Movie Nation

This sweet little romance, from director Kyra Sedgewick, was picked up by Samuel Goldwyn and comes out March 31.

Is Screen Gems frantically trying to grab the remake rights to the Korean stolen cell-phone thriller “Unlocked?”

If they aren’t, the Hollywood distributor of “Searching” and its somewhat lesser follow-up “Missing” is missing the boat.

“Unlocked” is a crackling, nervy and above all sinister parable that will make any viewer think twice and thrice about letting one’s cell phone out of your sight. And it’ll make ALL of us blush when we recognize the degree to which we’ve folded so much of our lives, our livelihoods, our identity and our fortunes into these pocket-sized modern marvels.

Writer-director Kim Tae-joon — the post-zombie-apocalypse “Peninsula” was his” — pokes at our paranoia, and justifies it in this tight tale that shows just how easy it might be for someone to destroy your life if he has a mind to, and gets hold of your cell phone.

First act montages show us how much plucky Na Mi (Chun Woo-hee) runs her life via her cell.

She’s buying drinks and photographing food, not just by publishing her location via (sometimes drunken) photos on social media. She’s using map applications, doing her banking, making lunch dates, buying baseball tickets, listening to music, running a “hidden” social media identity to help with her marketing job and using her fingerprint to access the damned phone.

And all around her, distractedly zombie-walking down the streets or packed into buses, everybody else is doing the same.

All it takes is one tipsy trip home, one phone left behind on a bus, and one bad actor to blow up her world.

He uses a phrase-reading app to give him a woman’s voice when Ni Ma and a pal call to retrieve her phone. He lies that the phone has been dropped, and has been left with an ace phone repairman, Mr. “Digital Sheriff,” which is this bespectacled nerd’s (Yim Si-wan) alleged business.

Once she’s in his sketchy “shop,” he gets her password from her, copies all the data from her phone and installs spyware that will allow him to hear her calls, see her searches, read her texts and follow her anywhere she goes.

And he starts keeping a long list of her friends, family, “likes” and passions and meticulously writes down ways to use that against her and disrupt her life. She’s cute, so he’ll throw “stalking” into the mix.

But this veteran cop (Kim Hee-won) is on a case where bodies are turning up, usually near plum trees. Det. Ji-man recognizes that M.O. There’s a serial killer on the loose, and we can only assume that he has a thing for cell phones as well as plums.

Kim, adapting a book by Japanese novelist Akira Shiga, serves up three points of view — Ni Ma’s unraveling friendships and ignored warnings from her father (Park Ho-san), the not-frantic-enough police hunt, and the villainous Jun Yeong’s meticulous scheming, contriving ways to meet Ni Ma and meet her “needs” (tickets, buying a CD she advertises online) and even giving himself a makeover when she criticizes his haircut and glasses to a friend while her ever-listening/ever-watching phone is nearby.

“Unlocked” takes a few maddening turns that might prompt a shout or two at the screen and the police, who let one cop dictate that no nationwide “BOLO” be issued for this plum-sucking killer they’ve identified as their one and only suspect.

The film is a bit overly patient in setting up the menace and the obstacles to the mystery being solved and that menace being thwarted before our unsuspecting 20something is snatched and buried “in the mountains” near another plum tree.

But when the third act kicks in, the ticking clock starts and every one of the final minutes on this cell-plan story can be savored for the well-engineered and well-acted thriller it is.

If Netflix isn’t planning a North American/English language remake (it’s in undubbed Korean), Screen Gems certainly should.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Chun Woo-hee, Yim Si-wan, Kim Hee-won, Park Ho-san

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kim Tae-joon, based on a novel by Akira Shiga. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:57

Guy Ritchie’s (“Snatch”) and Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”) made it all look so easy that Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”) thought he’d have a go.

But that slice of British working class/underclass/criminal class life ensemble dramedy thing is easy to imitate, harder to get right.

“Three Day Millionaire,” scripted by Paul Stephenson and directed by Jack Spring (“Destination: Dewsbury”), is a Ritchie-lite movie that gets many of the basics right even as a misses a couple of the most obvious.

