ENTERTAINMENT
cinema Reviews
BY JOHN CAMPBELL
MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN Tim Burton’s films generally strike me as being lurid examples of style over content. Heavily reliant on special effects and lairy eye candy, they just don’t do it for me (okay, I’ll pay Big Eyes). With few exceptions, they come across as children’s movies, so it should not surprise that his latest is, in fact, aimed at kids. Unfortunately, it is all over the place like a mad woman’s breakfast, with a time-jumping narrative that lurches unsteadily and frequently from 1943 to the present day.
The harshest criticism that can be levelled at a film based on a best-selling novel is that it has taken liberties in re-telling the story – that it is unfaithful to the book. Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s hugely successful whodunnit makes a rod for its own back, however, by being so infinitesimally true to its source. Those who have no idea what might have happened to Megan Hipwell, and why, will undoubtedly be held in suspense by Erin Cressida Wilson’s taut and faultlessly constructed script, whereas those of us only too well aware of her fate will be watching to see if Taylor ‘gets it right’ (it was also the case, for me, with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, to which this is not entirely dissimilar).
The only change that has been made, and it is purely cosmetic, is that the events now take place in upstate New York rather than outer London. Rachel (Emily Blunt) is a woman on the The establishment scenes are particularly poor – perfunctorily written and badly acted, they set skids – divorced, unemployed and sinking into alcoholism. She fantasises over the perfect life of Megan (Haley Bennett), whom she sees every day from the train that she rides to the city. an uninspiring benchmark that is not much improved upon by any amount of CGI that follows. As Jake, the adolescent hero, Asa Butterfield displays the vitality of a sleepwalker as he discovers That Megan had been employed as a nanny by Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), the new wife of Rachel’s ex-husband Tom (Justin Theroux), and that they happen to live in the same street is a how he fits into the scheme of things at an orphanage off the coast of Wales. Run by Miss coincidence that seems steeper on screen than it did on the page, so as a psycho-drama much Peregrine (Eva Green), its occupants live the same day in 1943 over and over. Weird kids on screen have the greatest impact when they are in nearly every way normal – none depends on Blunt’s performance. The weight of the story is entirely on her shoulders, with Megan’s voracious but fragile sexuality of those glass-eyed boys in The Village Of The Damned (1960) needed to have a mouth in the not fully explored and Anna reduced to bit-player status. Fortunately, Blunt is up to the task, back of their head to make you take notice. But that was B&W 1960, and we have arrived at the taking you with Rachel through her splintered reality. If the final revenge scene of feminist point where only excess and a climax every ten minutes will appease thrill-seeking audiences. brutalism is not quite believable – what Anna does is almost comical – don’t blame the director. A stellar cast is involved in a plot that that gets more Byzantine and brain-breaking the longer Hawkins wrote it exactly like that and it didn’t ring true to me when I read it, but it brought the it goes. Terence Stamp is Jake’s dead grandfather (who isn’t really dead), Samuel L Jackson house down at the screening I attended. in overdrive, Allison Janney and the adorable Rupert Everett are all the same evil person, Judi Dench ends up at the bottom of a cliff and Chris O’Dowd, as Jake’s dad, drinks beer and watches darts on TV. Ella Purnell, who is lighter-than-air Emma, steals the show when she swims underwater to the sunken liner, but in all honesty, I didn’t have a clue what was going on.
PERIWINKLE PRESCHOOL CROWDFUNDING AND FILM FUNDRAISER AT BRUNSWICK PICTURE HOUSE ON FRIDAY
PERIWINKLE PROJECT Periwinkle Preschool is a unique not-for-profit community-based preschool that has been serving local families for thirty years. They have been given the chance to purchase the land on which Periwinkle Steiner Preschool sits on Sunrise Blvd in Byron Bay. Right now the preschool is crowdfunding to repay a loan of $237,000. Those interested in finding out more are invited to the
Brunswick Picture House on Friday at 6pm. Your $32 limited-availability tickets include a curry, and of course there are raffles, silent auctions, an art auction and musical performances by Maple: Bridget and Monica Brandolini and Lecia Roberston and Davey Bob’s Blue Healers. And raffles: If you want to make a donation go to www.gofundme.com/ periwinklebyron. 6pm.
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo October 12, 2016 35