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OT: Miss Peregrine and The Accountant (two non-franchise movies)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
3 replies | jump to latest

So I had some time and some access to cable and I dialed up a couple of fall 2016 movies I missed last year. They offered some revelations given recent discussions around here, though not particularly of a Psycho type.

The films were Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" and Ben Affleck in some director's The Accountant.

As fall films , neither project was part of an ongoing franchise, nor did I feel that either film was meant to LAUNCH a franchise. Though either film COULD launch a franchise. I mean, Psycho -- with one of the greatest and most "final" endings of all time, did.

I missed them last fall, as I recall, in an obsessive quest to see The Magnificent Seven and because other tasks came up.

With the Burton film, I felt it looked like too much of a children's film to go see it without a kid in tow. And no Johnny Depp. In fact, no truly major star at all. The lead is a woman, and Burton chose the very sexy Eva Green(Depp's witch-love in Dark Shadows) to anchor the project, with a buncha kids. (Oh, and the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson for villainy and Judi Dench for class. )

With the Affleck thriller, it looked a bit too buttoned-down and deadpan to ignite my "John Wick" style shoot-em-up Jones.

But seeing them this year, both films delivered in surprising ways. I'm glad I saw them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

First up: Miss Peregrine

I retain my Tim Burton fandom in the face of all opposition. He's two things at once: "old hat" and rather cast away as an auteur to take seriously(by the critics) and "massively successful" enough -- Batman in the beginning; now 7 years ago with the billion-dollar hit Alice In Wonderland, that they keep financing him, even though the big "Dark Shadows" and the small "Big Eyes" weren't successes.

Miss Peregrine looked to me like a "vanity project" given to Burton in salute to "Alice," but I thought that of Big Eyes too. Perhaps like Billy Wilder in the 70s, Burton is a big enough name to get to keep making major films for 15 years past his successful era, too.

I noted how Burton's "Batman" (1989) is my favorite comic hero movie and my bet for perhaps the only truly great one out there(it has a prestige superstar in Nicholson, a surprising star in Keaton, and Burton's cracked vision going for it...whereas Nolan's non-Joker material in "The Dark Knight" is pedestrian.)

I also noted how "Batman" ended with a nice simple three-character plus henchmen showdown in a bell tower. Burton didn't need an all-stops-out, refuses-to-end CGI climax.

Until 2016, that is. With "Miss Peregrine." I watched THIS third act mess unfold, and unfold, and unfold, and felt light depression: "You too, Tim?" But in its favor, the big showdown in Miss Peregrine features a horde of Ray Harryhausen-like swordfighting skeletons very a squad of horrific humanoid creatures, and all manner of fight-back by the titular Peculiar children using their peculiar powers(making fire, invisbility, etc.) In short, "Miss Peregrine" doesn't end like a Marvel/DC. And the budget on this baby looked enormous. Plus, Eva Green does for me even in a movie where she keeps her clothes on and smokes a pipe.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Side-bar: Miss Peregrine is a children's movie, perhaps, but a key plot element is how Sam Jackson leads a group of ghouls dedicated to eating human eyeballs by the plateful -- with children's eyes their preferred delicacy. I suppose that might appeal to the pre-teen horror fan with a taste for the playground tales of surviving a gross horror -- like Psycho played in my elementary and junior high years...

I guess it is from some novel, but I do give kudos to "Miss Peregrine" for its mind-twisting play with time and space; one has to stay on ones toes to understand its different "worlds." Also, as a commercial matter, I suppose the film owes a lot to Harry Potter.

One more thing: Burton's Herrmann -- Danny Elfman -- does the music again, and during that madcap climax, this movie really sounds like...."Batman"!

So everything old is new again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Accountant is a hit man thriller(eventually) which seemed real intricate at first, but boiled down to a nifty merger of two big hits: "Rainman" and "The Bourne Identity."

For Ben Affleck's "accountant" is an adult autistic savant -- a human computer with numbers, including blackjack card counting, just like Dustin Hoffman -- who is also a killing machine for shadowy government-corporate employers. And everybody wants to kill HIM. He' the Accountant who knows too much.

I had to laugh as I saw the "RainMan" references come up and start MERGING with the Bourne references. Hey, why not? A key element of our modern hit man heroes is their unflappable lack of full human emotion. They gotta do what they gotta do.

To me, the best element of "The Accountant" are flashbacks to the ice-cold, rock hard military dad who decided that his autistic son would be bullied and ignored for his entire life UNLESS the boy was trained to be a hardened marital arts expert and killer. Dad also forces his son -- who can't stand bright light and loud noises -- to be exposed CONSTANTLY to bright light and loud noises. One thinks of the sadistic father in Peeping Tom who did fear experiments on his son.

So one wonders by the film's end: was daddy a physical and mental abuser? Or did he really create in his adult son a numbers-brilliant killing machine who could always takes care of himself(and only kills bad guys?)

An interesting element of the film to me. And I've always thought Ben Affleck had more star power than his little bitty buddy, Matt Damon, so its nice to see Affleck getting HIS Bourne. Alas, to much smaller box office...

"Miss Peregrine" and "The Accountant" are reminders that Hollywood does make non-franchise movies, still. Stand-alones with a beginning, middle and end. They may be derivative of OTHER movies, but that's unavoidable. The trick is to mix and match things in a new way. I never conceived of Rainman as Jason Bourne. But somebody did...