What to watch: ‘Missing’ reboots the ‘Searching’ formula, ‘The Last of Us’ brings the game to life, and more
Missing
Rated PG-13, 1 hour 51 minutes, in theaters Jan. 20
Released in 2018, “Searching” was produced before the coronavirus pandemic but with the benefit of hindsight, it felt like the ultimate Covid movie, claustrophobically focusing on a father as he scours the Web for clues about his missing daughter. “Missing” flips the generational script, in a movie that’s still plenty twisty and watchable while laboring, perhaps inevitably, to hit “refresh” on the formula.
This time around, perhaps appropriately, it’s the 18-year-old June (“Euphoria’s” Storm Reid) who is forced to go on the hunt after her widowed mom (Nia Long) doesn’t return as scheduled after a trip to Colombia with her new boyfriend (Ken Leung). It doesn’t help that June has been distant and surly — irritated that mom will be away on Father’s Day — prompting guilt to go hand in hand with surprises as her search unearths clues and shocking secrets in near-equal measure.
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HBO
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in the HBO series "The Last of Us," adapted from the popular game.
The Last of Us
Rated TV-MA, 1 hour 20 minutes, Available Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and HBO Max
The spotty track record of videogame adaptations and glut of apocalyptic/zombie dramas receive a welcome boost from “The Last of Us,” which proves there’s room for more of each as long as it’s this good. A road series with mini-dramas baked into the episodes, the HBO show quickly proves itself worthy of the hype and anticipation by delivering a fully realized series graced with flesh-and-blood characters.
Sure, we’ve been down this particular road before, featuring a world rapidly descending into chaos, after a pandemic that has transformed people into zombies, spurring government attempts to tamp down the spread in the most ruthless of ways.
Series creators Craig Mazin (an Emmy winner for “Chernobyl”) and Neil Druckmann (co-president of the award-winning game’s maker, Naughty Dog) initially construct that story around one family, flaring out to chronicle the outbreak’s ramifications around the globe, with a 20-year palette from which to choose.
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IMDB
Daniella Pineda, Gerard Butler and Yoson An in "Plane."
Plane
Rated R, 1 hour 47 minutes, in theaters now
“Plane” is a too-generic title for what’s actually a pretty good little movie, combining with the ad campaign to convey a sense the film is more “Rambo”-like than it is. A crisply executed thriller likely never to be offered as in-flight entertainment, the bare-bones story falls mainly in the plain but is fueled by stars Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, thinly written though they may be.
“The Unluckiest Flight” would be a more descriptive title based on the way events unfold, as widowed pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler, adding another entry to his long action resume) flies a New Year’s Eve leg from Singapore to Tokyo, looking forward to meeting up in Hawaii with his daughter.
Alas, Torrance and his 14 passengers — a list that includes a prisoner, Louis Gaspare (“Luke Cage” and “Evil’s” Colter), being extradited to stand trial for murder — don’t reach their destination, as the plane gets struck by lightning, forcing Torrance and his copilot (Yoson An) to execute a harrowing emergency landing on a sparsely populated island.
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