Category: Theaters

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children starts off well.  It is charming and slightly creepy like all good Tim Burton films, but it all almost falls apart in the end.  Thankfully it gets its act together just before the ending credits.  It is just a shame that it couldn’t be good the whole way through.

Miss Peregrine’s follows a boy named Jacob “Jake” Portman (Asa Butterfield) who grew up listening to his grandfather’s (Terence Stamp) amazing stories about a home for children with strange powers, and one day he decides he needs to check these stories out for himself.  Of course he gets swept up in an amazing adventure in which he will need to rely on the children’s mutations peculiarities, and maybe just learn something about himself.

This movie feels like Tim Burton wanted to make a longer movie.  It takes its time setting the table for Jake’s adventure, but then it rushes through the rest of the movie, so when Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children gets to the big showdown it is rushed and campy, and there is almost no tension.  Which is a shame because there is room out there for a strange version of the X-Men with weird and creepy kids.

For the most part the actors do a good job.  Especially Eva Green as the titular Miss Peregrine.  She is delightfully odd, but you can tell she cares about the kids in her care.  The only real breakdown is that Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell, who plays Emma Bloom an Air Bender, have no real chemistry together.  They are fine separately, but awkward together.

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is a fun film, but it falls short of being a great film.  Whether or not you should see it in theaters depends on how much you like Tim Burton or the source material.  If you are ambivalent about those two things you can probably wait for this movie to hit Red Box or Netflix.  Still, in the end I enjoyed myself, and that is why we go to the movies in the first place.

Mrs. The Paladin and I got a to go on a surprise date Saturday, so we had a romantic dinner at the French restaurant Costco, bought expensive candies at the Dollar Tree, and used movie vouchers from Christmas to go see Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven.

After 2 hours and 12 minutes we both left the theatre having enjoyed ourselves – The Magnificent Seven is an enjoyable movie. Is it better or at the same level as the original John Sturgis film or even Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai? No. It lacks the mentality of the time that allowed for sweeping pans, lingering shots, and stoic monologuing. Instead it has a diverse cast, that largely is ignored in a time period were racism was still very much alive, a lot of laughs, and a high body count.

Peter Sarsgaard’s bad guy spared no expense hiring his army, although I had to wonder why as the astute businessman that he was that he didn’t just choose to write the whole thing off after the first wave got murdered/slaughtered/curb stomped. Peter Sarsgaard is a fine actor, but I feel like he always plays the same bad guy, intellectual but moody. This bad guy called for more of a Proto-Rockefeller; stoic, controlled, and menacing with hate and contempt just at the surface. I would have liked to have seen Kevin Coster or Ed Harris chew up the velvet drapes and sagebrush of the old west.

The Seven of the Magnificent Seven were all excellent. You would just start to really like one and then another would capture your attention – I felt like the belle of the ball. Vincent D’Onofrio’s Jack Horner with his squeaky voice and crazy eyes and Ethan Hawke’s conflicted and dashing Goodnight Robicheaux were two that stood out as memorable. Denzel Washington is of course fantastic and Chris Pratt’s Josh Farady is a fantastic second-in-command.

The Magnificent Seven is probably the best modern Western I’ve seen since Kevin Costner’s Open Range but its still not the classics. However, if you find yourself on a surprise date with your significant other and you have free movie vouchers go see The Magnificent Seven you should… it was… MAGNIFICENT.