Howdy y’all,

I had a day off work a few days ago and decided to make it a day of new things.

In doing so, I went to two new movies and a new restaurant. I went to see both Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and The Magnificent Seven, I also went to Wise Guys Sandwich Pub on Bagnell Dam Strip.

It was a good day.

I also bought a body pillow to feel like I am getting cuddled.

Don’t you judge me!

If you do not want spoilers for the movie, stop reading here.

This was one of my absolute coolest movie experiences, you see, I was the only person in this theater.

It made me feel like I was a real movie critic with the house all to myself… if this place had room service, I would have been in heaven.

We seriously need a Studio Movie Grill at the lake, I wish I could open one.

Miss Peregrine’s is a Tim Burton film, he is a very famous Producer and Director with an almost cult following. Among the movies he has directed and produced are Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish, Dark Shadows, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Cabin Boy and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

In general, I am not a huge fan of Tim Burton movies.

I certainly have several I like but have always found his movies kind of campy with the awkward use of color and settings… that changed with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

The cast for this visual feast is:

Eva Green as Miss Peregrine. I was thinking about naming this article “Unfortunately Eva Green does not get naked in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” but I decided against it. I have been a fan of Eva Green for a while now, not just for the nudity but it is something to look forward to especially in weird movies like The Dreamers which kind of made the whole movie. She has been in some pretty good films throughout the years, though, like Kingdom of Heaven, Casino Royale, The Golden Compass (I really wish they would make the sequels), Dark Shadows, 300: Rise of an Empire, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Penny Dreadful.

Asa Butterfield as Jake. The only other thing I know Asa Butterfield from is Ender’s Game. He did a great job in it and didn’t do too shabby in this. Coincidentally, Ender’s Game is the only Blu-Ray movie that I own, it belonged to my buddy Paul before he died.

He was one of the final candidates for the third film incarnation of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, though Tom Holland was cast instead.

Samuel L Jackson as Barron. Samuel L. Jackson is my favorite actor behind Walter Matthau so I am glad to see him in anything. Jackson has come a LONG way since being the shit bum thief in Coming to America. Look for Mr. Jackson in Amos & Andrew, Jurassic Park, Pulp Motherfucking Fiction, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Long Kiss Goodnight, The Negotiator, Star Wars: Episode I – III, Shaft (2000), Unbreakable, Formula 51, XXX, The Man, Motherfucking Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane, Black Snake Moan (Christina Ricci made this movie… good God… the nudity, not the being beaten up… that bit pissed me off), any Marvel Movie that has a part for Nick Fury, Robocop (2014), Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Legend of Tarzan.

Dame Judi Dench as Miss Avocet. Judi Dench has been gracing screens since the late 1950’s. I have not seen her in a lot of the older things she has been in but know her from several different roles in the more recent past, such as here being M in several of the James Bond movies during both the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig renditions of 007, The Chronicles of Riddick, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Chris O’Dowd as Franklin Portman. O’Dowd plays the boring, overprotective father to Jake in this movie but outside of this, I love seeing him in movies because he was my favorite characters in a British Comedy called The IT Crowd. He has also been in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Pirate Radio, Gulliver’s Travels (2010) and Thor: The Dark World

In a 2014 interview on the NPR interview program “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” O’Dowd told Gross that before he was an actor he worked at a call center, and one of his jobs was making solicitation calls for a well-known wildlife charity. He said that the endangered animals that he was supposed to tell potential donors about–like New Guinean bats or newts from New Zealand–were unappealing to people, so he started making up fake endangered animals that he thought would be more attractive to them. One was a “tiger swan,” which he described as “essentially a swan with the markings of a Bengal”; one was “some kind of flying dolphin”.

Terence Stamp as Abraham ‘Abe’ Portman. This gentleman has been on the big screen since the 1960’s but the first movie I know him from is General Zod in Superman and Superman II. You may have also seen him in Young Guns, Alien Nation, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Bowfinger, Elektra, Wanted, Get Smart, Valkyrie and The Adjustment Bureau

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#59) (1995).