It’s a tale of “trawlermen” from the historic fishing port of Grimsby, a Lincolnshire landmark whose glory days ended as the Cod Wars were settled in the 1970s. A group of sons-of-sons-of-sons-of-sons of trawlermen stare at “The End Times” and find themselves lured into a heist, just as the working port is about to make the inevitable transition to “prime seaside real estate.”

Curly Dean (James Burrows) heads our colorful cast of characters, goateed and tattooed, narrating from his trawler bunk, straight at the camera, telling us the place’s history and introducing his motley mates.

There’s pudgy, short-attention-span Budgie (Sam Glen), the former shipmate Codge (Michael Kinsey), whose drug abuse made him a liability no skipper would take on, and reliably discrete cabbie Weezy (Robbie Gee).

Jonas Armstrong is Charlie Graham, the fuming ex-fisherman who went to work for The Big Boss (Colm Meaney, of course) who contracts the fleet of boats and owns the fishpacking plants, where Queenie (Grace Long) and Demi, aka “Pitbull” (Melissa Batchelor) make an honest wage.

Graham is the one who realizes what Barr the Big Boss is about to do, sell out to Devine Residential Group, which will turn the “greatest fishing docks in the world” into flats, condos and Starbucks. Gilly (Lauren Foster), Curly Dean’s girl-in-port, also knows, but isn’t letting on. Graham is the one who pitches the caper.

“Fishermen we are,” Codge grouses. “‘Oceans F—–g FOUR’ we definitely are NOT!”

Nevertheless, a scheme involving Budgie’s mum (Catherine Adams), who is Barr’s paramour, and a safe full of cash destined for the crypto market is casually cooked up as the trawlermen finish up their latest booze and big-spending binge as “Three Day Millionaires,” the trawler crew ethos that most of what you earn had better be spent before taking on that next voyage, because it’s “bad luck” not to.

This is a good-natured action comedy that could seriously do with a bit of subtitling. It’s not like anyone outside of Limeyland is going to pick up on the thick, salty slang without it.

Stephenson’s script is fine at capturing the flavor of the place, where every fisherman, from the youngest to codgers like Curly Dean’s alcoholic Dad “Teapot” believes “It’ll come back,” that the decades-long downturn in fishing work is “just a lull.”

But a city’s slow death is a lot harder to instill desperation into than a story with more imminent peril. The stakes seem low, the caper under-planned and a lot less inventive than you’d like. Realistic? Sure. Kind of.

“This is nothing compared to the risks we take at sea!”

Maybe it was too expensive to show us that risk, as the boat scenes seem filmed in a painted up, docked and long-unused trawler rather than something we see in the “wine dark sea.”

The overlong opening act takes pains to give a Ritchie-esque freeze-frame introduction to every character, and suggests the women who love these seafaring men will have agency and a role in the caper. But they’re barely in this.

For Anglophiles like me, a “Three Day Millionaire” is always going to be worth a look, especially on a streaming platform that subtitles. But as even Guy Ritchie isn’t really making “Guy Ritchie movies” any more — God help us, “Aladdin 2” is on the way, and “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” is finally getting a U.S. release in March — maybe mimicking the master, even somewhat clumsily, isn’t the smartest play these days.

Rating: unrated, moderate violence, drug abuse, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: James Burrows, Michael Kinsey, Sam Glen, Robbie Gee, Lauren Foster, Jonas Armstrong, Melissa Batchelor, Grace Long, Catherine Adams and Colm Meaney

Credits: Directed by Jack Spring, scripted by Paul Stephenson. An Entertainment Squad release.

Running time: 1:35

Finally, a video game movie we can all get behind.

March 31, this bizarre tale of how “the perfect game” escaped from the Soviet Union and made Gameboy the toy of the decade, comes to Apple TV+.

March 24, the gangs all back — Keanu, Lance, Laurence and Ian, with a Skarsgård, a “Warriors” reference and a Donnie Yen.

