MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN
PG-13, 127 minutes. Starts Friday at Niantic. Starts tonight at Mystic Luxury Cinemas, Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon. Fall has officially just started, but there’s still one more superhero flick sneaking in just before all the summer heat vanishes completely. But if you want muscled torsos and capes, you’ll be sadly disappointed. After a steady stream this year of Batman, Superman, Captain America, X-Men and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’s time now for a group of kids who float, are invisible, who spark fire, manipulate plants, control bees and give life to inanimate objects. Not really X-Men, exactly. Call them X-Tweens. They’re the unlikely young heroes and heroines of “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” the Tim Burton-directed 3-D film loosely based on the novel of the same name by Ransom Riggs. Sweet, with some mind-blowing visual effects, it’s the perfect film for your young disaffected mutant friends. Asa Butterfield (Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”) plays a young adult who stumbles upon a secret refuge for supernaturally gifted youngsters hiding in a time loop in 1943. Our hero befriends the mysterious schoolmarm Miss Peregrine (a delicious Eva Green, channeling a sexy Mary Poppins by way of Helena Bonham Carter) and learns that the children are in danger from ever-growing malevolent forces. Burton is a natural choice to direct: The material already has that gloomy, Victorian vibe, a stylized dreamlike quality, and a sort of Goth-punk look, which is catnip to the director of “Edward Scissorhands.” He also famously adores misfits; here, the screen is filled with them. No surprise the job of turning the book into a film was handed to Jane Goldman, who is familiar both with mutants and the 1940s, having been the screenwriter for “X-Men: First Class.” A somewhat ponderous first half leads to a hardcharging second, filled with ingenious fight-scenes, glorious ocean liners and sublime underwater moments. Hyper-stylized films like Burton’s usually create stiff performances, but Terence Stamp is grounded as a knowing grandfather and Chris O’Dowd is perfectly oafish as a clueless dad. Other cameos are by Judi Dench, Allison Janney and Rupert Everett (blink and you miss them). Ella Purnell is lovely and understated as a love interest; she’s buoyant, in more ways than one. — Mark Kennedy, Associated Press