Ella Purnell as Emma Bloom. Ella has been in a few decent roles prior to Miss Peregrine’s, you may have seen her in Kick-Ass 2 and she was a body double for young Jane in The Legend of Tarzan.

There’s a joke in my family that I’m going to make a career out of playing other people’s younger selves, I played the younger Keira [Keira Knightley], now I’m playing the younger Angelina [Angelina Jolie]. I mean, it’s a good track record, right?

Lauren McCrostie as Olive Abroholos Elephanta. She did not have a huge role in the movie but neither did Judy Dench and McCrostie is far dreamier. Just… damn. This movie is the only thing I have heard of that Lauren plays in but she was in a movie called The Falling with Maisie Williams who most people know as Arya Stark of Game of Thrones fame.

She was born and raised in London, England.

I added the trivia and quotes because the ones I don’t have a lot of information on kept overlapping when I would save them and it annoyed me.

When his beloved grandfather leaves Jake clues to a mystery that spans different worlds and times, he finds a magical place known as Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children. But the mystery and danger deepen as he gets to know the residents and learns about their special powers – and their terrifying enemies. Ultimately, Jake discovers that only his own special peculiarity can save his new friends. Based on the novel “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children,” written by Ransom Riggs.

In this story Jake is an awkward kid, he doesn’t really get along in society. If he had any romantic hopes, he would be the kid who gets friend-zoned.

Throughout his life, his grandpa, Abraham, told him amazing stories of his travels and the people he’s met. Many of his stories involved a weird place called Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children on the island of Cairnholm in Wales.

Abe was sent to Miss Peregrine’s prior to World War II and it is where he grew up. When the War broke out he left Miss Peregrine’s to join the military and never went back to live at Miss Peregrine’s again on a permanent basis.

The story takes place in the present and Jake’s grandpa is an old man. Jake’s parents are dull and in general very boring and try to not have much to do with Abe. Jake’s dad, Franklin, is not very close to his father so the story starts out with Jake getting a call from his grandfather asking Jake where the key to his gun cabinet is.

When Jake asks why Abe asks him how else is he going to fight the monsters?

Jake realizes he needs to go visit his grandpa to make sure that he’s ok. Jake gets a ride with the lady he works with, upon arriving at the house Jake sees a black man with crazy hair and white eyes seem to form out of the fog. Jake then shows up to his grandpa’s house and sees that it is destroyed.

He looks through the house trying to find his grandpa but fails. Jake then decides to look around the house and sees that the fence in the back hard has been ripped apart he searches in that direction and eventually finds Abe in the woods, dying.

Abe tells Jake that he needs to find Miss Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children, says a few irrational phrases and then dies, eyeless (I did not realize he was eyeless until later in the movie due to lack of blood or anything)

Jake takes his grandfather’s death badly and his parents send him to see a psychiatrist.

During the time Jake is seeing his psychiatrist, he has a birthday and his aunt gives him a book his grandfather had meant to give him but hadn’t before he died.

Inside the book is a postcard from Cairnholm, Wales from Miss Peregrine. Upon seeing it, and since the psychiatrist doesn’t seem to be doing much good, Jake decides to listen to his grandfather final words and try to convince his parents to let him go to Wales to meet Miss Peregrine. His grandfather said she could tell him everything he needed to know before dying.

At first, his parents are against it but with coaxing from both Jake and the psychiatrist, they give in and decide that it would be good for Jake to go under the supervision of his father and Franklin would be able to work on his book during the vacation.

Jake goes to Wales with Franklin who is overprotective for going to a tiny Island town in Wales. I’m not exactly sure how old Jake supposed to be in the story but he looks old enough to not be babysat as much as he is.

Jake and Franklin show up in Cairnholm and Jake goes to find Miss Peregrine’s school for Peculiar Children.

