The Little Mermaid (in theaters) 

I’m torn on Disney’s new live-action “The Little Mermaid.” 

On one level, it was frustrating in the way a lot of the studio’s live-action remakes have been. Though the cast was great, particularly Halle Bailey as Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, but every time the movie tried to directly re-recreate a scene from the original it came off as a slightly disappointing copy. The timing was slightly off, or the emotions, or it felt stuffed in just to get an iconic shot. 

It’s the problem that continues to plague the live-action remakes – if you’re just going to photocopy the original, or stuff in random content in places that make no sense, why remake it at all? You’re not honoring the original, you’re just making people wish they were watching it instead of the remake. 

Surprisingly, though, that’s also the reason a part of me loves the new “The Little Mermaid.” When it stopped trying so hard to copy the original, it actually managed to justify the entire concept of the remakes in a way none of the others have. Certain plot changes in the back half of the movie feel like they were written by someone who loved the original, but wish they’d explored things in a slightly different way. During those scenes, I felt this was the movie some little kid had kept in their head all these years and was just waiting to make. 

What better reason for a remake could there possibly be? 

Grade: Two and a half stars   

Missing (Netflix) 

If you missed its too-small theatrical run earlier this year, now is the perfect time to catch one of the best thrillers of the year. 

Told entirely through video and computer screens, “Missing” is a surprising, unexpectedly gripping new spin on the classic kidnapping story. The action never feels distant, thanks to some extremely clever uses of the format, and there are some genuinely shocking twists that turn out to be beautifully established in advance once you know where to look. 

The movie follows June, a teenage girl planning to enjoy her senior year while her mom goes on vacation with her new boyfriend. She heads to the airport to pick them up after the trip is done, but the duo never arrives. There’s only so much the police can do, sweeping June up into danger and shocking secrets as she desperately tries to find her mother. 

Storm Reid is fantastic as June, who still misses her dead father and often has a difficult relationship with her mother. She’s intelligent and independent enough that it makes sense for her to start checking things on her own, but Reid makes it clear that she’s also young and really scared. The movie consistently makes her clever and resourceful without giving her superpowers, which only makes you root for her more. 

Though the screen-only format may make some people leery – especially those who remember the 2014 clunker “Unfriended” – director Nicholas D. Johnson is an absolute master of the form. His “Searching” (2018) was a relentlessly tense story about a man’s search for his missing daughter, and he’s made “Missing” even more exciting. It’s a ride you don’t want to miss out on.

Grade: Three and a half stars

Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Utah Film Critics Association. Find her on Twitter at @wardellwriter or drop her a line at [email protected].