Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children'

Happy October! Halloween is in the air, and what better way to kick off the season than a good old-fashioned Tim Burton creep-fest! Miss Peregrine certainly delivers on the creepy front, after all. Monsters with white eyes and razor-sharp teeth consuming plates of children's eyeballs to gain immortality? Sounds like classic Halloween fare to me! And what better time to get back into the swing of writing (I know, I know, I have been totally MIA all summer...sorry!) than Halloween season, when horror movies abound, nostalgia for our classic favorites is high, and the weather is perfect for staying inside curled up with a glass of wine/tea/cocoa/pumpkin spice latte--okay, I wouldn't personally be caught dead with the last one, but to each their own--and a damn good movie?

First of all, a disclaimer: I have been a Tim Burton fan since before I knew I wanted to be a director. Sleepy Hollow was my first horror movie, and the film that sparked my desire to get behind the camera. Frankenweenie is one of my all-time favorite shorts. I used Edward Scissorhands as the inspiration for one of my final projects in college. I can't let a Halloween go by without at least one viewing of Corpse Bride, Beetle Juice, or The Nightmare Before Christmas. I have a Jack Skellington wallet, for Pete's sake. Speaking of which...

I know, I know. It's a miracle I never got my ass kicked in high school.

Even with all that having been established, trust me when I say that you don't have to be a die-hard nerd for Burton to love Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, nor do you have to be a fan of the original novels to follow the plot. I wouldn't advise taking small children to see this (those hollowghasts are actually less creepy than their human counterparts, thanks to the masterful acting of Samuel L. Jackson & Co.) but Burton's usual knack for taking something that would typically terrify a grown man to tears and making it fun is in full use here and it makes for a hell of a lovely, heartfelt film.

One thing I'd like to address before we begin. I adore Burton, but I know he has flaws. I can't stand his adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I generally like to pretend Dark Shadows just never happened, and much as I love the man, I will own here and now that he is flipping TERRIBLE when it comes to interviews. He really is. I love him, I really do, but without an editor or a really, really good interviewer to coax coherent sentences out of the man, he is useless.

So, a few days ago, an interviewer asked Burton why the cast of Miss Peregrine was mostly white and Burton, as Burton tends to do when asked sensitive questions in interviews, made himself look like a doofus at best, and a complete ass at worst. Now, I understand what he was trying to say. Namely, that he and his casting director were casting for talent, not trying for affirmative-action, check-off-the-list, "cast a black, Asian and Latina person each just to make myself look good" casting. But he made himself look like an idiot by replying, "Well, I didn't think white people needed to be cast in Blaxploitation movies!" If there ever was a statement that called for a good old-fashioned "No shit, Sherlock," that would be it.

But, in defense of my favorite director: He cast Samuel L. Jackson in a role that, in the book, did not define the character's race one way or another. He did that on purpose. He didn't go "well, I HAVE to cast a black dude, it might as well be him," he was more like "That man is a damn fine actor and I will put him in my movie because it just won't be complete without him." If y'all weren't busting Kenneth Branagh for only using Idris Elba in Thor, maybe cut Burton some slack here, okay?


Which brings me to my second point. People will actively look for excuses to hate Tim Burton just because he's Tim Burton, in the same vein that people will look for excuses to hate just about anybody that they don't like. Anyone who's posting Tim Burton's (admittedly stupid awkward) reply to a badly-phrased interview question with captions like "well here's another reason to hate him!" most likely already isn't a fan. Please, people, PLEASE give the movie a chance before you slam it.

And please, PLEASE stop putting the onus all on a single director to "diversify" our films! There are so many fantastic movies coming out this season with highly diverse casts...Loving, Hidden Figures, A United Kingdom, Queen of Katwe, the Rocky Horror remake and the new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to name a few...and it's not fair to bust one director for failing to make his film look a little more Orange is the New Black and a little less Camp Rock. Tim Burton is not doing anything to purposely hurt anyone. It's time the witch-hunt for anyone who says something stupid to be ended. We've got enough to worry about right now without scrutinizing a guy who's notoriously awkward in interviews and his badly-phrased declaration of his love for Blaxploitation movies.

