Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Movie Review

Starring Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris O'Dowd, Judi Dench, Allison Janney, Terence Stamp, Rupert Everett, Kim Dickens, Lauren McCrostie and Finlay MacMillan.
Written by Jane Goldman.
Directed by Tim Burton.

★★★

Some actors should just not be forced to try an American accent, and Chris O'Dowd is one such actor. The Irish actor best known for the BBC comedy The IT Crowd makes Ewan McGregor sound like Robert Redford. But that aside he plays Franklin, father of Jake (Asa Butterfield, a Londoner who's slightly more successful at sounding like a native Yank.)

Jake is on a quest. After his grandfather dies, Jake follows a set of clues to find Miss Peregrine. Miss Peregrine is the subject of bedtime stories his grandfather would tell him, but he confides that the stories are true. Jake convinces his father to take him to a small island off of Wales, where Miss Peregrine's house is supposedly hidden.

He finds it, and it's a house in the middle of a magic cave. The house is stuck in a time loop from 1943, and in this house live all sorts of peculiar children. One boy is invisible. One girl has a mouth on the back of her neck. And so on.

But there are another set of mutant peculiars who are hunting them. These are a menacing breed led by Barron (Samuel L. Jackson). The design of the mutants is where you can really tell this is a Tim Burton film.

The movie is breezy and enjoyable. Eva Green tends to be great in everything, and she's darkly bewitching here as Miss Peregrine. Like many Burton films, the ending isn't great. In fact, it gets quite convoluted with jumping from time loop to time loop. I lost track trying to make sense of it.

Miss Peregrine #1, Deepwater #2 at box office

For the weekend of September 30-October 2, 2016, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children won the day. Based on the best-selling book, the Tim Burton-directed feature didn't open as high as Fox would have hoped, considering its budget. The book has two sequels, but book-series adaptations haven't proven to be guaranteed hits. For every Harry Potter, there's a Golden Compass. For every Hunger Games, there's a Mortal Instruments. Depending on how well it does overseas, it's more likely than not that this'll be a stand-alone film.

Deepwater Horizon is another solid effort from director Peter Berg, but not enough people could get interested in seeing a movie about an oil-rig explosion. Too bad.

Masterminds was long-delayed due to Relativity's financial woes. It would have opened to twice these numbers had it come out as originally scheduled last year.

Queen of Katwe failed to spark interest with its expansion.

In limited release, Denial (starring Rachel Weisz) and American Honey (starring Shia LaBeouf) found success.

Opens October 7
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN with Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett and Rebecca Ferguson.
THE BIRTH OF A NATION with Nate Parker, Armie Hammer and Jackie Earle Haley.
MIDDLE SCHOOL with Lauren Graham, Thomas Barbusca and Griffin Gluck.

Frankenweenie - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Charlie Tahan, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau and Winona Ryder.  
Directed by Tim Burton.

★★★

Saw this at the $2 theater with the family.  Burton has taken his short from 1984 and expanded it to feature length.  It's about a boy whose dog Sparky gets killed.  Rather than accept this, he conducts a Frankenstein experiment on him and brings the dog back to life.  But this re-animation power has unforeseen consequences, especially when other kids want to know how to do it.

It's all very Burton-esque, and in animation, that's still a good thing.  It has that Nightmare Before Christmas / Corpse Bride vibe, with the neighborhood feel of Edward Scissorhands.  It's all in black and white, and it makes good use of the suspenseful setting.  There was one sequence in the night at school where all the kids held their breath, just knowing something was coming.

Dark Shadows - Movie Review

Starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Chloe Moretz, Bella Heathcoate, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Gully McGrath, Alice Cooper and Christopher Lee. Directed by Tim Burton.

★★½

What is it with Tim Burton and a twisted tree on a cliff? All of his movies have that image in there somewhere. A tree, with gnarled branches, near a cliff. Even Big Fish had it.

Anyway, this eighth collaboration between Burton and Johnny Depp is a decent entertainment, even if it's more about visuals and dialogue than story. Depp plays Barnabas Collins, a 200-year-old vampire who's awakened in 1972 and must recalibrate accordingly. He finds his descendants hanging on their vast manor of a house, but barely. Their fishing business is on the skids. Ah, but Barnabas knows where the money's buried and he's determined to turn this family around.

There to throw a wrench in his plans is Angelique (Eva Green), the witch who cursed him and locked him away and has spent the past couple centuries making his family fail.

This is one of Depp's better characters under Burton's watch. Barnabas is an 18th-century aristocrat with some adjusting to do, and Depp's umpteenth variant on the Eurotrash accent still entertains. Most of the supporting cast is good in their less-flashy roles. (I just like seeing Michelle Pfeiffer get work).

The main problem for me was the ending, by which I mean the last twenty minutes or so. Tis a giant mess. Each thread is tied up, but the pacing and general clumsy execution is as though pages 80-95 of the script just said "Hijinks ensue."

I loved the early 1970's soundtrack. It's worth a rental, but you can wait until then.