Mister X: Condemned

This reboot of Motter's groundbreaking retro-future cult favorite from the '80s for the 2000s comes up with an odd mixed bag. When Radiant City's mood-soothing “psychetecture” starts eliciting assorted mental and emotional disorders in its inhabitants, the local government decides to raze the metropolis and build anew, a plan carried out by giant robots that kill a respected sect of architects. But the reconstruction can only spell a horrible outcome, so the city's mysterious designer, Mister X, returns after having disappeared years earlier and endeavors to retrieve his original blueprints while eluding the corrupt government, vicious gangsters and the police, who think he may be the serial killer who's leaving a trail of bodies. The narrative moves at a measured pace and at times reads like a dream of a place and era that simultaneously never was and is yet to be, the art a cold yet alluring fusion of the film noir aesthetic and a push-button future as imagined by the likes of film directors Fritz Lang or William Cameron Menzies. Motter certainly delivers in terms of mood and visuals, but the end result comes up curiously uninvolving. (Nov.)