Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
From IMDB - When Jacob discovers clues to a mystery that stretches across time, he finds Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. But the danger deepens after he gets to know the residents and learns about their special powers.
I'd still be here tomorrow if i went into the plot details of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. What begins as an intriguing little mystery grows in scope as the film develops into an eyebrow raising fantastical adventure.
Having never read the source material and having no wish to do so the film was viewed purely as a Tim Burton film, nothing more. What i first noticed is what a fantastic cast had been assembled - Eva Green (Easily the best thing about the film), Samuel L Jackson, Judi Dench, Terence Stamp, Chris O'Dowd, Rupert Everett and Hugo's Asa Butterfield as young Jacob. Sadly many of them are underused. Green's not in the first half hour and Jackson only turns up properly once events reach Blackpool!?
Burton keeps things quite dark as is his norm. There are several disturbing sequences as well as the odd gore effect but among all this typical Burton darkness we have huge references to other films. During the film's brilliant climax in Blackpool (see you did read it correctly) we get skeletons, which the producers say was as a direct reference to Jason and the Argonauts (1963), who have a huge fight on the North Pier with creatures that could have walked straight out of a Resident Evil movie, and the whole thing sort of played out like a Tim Burton does X-Men.
Whilst this is nowhere near the top of the Tim Burton tree i did enjoy it. Yes the plot becomes ever so convoluted at times and he also seems to have lost his knack of great story telling which was on display in the likes of Edward Scissorhands (1990) yet this film is fun, easy on the eye and well worth a go for the spectacle alone.
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