What the trailer doesn’t tell you? This beast is two hours and 49 minutes long.

A Syrian refugee child finds comfort in the poetry, philosophy and biography of Jalaluddin Rumi in “Lamya’s Poem,” an engaging animated drama that compares its title character’s life and fate with that of her fellow refugee, a 13th century Persian mystic.

Scripted and directed by “cross cultural understanding” speaker, pundit and documentary filmmaker Alex Kronemer and animated by Pip Animation under the direction of Brandon Lloyd of public TV’s “Cyberchase,” it’s a dark but lightly-instructive fantasy about children of conflict zones, Islam and a poet and teacher little known in the Occidental world.

Lamya, voiced by Millie Davis, is 12 years old and home-schooled because she has to be. She’s in Aleppo, Syria, a city under siege, where she and her mother (Aya Bryn Zakarya) avoid windows because of frequent artillery barrages and air raids directed by Syria’s dictator, nepo-baby Bashar-al Assad. It’s 2016, and he’s clinging to his dad’s old dictatorship by bombing (and gassing) his own people.

Lamya’s elderly, bookish teacher (Raoul Bhaneja) walks from apartment to apartment, checking on his students, giving assignments and picking up homework. He sees a future teacher in Lamya. She’s absorbed his “What is the the first word of the Revelation?” lesson.

“Read!”

He gives her a treasured collection of Rumi, “Poet of Love.” And from reading that, Lamya’s nightmares about war and displacement become dreams of meeting a teenaged Rumi (Mena Massoud), who struggles with the same fears Lamya does, added to a adolescent rage at the oppressors of his day — the Mongols who invaded Samarkand.

Rumi plays his flute and tries to plant it in the barren ground, shows Lamya the wonders of his fantastical steampunk home city and lets her see his struggles to tamp down the fury he feels at the rapacious Mongols.

“Hate can never defeat hate,” his scholarly father (Faran Tahir) lectures him.

As Lamya faces displacement, a sea journey to escape Syria, separation from her mother and a Europe that’s turned hostile to refugees, she learns from Rumi’s experiences and his writings, which soften the blows of her life.

This kid-friendly English language drama features polished 2D animation and just enough drama, strife and excitement to keep a younger viewer engaged.

The oppressor of Lamya’s dreams is a cavalry of demonic dog-beasts riding other beasts, not unlike how the Mongol horde was viewed by those it preyed upon. “Hatred” is visualized as an insidious street vendor, or a tentacle-limbed plant that swallows people, machines and human hearts.

Lamya reads from and quotes Rumi’s poetry to others as she throws in with an illiterate little street thief (Nissae Isen) also forced to flee Aleppo.

The film is more high-minded and well-intentioned than entertaining, but that doesn’t blunt its impact or render it less watchable. There’s a bit here for adults, but if you’re trying to raise enlightened, curious kids they’re the best audience for this child’s odyssey of understanding a hostile world through a great poet.

Rating: unrated, war zone subject matter

Cast: The voices of Millie Davis, Mena Massoud, Faran Tahir, Raoul Bhaneja, Nissae Isen and Aya Bryn Zakarya

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alex Kronemer, animation directed by Brandon Lloyd, inspired by the poetry of  Jalaluddin Rumi. A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:28

Freeman plays the expert consulted by the cop (Hauser) tracking this bizarre, multi-continental murderer.

March 10.

I don’t think the Japanese title of “Re/Member” is as clever a pun as it is in English.

As this is a horror tale of high school kids trapped by a ghost, doomed to search for and re-assemble the dismembered body parts so that the spirit will rest in peace, “Re/Member” is amusing truth in advertising that “Karada Sagashi,” translated as “Remember Member,” never will be.

The hook here is a sort of “Before I Fall,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Groundhog Day” variation. Six high school kids are summoned and assembled by a ghostly “red person” dragging around a knit doll she had the day she was murdered in the film’s opening scene.

The teens find themselves trapped, sucked into the school each midnight to complete their quest, recovering body parts.