So! Now that that's out of the way, on to the movie itself. For anyone not familiar with the story, Miss Peregrine follows a teenager named Jacob as he learns a jolting truth about his heritage after witnessing his grandfather's traumatic death. On advice from his parentally-enforced therapy sessions, he treks to Wales to find the home for "special" children where his grandfather grew up, expecting an elderly matron and a new crop of kids...only to discover a pack of gifted children and teens his age under the strict but loving chaperonage of the enigmatic, shape-shifting Miss Alma Peregrine. Confused yet? Wait until you learn the variety of monsters hunting the innocent Peculiars: tentacled, ten-foot sightless hollowghasts, who are both immortal and mortal at the same time, and their white-eyed shape-shifting keepers known as wights. Still not overwhelmed? It gets better: Later books detail peculiar animals, time-travel concepts that would make Emmett Brown himself dizzy, and the concept of sucking one's second soul out through their foot in order to sap their powers. If you're looking for a quick, easy read, this ain't it.

But lucky for those who aren't into long, epic stories, Burton is more than willing to condense that material into a light-speed 127 minutes. The movie may be two hours, but it goes by so fast it certainly doesn't feel it. The Jane Goldman-penned script takes the ambiguous ending of the first book and gives it more weight, all without cutting off the possibility of future sequels should they decide that Hollow City and Library of Souls into feature films. For fans of the book, yes, they do change a fair bit, but within the spectrum of the film it does work. I personally viewed the film as an alternate-universe tangent of the books, a what could have happened here sort of ending, because that's basically what Burton did: asked "what-if" and went with it.

The highest strength of the new script, however, isn't the epic battle between the hollowghasts and wights, the Peculiars, and...the Jason and the Argonauts-esque pack of skeletons? whatever; just go with it--it's the heart and soul that Burton puts into the film. What made Miss Peregrine so special in book form was the way that Ransom Riggs delved into the weight and pain of what it feels like to be so visibly and thoroughly different that you never had a prayer of fitting in. Burton, no stranger to not fitting in, turns that pain into a celebration and invites everyone who's ever felt out of place to cheerfully flip the bird to their tormentors. The penultimate showdown between the Peculiars and the hollowghast-wight crew has the dual value of being both visually pleasing and incredibly cathartic, as the Peculiars take no prisoners and show, for the first time in broad daylight and well outside the safety of their home, their vast array of talents.

And since it's a Tim Burton film, being visually pleasing in general is a given. (Well. Unless we're talking about Chocolate Factory or Dark Shadows, but every genius is bound to have one misstep or two; think of those as Burton's answer to Hitchcock's Marnie.) The very Oscar-worthy costumes have already inspired a collection at Hot Topic and while they may not be copied quite as much as the fashions of Suicide Squad this Halloween, they will no doubt be resurrected come next year's crop of Comic-Cons. The set design is a bit less classically Burton than one may be used to, and with a backdrop of oceanside beauty to temper the gothic-with-a-hint-of-Victorian design of the "Peculiar" world, it's certainly much sunnier and warmer than, say, Batman Returns or Beetle Juice, which works in the movie's favor when the dark turn comes and deadly creatures called hollowghasts come to threaten the innocent peculiars. My compliments to Colleen Atwood, Gavin Bocquet, and literally the entire VFX team, because this film is a thing of beauty.

Now, even the greatest movies usually have at least one flaw, major or minor, and Miss Peregrine is no exception. Every critic is saying that Jake and Emma's love story needed a few more "beats," and I have to agree. They pretty much went from total strangers to on the verge of kissing in about two scenes, which--and I hate to be one of "those people"--is not at all how it happened in the book. Also, I hoped that watching the film would bring to light why the kids' powers and ages were switched around. You see, Olive and Bronwyn's ages and personalities, and Emma and Olive's abilities, were swapped out, much to the confusion and unhappiness of many fans, and I thought, well, perhaps there's a reason for that--but there really isn't. Not that it takes anything away; Emma and Jake still flourish, and Bronwyn still manages to dazzle us with her freakish strength, but it gives reason to throw in a sudden romance between Enoch and Olive that I can't imagine would've been approved by Ransom Riggs. And for the record: in the book, Emma's firepower is not so potent that she has to wear gloves to keep from burning her friends, a la Elsa's gloves in Frozen. C'mon, Burton. These are peculiar kids we're talking about here, not Rogue from X-Men.

