Justin and I saw Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children on October 1, 2016! This has been a pretty dull year for the most part in terms of good movies. There's definitely many I do like, but a movie like Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children makes me realize how much I love watching movies. It's easily one of my favorite movies of 2016, and one of my favorite movies of the 2010s in general. I read the book and enjoyed that. There are things changed in the movie, but it didn't bother me at all. They made the movie even more intriguing by creating an even bigger adventure. It was still a great movie that kept flowing for me. Ransom Riggs wrote the screenplay. With that and Tim Burton's direction and creative perspective, I was very excited for this and it didn't let me down. It took elements from Harry Potter (my favorite book and movie franchise of all time) and X-Men (one of my favorite comic book series of all time) and created a unique world that pulled me in right away.
The movie's main focus is on the peculiarity of time. It's fascinating watching the characters through the time loops. I think the characters are intriguing. Each peculiarity is interesting. Peculiarities include: air, fire, creating life and bending it to your will, super strength, the ability to manipulate the earth, turning people to stone, and inner beasts showing a physical manifestation. Asa Butterfield's character Jake finds himself connected to a world his grandfather Abraham told him about. His peculiarity is important as he can physically see the dangerous monsters that can wipe out peculiar children. His grandfather possesses the same gift. With this gift, he can hunt this danger and protect the children. His character is constantly asking questions, but it makes sense to me as it's a new world for him, and even with his grandfather's stories, it's a wise idea to realize how important his worth is to this new and intriguing world. I think the movie explores the peculiarity of the characters as well as giving a great explanation of how the time loops work, as well as the the complexity of time itself.
Eva Green was incredible as the ymbrynes serving as the protector of her home and her children. Her presence was larger than life. Her explanations about their world were done in a way that made the character seem immortal, which is what the character asks for. Ella Purnell was great as Emma. She is kind of tragic in a way as she likes being with the peculiars, but she also longs for love and the ability to live a normal life. She balanced that well along with helping Jake realize how amazing their world is. I liked the addition of Samuel L. Jackson as Barron. I thought his over the top look and attitude with the other wights/hollows was well done and added to the sinister nature of their characters. The back story with the eyes showed me that the hollows were deceptive, relentless, dark, and sinister. They didn't care what they had to do to maintain their humanity. They didn't care how young a peculiar children was. The eye eating scene was over the top and well timed to show the unique take on these characters and their lack of feeling for good peculiars.
The time loop reset and the amusement park scenes were absolutely incredible to watch. We watched as each of the children were able to use their peculiarities to help each other and save Miss Peregrine from the hollows experiements. We were able to see how Miss Peregrine was able to re-set time. Watching the peculiars battle the hollows are some of my favorite movies scenes of 2016! I think Enoch's power really helped to build excitement for the scene, but each of the characters had their chance to shine in different intervals throughout these scenes. Intelligence was also on full display from both the good peculiars and the hollows. The game of chess between the characters kept the movie flowing. This movie is split into 3 incredible acts: Jake's current life with his parents & his grandfather's stories, exploring and getting information from Miss Peregrine, Emma, Olive, Enoch, Bronwyn, etc, and saving the time loop, his peculiar friends, and rescuing his grandfather from death. Each of the acts works together to create an awesome adventure through time and larger than life characters. It's clever as the conclusion of the movie brings us back to the beginning in some ways.
Tim Burton created amazing visuals and backgrounds. Colleen Atwood always makes tremendous costumes for Burton's movies. I can remember back to when she made the costumes for Sleepy Hollow. She really is a talented designer. Each outfit in this movie really added to the character as well as echoing the 1943 time period. Susie Figgis also does a great job casting for Burton's movies, and it was no exception here. Burton and Riggs worked together and created a unique movie that I look forward to owning on DVD when it comes out.
This movie gets a definite 5/5 from me for the larger than life characters, the complexity of time plot that found a way to always connect in each act, the peculiars vs. the hollows, incredible costumes, and an excellent score, as well as great new music from Florence and the Machine.
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