“Until the body search is complete,” nerdy Shôta (Kotarô Daigo) reasons — in Japanese or dubbed into English — “this is our ONLY day.”

Shôta, like our heroine Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto), is an outcast. She’s “invisible” and “a loser” to her classmates. He’s bullied, blamed for crimes he didn’t commit.

But super-popular super-jock Takahiro (Gordon Maeda) “saw the dead girl,” too. So did class hottie Rie (Mayu Yokota) and popular chatterbox Rumiko (Maika Yamamoto).

Sad and sullen truant Atsushi (Fûju Kamio) finds himself forced to show up and pitch in when they’re stuck in this time-trap, with the possibility of being “erased” from existence if they don’t succeed.

You know the “Groundhog” drill. Every night, they have to figure something new out. These kids, mostly strangers to each other, have to team-up to work the problem. As in “Edge of Tomorrow,” a nightly slaughter, one by one, is their reward for failure.

They compare notes each morning — with the last to die the night before filling in the new data for Miss “Honestly, we got killed off pretty early” and the others.

Honestly, “Re/Member” could use more of that “Tom Cruise got killed AGAIN” comic energy. While the script does a good job of showing us how these new associations could change the trajectory of that one hellish day — a stray cat who keeps getting run over — and their high school lives, it lets down the plucky players in a lot of other ways.

The body parts aren’t so much “discovered” in a logical hiding place, as “presented.” If the ghost knows where they are and can move them, why pester teenagers with that?

After seeing a child chased into the forest in our opening scene, there’s nothing done to add pathos to the original victim. She’s just another “Ring” style wild-haired Japanese girl/demon.

The nightly deaths are gruesome and creatively-handled, reminding us that “J-Horror” is a genre for a reason.

But the third act turn towards giving this quest meaning — over-explaining, the Achilles heel of many a thriller — is a dud. And much of what comprises the climax will have you shouting at the screen as it is dragged out by SOMEbody not taking care of that one piece of business, obvious to everyone but her.

“Re/Member” does just well enough by a killer concept to merit a Hollywood remake, because this version stumbles here and there, and simply fails at the finish.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence

Cast: Kanna Hashimoto, Gordon Maeda, Maika Yamamoto, Fûju Kamio, Mayu Yakota and Kotarô Daigo.

Credits: Directed by Eiichiro Hasumi, scripted by Harumi Doki. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:42

Broadly speaking, China’s World War II began before anybody else’s, and ended with the conclusion of the long off-and-on Chinese Civil War that preceded it and postdated it.

Any trip down the rabbit hole of the various Sino-Japanese wars, considered a sideshow of the global conflagration by Westerners, is going to be messy and feature various alliances, “war lords” as war leaders, collaborators and the Japanese trying to swallow a divided nation many times their size through conquest, treachery and outright barbarism.

As China’s military record in the field was nothing to wave a big red flag over, combat movies from a Chinese perspective are more propagandistic fantasies than anything truly historic — even the ones that don’t feature Bruce Willis. Safer ground for filmmakers seems to be tales of espionage, intrigue and resistance.

“Cliff Walkers” and “The Message” went that route, and that’s where writer-director Er Cheng takes his moody, murky thriller “Hidden Blade.”

It tells the story of the war years through the eyes of spies who work for the the nationalist Kuomintang of Chiang Kai-shek, the collaborationist “We just want peace” government of “President” Wang Jingwei and the communists, whom everyone else — occupiers and resisters — figures are the “real” threat.

There’s an “it’s never too late to change sides” ethos among most, and that even goes for the cynical Shanghai-based Japanese intelligence officer (Hiroyuki Mori) who’d rather be in the first conquered corner of China, Manchuria, “the fortress” against Soviet invasion, or so the Japanese believed at the time.

It’s interesting that Cheng, who did the gangland WWII tale “The Wasted Times,” takes pains to show the Japanese point of view, the “How do you win a war without a goal?” realization of some who figure their island empire has bitten off more than it can chew in its “land war in Asia” blunder.