And the "consuming eyes" rather than consuming souls does not seem to add much other than a certain creep factor. In the book, peculiar children are eaten alive by the hollowghasts, which enables the monsters to regain human form. Once they get that form, they're done--no more flesh meals are needed. And it's not even the flesh so much. It's the souls; peculiar individuals are considered to have a "second" soul, not a recessive gene, that enables their abilities. Consuming a plate of eyes, after all, might seem more visually dynamic than consuming souls, but ooh, imagine what Burton could've done with that--a freaky, sharp-toothed Samuel L. Jackson consuming a child's soul? I'm shivering just thinking about it. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Last but not least...I love the music, but I missed Danny Elfman. Sorry, Mike Higham and Matthew Margeson, but it's a fact--Tim Burton and Danny Elfman is a match made in cinematic heaven. Now, with that being said, I am glad he's branching outside his usual creative partnerships. This is his second movie in a row without Johnny Depp, and I must say it's lovely seeing Burton use other actors. He may have shoved Eva Green into the bad-villain backseat in Dark Shadows, but here she is used to her full potential. Asa Butterfield is adorable as Jake, striking the perfect balance between insecure and fiercely protective, an attitude that can best be summed up in the scene where he takes up Miss Peregrine's crossbow to protect his new friends from a hollowghast. He might be the worst shot in human history--seriously, was this kid trained in marksmanship by Lucas's Stormtroopers?--but dammit, he will kill that thing or die trying if not-trying means certain death for the Peculiars.

I said it in 2012 with Frankenweenie and again in 2014 with Big Eyes, and I was tragically wrong both times, but this time, I think it might be true: this could be Burton's year. I know it's dumb to keep putting faith into the Academy when they've gone out of their way to overlook him in the past, and I know it's crazy to hope--but in the end, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children strikes the balance between "too Burton-y" and "not Burton-y enough" (seriously? y'all are going to slam him for being too much like himself and then when he delivers Big Eyes complain that he didn't put enough of himself into the movie? REALLY?), and that might just be enough for critics and Academy voters to finally figure out that, hey, we have been deliberately ignoring this mad genius for way too long.

In my 2015 review for Big Eyes, I said the film was Burton's love letter to aspiring artists. Miss Peregrine, in a way, reads like part 2 of that. In Big Eyes, Burton sends a message of comfort to budding artists, assuring them that even if critics hate their work, it doesn't matter as long as it reaches its intended fanbase. In Miss Peregrine, he sends a bigger, all-encompassing message to all the outcasts, artists and logicians alike: you are not alone. And as any Burton fan knows...in the end, that's the most important thing he has to say anyway.

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Big Eyes'

For days now I've been trying to persuade my amateur film critic boyfriend to write a review for Big Eyes. We saw it together the day after Christmas and he enjoyed it as much as I had, and mentioned he'd probably write about it for his website (he has a column on Punk Effect). Well, cut to one month later, no review. So I did the mature thing and gave him the puppy-eyed pout, stroked his arm (and his ego) and sweetly asked "Please? Pretty please?"

"Why?" was the unsympathetic (and, admittedly, pretty confused) response. "You already know my thoughts on it."

"Yeah, but I need backup. I need, like, hardcore proof that I'm not the only one who thinks that movie deserved a shit-ton more attention than it got."

Still he didn't budge ("it's been too long since it came out, I need to re-watch it, you know how it is, what if I gave it a mention in my Oscar predictions article?") so I decided, in my classic immature feminist fashion, well, the hell with it, I'll write about the damn movie myself.

Now, I don’t have the academic style that Ian has. He actually has the whole “write about the film without your emotions getting in the way” thing down and I definitely don’t. Once I actually got into film school, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that I am infinitely better at writing movies than writing about movies, and he is definitely far superior to me in the writing-about-movies department. (And if he ever tells you that’s not true, you have my permission to…scold him. Politely. Because if you hurt him I’ll kick your butt.) I ramble. I gush. I do stupid things like yell “American Sniper stole Gone Girl’s nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and thus I WILL NEVER EVER LOVE THAT MOVIE I DON’T CARE HOW GOOD IT IS OR HOW MANY TIMES IT MADE ME CRY.” Yes, I did that. Tonight, actually. Damn you, Clint Eastwood.