When Jake finds it, he is confused by what he sees. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children had been bombed in September of 1943. What makes it even more confusing for Jake is that the postcard inside Jakes book had a post date of 2014 and it talked about the school as if it were still running and most definitely not destroyed by a Nazi bomb.

The next day Jake decided to go back to the school but due to his overprotective father, he was forced to lie to him and tell him he was going to hand out with the shit-bum kids who originally showed him the obliterated ruins that once housed his grandfather.

When Jake arrives and starts looking around through the debris, he is startled to see children out of the corner of his eye, he gets scared and bolts which does not end well. While looking for what may be chasing him, Jake trips and knocks himself out.

Jake wakes up to kids surrounding him, they tell him that Miss Peregrine sent them to bring him to the home.

They go through a cave located near the home which takes them back in time 2 September 1943, the day that the bomb falls on the house.

The means they use for being able to go back in time is Miss Peregrine’s peculiarity, aside from being able to turn into a bird, is to pick out a spot in time, a perfect spot and replay the 24 hours over and over again in order to keep the Peculiar Children safe.

Unfortunately, the day that they had to pick in 1943 wasn’t exactly perfect but it worked for them in a pinch so they did not lose their home.

All of the friends Abe told Jake stories about his whole life we’re now standing in front of him having aged not a day. This struck me as being exceedingly sad at first, that these kids don’t get to grow up and they spend the same day over and over again. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day, they do different stuff but every moment has been mapped out. They know what’s going to happen every second of the day, for example, a little squirrel falls out of a tree at exactly the same time every day and it is Emma’s chore to be there at that exact moment every day to catch the squirrel and put him back in the tree.

Miss Peregrine and the children start to tell Jake a little bit about his grandpa, he finds out that Abe left the home about three months before the bombing to join the military. We later find out that he did so in order to protect the children at Miss Peregrine’s and in all the different loops around the world because there are some bad peculiars who, in trying to make themselves immortal, ended up turning themselves into monsters and the only way they can become human again, to an extent, is to eat the eyes of peculiars.

Samuel L. Jackson is one of these monsters, the same monster Jake saw on the night of Abe’s death. His name is Mr. Barron.

Jake doesn’t spend a lot of time with the peculiars he really likes them and it’s hard for him to leave, especially Emma, The girl Abe left and the girl Jake wants to stay for.

The peculiars of 1943 have to stay in the loop otherwise, if they leave the loop for any long period of time, they’ll become the age they would really be if they hadn’t been spending all that time in the loop.

Jake doesn’t know what to do because he really likes Emma, I would have the same dilemma because she is pretty cute. Actually, no I wouldn’t, leaving doesn’t bother me much… that is the whole purpose of Chop’s Guide.

Jake decides to leave but weird things are happening in present day Cairnholm and inadvertently, while trying to save the children from the monsters, Jake leads the monsters to the children which end up getting Miss Peregrine caught.
Without Miss Peregrine there to restart the loop every day the loop will close which means the kids will revert to present time and so will their age, so it’s on Jake and the children to find her as quickly as possible while also finding a new loop they can stay in temporarily.

Miss Peregrine is caught not long before the reset for the loop so Jake and the children have to get out of the house before the bomb drops and they have to find Miss Peregrine soon to either reset their loop or start a new one so the children remain as they are.

Jake and the children realize that if they can save Miss Peregrine and get rid of Barron and his monsters while still in the 1943 time period, there will be no one there to kill his grandfather and he may be able to not only keep Abe around but to learn more about this new world from him.

But if that happens, does Jake stay in the present with his grandfather or in the past with Emma?

I’ll try not to give any more spoilers but I do have to say I enjoyed this movie far more than I expected to with it being a Tim Burton movie.

I would go watch it in theaters again… I liked it so much, I want to read the books although, if you click on the character links above, you will see that the book and the movie are a little different.

Chop’s Guide score 4 out of 5.