But “Hidden Blade” has many characters and points of view, from sketched-in “honey trap” female spies ( Xun Zhou, Jingyi Zhang, Shuying Jiang) to government functionaries, Japanese troops in the field committing atrocities and a bomber co-pilot who keeps his dog, “Roosevelt,” in the cockpit with him on missions.

Cheng’s narrative flips back and forth in time, from early war interrogations to late conflict walks along a river delta littered with the corpses of Japanese invaders. So it’s a little hard to follow thanks to his needlessly untidy storytelling.

It still immerses us in uncertain, nerve-wracking times as we follow well-dressed and well-fed city spies, officers and officials down the corrupt, back-stabbing road towards communism’s triumph. And it features just enough action, including a couple of the most savage brawls in recent screen history, to deserve its “war movie” label.

Hong Kong acting legend Tony Leung (“In the Mood for Love,” “Red Cliff,” “Chungking Express”) is Mr. He, a smiling, silky-smooth debriefer/interrogator who surfs the shifting currents of China’s struggle but sees the safest ground in the employ of the collaborationist Wang regime.

But even the ruthless Mr. He has his blind spot. Yes, it involves a woman assassin (Xun Zhou) working for the communists.

Sino-Korean boy-bandmate and TV actor Yibo Wang gives a breakout performance as the brooding Mr. Ye, an agent so pretty that our first and second impressions are that he’s romantically involved with his partner and constant dinner companion Mr. Tang (Chengpeng Dong). But Ye also has a woman he is trying to save from this slaughter.

The women are this spy war’s philosophers, intoning truisms that hold for any civil war or violent political divide.

“It’s easy to forgive an enemy, impossible to forgive a friend.”

Real history skips back and forth underneath this ebbing and flowing narrative, with the Japanese in China certain that they’re about to join Germany in invading the U.S.S.R. (Their dictatorship was most terrified of a war with Russia, throwing Toyota-tanks against real armor. But Stalin was also obsessed with a Japanese stab in the back.). There are scenes that capture the round-up of foreigners in Shanghai depicted in “Empire of the Sun,” mentions of The Rape of Nanking, an anti-spy raid that goes wrong and an everyday atrocity in the countryside, summary executions and a mass “punishment” of locals accused of fouling a well.

They are buried alive as a concrete foundation is poured for a new grain elevator.

As you can gather, there’s a lot to get in and a lot to take in, and Cheng’s storytelling doesn’t make absorbing it any easier. You’d think he watched “Inglorious Bastards” a few too many times, the way he stages every interrogation as a long string of soliloquies, characters giving monologues to each other that pass for conversation.

But Leung is terrific, and Wang holds his own and dazzles in a couple of epic fights. The women characters are secondary, but there’s room to play around with their degrees of fanaticism. The Japanese officer Watanabe (Mori) is almost sympathetic thanks his delusions and disillusionment. Watch how he sees a raid go wrong and gets out of his car and pulls out his samurai sword and to salvage it. Listen to how he takes the news that a Japanese prince has been assassinated on duty in China.

“I guess I’ll have to disembowel myself to apologize.”

I found the whole “Hidden Blade” rather less satisfying than its individual component parts. The many characters, myriad plot points and points of view and added complications with the narrative timeline clutter things up.

But scene after immaculately-realized, quietly-menacing scene pays off. The violence is shocking even when it’s not sudden and the messaging is less heavy-handed than typical Chinese fare set during WWII. Whatever went wrong for China on the battlefield, the secretive men and women hiding their politics and taking the measure of all their many enemies were a real success story, even if they’d never recognize the oligarchical, class-conscious “People’s Republic” of today.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Tony Leung, Yibo Wang, Xun Zhou, Jingyi Zhang, Shuying Jiang and Hiroyuki Mori.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Er Cheng. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:10

A melancholy Chinese romance of love-unconfessed and much else left unsaid, writer-director Luyi Zhang’s “Yanagawa” takes its title from its Japanese setting. But that title, like the film’s “love triangle that might be a quadrangle,” is somewhat ironic.

