This year's movies share a couple of major preoccupations: the apocalypse, and fables. One obsession has to do with our sheer terror about the future, while the other has to do with our longing for an idealized past. So it's jolting and thrilling to watch a movie like Beasts of the Southern Wild, which takes both of…

Beasts of the Southern Wild isn't like other movies you've seen lately. It's a really wild and beautiful movie that manages to combine magical realism with an apocalyptic sense of doom, all seen through the eyes of a six-year-old girl. But how did something this strikingly beautiful and different emerge? How did a…