is my normal get up" and smiled. One other thing that made me laugh was when someone asked "Are your parents still mad that you didn't go to law school?" Benh laughed yet again and replied, "Nah, they new I was never going to do anything productive." We all laughed with him. They are part of his team now though helping him ...as his recent success with Glory at Sea and this first feature.....is really keeping him busy!

Preview looks great.  Kinda in the same vein of Whale Rider.   I really appreciate these kind of films as opposed to the same ol' Hollywood cookie cutter crap.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi877306649/

Me too! I get tired of going to the movies these days almost. So when something like THIS or I loved Moonrise Kingdom comes along...it's like a breath of fresh clean original air!

I'll have to check out Whale Rider!

Caught this over the weekend...

And I'm glad I did.
It's one of a handful of introspective tales of broken children this year.
The other two being foreign films, Kid with a Bike & Kauwboy.
Might as well throw Whale Rider in there too.

Yes, the wee protag is pretty astounding.
And the director showed me a world I didn't know existed.

My only gripe was I felt the journey was too internal.
I wanted a little more physical obstacles as well.
Blowing the levee went shockingly fast.
And I really liked the juke joint deep in the swamps.

A very good film.

E.D.

Brett,

I know what you mean by the movie being too internal, but I disagree with it being a problem.

Think about the world of children... They have very little control over what happens to them. It's difficult to make a believable movie about children for that reason exactly. Hushpuppy has little choice but to react and sometimes bend the world around her. It's truly an awful world, but she makes an adventure out of the whole thing with her imagination and the wild stories fed to her by her community.

I think the fact that this movie is so internal makes it that much more powerful. The world is all about perspective. "One man's trash is another man's treasure" kind of thing.

Wonderful film with terrific first-time actors.

I super loved this movie. My two favs for the year are Beasts and Moonrise Kingdom

Funny you mention it. My favorites look very similar. I'm partial to Moonrise, however.

Moonrise was my number one also!

My 2 faves are Killing Them Softly and Lockout...

Oh wait...this has nothing to do with this thread, does it?

And, I was wrong...those are my 2 least favorites.



Dull day at the office...sorry...

Just watched this movie for the first time today and I have to say that I was blown away by the performances of Hushpuppy and Wink, both of whom were novices--in fact, the guy who plays Wink owns a bakery in New Orleans.  Don't know how he got the part, but he did great in it.

The writing on this was superb and from all the previews you would have thought this was some super-mystical feature, but it really was far from it.   More of a story about family and home and hope and survival.  Yeah, there's some metaphorical creatures that show up, but they don't distract from the story at all.

I've seen several of the performances by the best actress nominees, and the young girl playing Hushpuppy does just as good, if not better, job than the other nominees.  I would vote for her for sure.

Oh, and my wife had tears a flowing at the end, so I know it has a pretty powerful emotional appeal as well.