The canal-laced seaside city described as “The Venice of Japan” didn’t dazzle the director of “The Quiet Dream.” He sees what we see — a quiet, working class water town that just happens to have sturdy, workboat-style gondolas poled by gondoliers through a water world more like Thailand than the Italian coast.

And memories of teenaged crushes don’t stand up to the film’s scrutiny as we hang out with two brothers who follow that girl who left them and Beijing behind twenty years before to this Rising Sun Venice.

We meet Li Dong (Luyi Zhang) just as he’s breaking Chinese custom and decorum, bumming a smoke off a lady outside of the Beijing U. hospital, over-sharing by admitting he’s just learned he has “Cancer, stage four” which chases her away in a flash.

That’s almost the last big “share” that Li Dong undertakes as the introvert in this quiet drama. He doesn’t tell his arrogant, boorish brother, Li Chun (Bai Qing Xin), even over drinks.

Married-and-over-it Li Chun is a bit of a bully, and a conversation hog. He wonders what’s up with his brother, who deflects by deciding that the house he inherited from their task-master dad should go to the Li Chun and his family.

They’re a family that is only comfortable leaving things unsaid and leaving out details of this “inheritance” and reasons for it. Any complaints they have about each other, the culture and the world are answered with their father’s pet expression — “Whatever happened to morality?”

Speaking of that, Li Dong says, we should go away for a few days, head over to Yanagawa to see the sights and see if they can locate the lovely Liu Chuan, whom the never-married Li Dong has been hunting down and pining for.

She’s a singer there. And whatever crush he and his brother shared over her 20 years before, he’s wondering if she might have been the only girl he ever loved.

To this end, Li Dong has learned Japanese. Li Chun sets the tone for their trip by marveling at this, and ridiculing it. His constant put-downs betray his insecurity. And matters only get worse when they go into the bar where Chuan sings breathy, wistful torch songs to the somewhat appreciative Japanese audience.

Perhaps the audience is there for the same reason as the brothers. Liu Chuan (Ni Ni) is a long-haired beauty in her late ’30s, never married and trilingual since she spent time in London and settled in Japan. She finishes a tune, walks up to their table and sits down as if they never parted.

A dynamic is re-established. Nerdy Dong is mostly silent, save for the odd shy remark about how things were (at least in his imagination) when they were younger. Chun dominates the conversation, openly comes-on and flirts, married-or-not, a cocky, self-assured vulgarian whom Liu Chuan either indulges in the most coarse way, or brushes off.

Chun flirts with xenophobia, mocking all things Japanese and any Japanese customs his brother or the woman he still calls “Chuan’er” abide by. The world knows a stereotypical Japanese tourist and the classic “ugly American” image abroad. Chun is a modern traveling stereotype himself, a brash Chinese blow-hard.

Dong just tries to stay in the conversation and not give away his morbid secret.

And if that’s not romantically complicated enough, the Japanese landlord who rents the siblings a room (Sôsuke Ikematsu) also has a crush on Chuan, but even he has trouble expressing that as they converse in his second language, her third — English.

Lu Zahng, few of whose films (“Chingqing” and “Scenery”) have played in North America, doesn’t deliver much in the way of big emotions or major revelations here.

“I really like you” (in subtitled Mandarin “Pekingese” or Japanese, or English) is about as open as these crazy repressed Asians get.

There’s a bit going on beneath the surface, and perhaps more going on with Liu Chuan than either of the three men pursuing her pick up on.

Is she sleeping around? Is she even interested in any of them?

That’s not altogether clear, nor is the fact that Chuan realizes she’s met the teen daughter of her youngest suitor, Nakayama (Ikematsu).

So much is left hanging, unsaid or unresolved, even in the finale.

But “Yangawa” still makes for a fascinating Asian variation of cultures and ideas of love and romance in collision, even if it’s no “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

Rating: unrated, adult situations

Cast: Ni Ni, Luyi Zhang, Bai Qing Xin and Sôsuke Ikematsu

Credits: Scripted and directed by Lu Zhang. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:52