Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

This is the best movie Tim Burton has made in a while.  If you read Random Rigg’s book, I don’t think you will be disappointed.  In fact, this is one of the very few cases I can think of where I enjoyed the movie more than the book.  The  author had an original  idea.  He collected old photographs and decided to use them as a guide to tell his story.  The book is full of quirky pictures and many of them are brought to life in this movie.  Eva Green is wonderful as Miss Peregrine, an Ymbryne who can change into a falcon and protects the peculiar children.  Their peculiarities are just the kind of thing that Burton is good at filming. Hugh stores bees in his stomach and can command them when released.  Olive can control air and must wear weighted shoes to keep her from floating away.  Horace can project his dreams for the entertainment of the other children who are all safe living in a time loop, reliving the same day in 1943 over and over again.  I am not even going to try to explain the plot, as it is extremely complicated, so no worry for spoilers.  I wouldn’t take younger children to see this one.  There are several pretty gruesome scenes, including some eyeball munching monsters who are under the direction of the always watchable Samuel L. Jackson. Allison Janney and Terence Stamp round out a solid cast.