But I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to take a stab at putting into words all the things that Big Eyes made me think and feel. It won’t be academic, it won’t be objective--hell, let’s be honest, the majority of it probably won’t make sense. But if you think you can keep up with my train of thought, go for it. Buckle up, this is going to be a ride.

First of all, well. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, shall we?

Tim Burton has made some really crappy movies recently.

There. I said it. I love Tim Burton, but dear God, his track record over the last decade or so is just abominable. I wasn’t crazy about Alice in Wonderland, I thought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory deserved an official Congratulations You Missed the Point of the Book Big-Time award, and as for Dark Shadows--well, let’s just not talk about that one, okay? Let’s just pretend that movie didn’t exist. That’s how bad it was.

But oh, Big Eyes makes up for all of them. Big Eyes doesn’t just make up for all of Burton’s past screwups, it transforms him into a new man. Big Eyes takes us back to the days of Ed Wood, back before TIM BURTON became an official brand, back in the days when his films were...you know...relatable. In Amy Adams’ Margaret Keane, I see the combined vulnerability and inner strength of characters like Edward in Edward Scissorhands, or Lydia in Beetle Juice, or Emily in Corpse Bride. These are arguably some of Burton’s best characters, not because they’re iconic (though honestly I’m not sure how much more iconic it gets than Edward Scissorhands) but because they represent the emotions and situations that normal people face on a daily basis.

Let’s break this down: first time we see Margaret, she’s on the run from her first husband with her young daughter in tow. We don’t know exactly what he’s done to her. But in the 50s, women didn’t just up and leave their husbands as punishment for leaving the toilet seat up--not that it’s like that today, but you get where I’m coming from. Back in the 1950s, women’s identities were tied to their marital status. A broken marriage was not just sad, it was an outright failure. So for a woman to pack up and leave her husband meant two things: 1) said husband was genuinely terrifying, and 2) the former wife had, not to put too fine a point on it, balls of steel. I have seen reviews that complained, “well, the first time we see Margaret she’s running away, she never confronts anything, she’s just too passive, she always runs, blah blah blah.” No, you don’t get it. She’s not running scared. She is making an incredibly difficult decision for the good of herself and her child--something she will do repeatedly for the rest of the film.

I’ve always strongly felt that Burton’s best films aren’t his most sensational, but the ones with obvious ties to his personal life. And having read Burton on Burton until I’ve practically memorized it (I know, I know, I need a life, believe me I’ve heard it before) I know that he made a living as a Disney animator after college--imagine that for a second, okay? Tim Burton, King of Halloween, working on The Fox and the Hound? I sure as hell can’t picture that, but he did it. After Margaret leaves her husband, she takes a job painting furniture. She’s an artist and she longs for more, but this is what she has to do to survive, and so it’s what she’ll do. We only ever see one shot of her actually on the job, but it’s all we need to see. She’s in a room of other painters, all painting the exact same thing. It’s killing her. It’s stifling. It’s about as impersonal a thing as she could possibly do with her talent.

It’s Tim Burton working at Disney.

Thematically Big Eyes tackles the idea of artistic subjectivity. Whether you like Margaret Keane’s big-eyed creations or not, you can’t deny that she has skill as a painter, and there is something genuinely enthralling about her portraits. And it’s exactly the same thing with Burton’s films--like him or not, he’s been a formative influence in Hollywood. Don’t believe me? Look at the on-screen depictions of Batman before Burton’s 1989 take on the Dark Knight. We’ve come a long way from Adam West, and it’s mostly thanks to Tim Burton. (He says you’re welcome, Chris Nolan.)

