The King of Fighters: Destiny (2017-2018)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Based on quite a long-running fighting game series (including dozens of sequels, ports, spin-offs and whatnots), the latest animated adaptation of Street Fighter's younger brother combines picturesque motion-comic sequences (for intro and side-stories) with beautiful, highly detailed, albeit a tad 'plastic' CGI visuals (for the main story) accompanied by energized soundtrack, to take us to a martial arts tournament peppered with cheesy humor, filled with intrigue and bringing together 80's & 90's fashion, science fiction, mystical forces, B-movie sensibilities and odd assortment of 3D-modeled 2D characters, from domineering, seemingly undefeatable baddies to perseverant heroes and heroines possessing all kinds of special powers, engaged in exquisitely choreographed action.

(All 24 episodes are available on YouTube.)

Fathers and Sons (Roger Deutsch, 2018)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Chronicling the history of his family from 1787 to now while looking for the answers to some buried secrets regarding certain relatives, Roger Deutsch (The Boy on the Train) soothingly voices over his latest effort - a poetic, travelogue-esque 30-minute documentary which takes the viewer on an engaging personal journey from Hungary to America and back via beautiful vintage photographs, grainy home videos (that often look better than professional and persistently stand the test of time), as well as his own impressionistic footage, with the unique experience enhanced by excellent musical choices.

Violet Delusion: Hercules and Cerberus

Ascend, descend, 13 here, 19 there.
Inside the Sun or under the Moon,
that is where!

Feed the pain, incinerate the pleasure sea,
penetrate a dream, embrace the mystery!

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Yellow Curiosity: A Sphinx and a Poster Boy

"... We have to accept the possibility of total darkness, no purpose, no direction, no intention, no goal in order to be open, to listen, to see, to live. And it’s glorious! We exist, we create and it’s a miracle... We are mystic warriors on a personal quest..." (Daniel Fawcet and Clara Pais, The Underground Film Studio: An Interview in 12 parts. Part 1: On Avant-Gardism and the Purpose of Art)

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Blue Love: A Centaur and a Lady

... As he was trotting across the Nameless Vastness, carrying a lady asleep on his back, he remembered his past lives and rejoiced that he had finally become a Centaur...

(click to enlarge)

Paper Kids (Shane Ryan, 2016)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Shane Ryan's cinema is one of brutal honesty, no compromises and raw lyricism, especially when it comes to his portraiture of social outcasts, as well as exploration of sensitive topics and dark side of human nature. In that regard, his most penetrative, yet not the best works are The Girl Who Wasn't Missing which focuses on the ramblings of a 15-yo rape victim, Echo, and My Name is 'A' by anonymous which is based on a real life murder committed by a group of mentally unstable teenage girls.

For Paper Kids - a short version of a feature in making God Got Ill and a spiritual sequel to the aforementioned films, Ryan completely eschews dialogue in favor of the music video-like imagery that is initially gentle, evocative and somewhat mystifying, only to gradually shed its skin into something grittier and more biting. (He takes the similar approach with a post-apocalyptic 80'sploitation Guerrilla.)

During the first half of this 20-minute experimental drama symbolically opening with the sunset, he utilizes on-screen 'tags' to identify his protagonists all of whom are played with unaffected simplicity by non-professional juveniles and young adolescents. Their wistful stares and idling around (streets, fairgrounds and empty beaches) reflect apathy, revolt, isolation, sadness or the mixture thereof, with the reasons for the 'sulking' becoming clearer in the second act and resolving epilogue.

Aimlessly wandering while trying to escape from the clutches of reality, the children (from the posters that no sane parent would want to see) are lovingly captured with a hand-held camera at their most vulnerable, every moment acting as a verse of an emotionally devastating poem. The tonal shifts which correspond with the chaos ruling their young, unprotected lives are marked by the changes in aural landscapes turning from soothingly ethereal into disturbingly piercing. A few instances of nudity are not intended to titillate or produce a cheap shock effect, but to emphasize the dreariness of the subjects' unenviable situation.

(The review is based on the screener provided by the author.)

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (Hiroyuki Seshita & Kōbun Shizuno, 2017)

☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

The latest offering from Polygon Pictures (Knights of Sidonia, Blame!) is - strictly visually speaking - probably their best work so far (apart from the titular monster and its Pterosaur-like kin that look as if their skin was made of carbonized wood), with beautifully rendered cel-shaded frames in stylishly flashy abundance, but in the story department, it falls flat as a tasteless pancake, boring you to death with tons of dull exposition, mind-numbing technobabble and the blandest of characters you could ever imagine, and not to mention that it ends with a cliffhanger after some of those utterly uninvolving protagonists are blasted to death during the final, action-oriented yet unsatisfying act.