Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (2016)

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Tim Burton
    Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Samuel L. Jackson,
    Terence Stamp, Judi Dench, Allison Janney,
    Rupert Everett, Chris O'Dowd, Lauren McCrostie
If there was ever an actress who seemed destined to be in a Tim Burton movie, it's Eva Green. With her jet-black hair and icy gaze, she looks like something out of a dark fairy tale, which is what most of Burton's movies are. Playing the pipe-smoking Miss Peregrine in this film, she looks like she'd be as inclined to eat one of her young charges as care for them. She also appears to be having a real good time. Green's Miss Peregrine and her unusual kids live in a gothic mansion on an island off the coast of Wales and inhabit a time loop, repeating the same day over and over: September 3, 1943. Asa Butterfield, who's grown at least a foot since "Hugo", plays a Florida teenager who drops into the time loop from 2016, after the death of his grandfather, who had a connection with Miss Peregrine, too. I'm not sure every detail of the story adds up, and I'm not sure I care. It's wonderfully creepy and weird, in the way that only Tim Burton's movies are, and if you're a fan of the guy's work, that'll be enough. Plus, there's Eva Green, puffing on her pipe, resetting the time loop precisely every evening, managing a house full of very strange children, and facing down a monster she can't even see with a crossbow and a stone-cold glare. You wouldn't want Miss Peregrine to be played by anybody else.