Stylistically Big Eyes is not a Burton film. There’s no Johnny Depp, no Helena Bonham Carter, no stop-motion, no deliberately cheesy SFX, no visual similarities to 1950s b-film horror, no barely-veiled references to Edgar Allen Poe or Vincent Price, no black-and-white film stock, no supernatural involvement in the plot. The color palette bears a vague resemblance to the too-muted-to-be-brights-but-too-sharp-to-be-pastels palette of Edward Scissorhands, but the bulk of the film was shot on-location in Hawaii and San Francisco; those are real colors we’re seeing, not the in-your-face sets we’re assaulted with in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Dark Shadows. In fact, the only concession Burton makes to his usual quirky style is the choice to show Margaret Keane hallucinating big-eyed customers in the grocery store, after she sees a huge display of her artwork--with her husband’s name on it--and realizes that her lies are catching up to her. Even here Burton keeps it concise, with only a few shots of the imagined big eyes. He resists the pull to pile on the cheese, and maybe for some fans that will be a major disappointment. For this fan, however, it was welcome relief. Like I said earlier: Burton is at his best when he’s not trying too hard.

The performances in the film are nothing short of astounding. The first time a director works with a new actor is hard. I know from experience that nothing is more comforting than having your close friends on-set, so I can only imagine how nerve-wracking it must have been for Burton to step outside his comfort zone and make a film without Johnny Depp by his side--but the payoff, oh, my God, the payoff is incredible. Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz have an intense, almost electric chemistry that creates a twofold effect: in the first half we are so rooting for them even though we know (or at least suspect) that Walter Keane is, not to sugarcoat or anything, totally full of shit; in the second half we are genuinely frightened for Margaret when Walter shows his true colors. I have heard Waltz’s performance scorned as “cartoonish,” but I honestly believe it is the best performance I have ever seen him turn in. For those of you who saw Django Unchained, imagine if Dr. King Schultz suddenly and violently went right the hell off the deep end--that’s about what Waltz’s Walter Keane looks like, and it’s hilarious--but it is also terrifying. Few actors can walk the fine line and pull off such a twisted performance. Waltz is one of them.

I mentioned earlier that Amy Adams has the difficult task of bringing to life a character that others have labeled as “passive.” But I’m honestly not sure what movie they were watching, because the woman I saw on that screen was anything but passive. There are moments where she seems swept away by Walter’s charm, or tempted by the money--and perhaps she genuinely is, but every decision she makes, including the one to allow Walter to take credit for her work, is for the good of her daughter. Think about it: she marries him not because she’s wildly in love, but because she needs a husband and provider in order to keep custody of her child. She leaves him eventually not because she can’t stand to put up with his crap anymore, but because he threatens to hurt Jane. She doesn’t enjoy lying to the rest of the world, but she can stand it--but after outright lying to her daughter, she goes to Confession because she feels so guilty. And the way Adams plays this allows little room for any other interpretation. Sure, you could assume she’s just a naive, whining idiot. But that little smirk in the courtroom when they’re about to have the paint-off? Yeah, that’s not the smiling of a naive idiot. That’s the look of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing. It’s a subtle character arc, to be sure, but it’s certainly more believable than the zero-to-badass transitions that most “strong female characters” are forced through.

In the end, what makes Big Eyes so beautiful isn’t the fact that it’s the most understated Burton film since Ed Wood, or the not-so-subtle feminist undertones. It’s the way that Burton demonstrates his understanding of the sad truth that unfortunately, innovation is not always rewarded, not at the opportune time at least. The critical response to Margaret’s paintings mirrors the critical response to Burton’s films. Critics, it seems, do not care about the emotional response to the art. They care about whether it’s objectively “good.” This is what Margaret deals with, this is what Burton deals with--and as such he understands that it is what young artists deal with every day of their lives. While we are trying to develop a style of our own, we are pelted with that’s not good enoughs and it’s too simplistics and I don’t understands and you really should give up on that idea, you’ll never make its.

Big Eyes is one of those lovely, not-quite-rare-but-not-quite-frequent Burton films that is as satisfying emotionally as it is visually. And take the leap with me here or not, I don’t care, but you’ll never convince me that this film is not essentially Tim Burton’s love letter to all those young artists out there who look up to him. Big Eyes, to those artists, is his way of saying, it is good enough, it is as complex as it needs to be, I understand, don’t you effing dare give up on that idea, you will only make it if you try.