MIFF: I've got Seoul, and I'm super bad

In case anyone is worried that the word "bad" is a useful adjective in describing this movie, don't be.

Can't a guy just make a simple James Brown reference combined with a pun?

Seoul Station, the first MIFF movie I'd seen as my only film of the evening since Certain Women on night #2, is the opposite of bad. In fact, it's pretty much awesome.

The funny thing about Yeon Song-Ho's animated zombie movie, though, is that it barely needs to be animated at all. Although the animation is nice to look at -- not top-notch, but close enough -- it doesn't do all that much for the movie except making the zombies easier to render. (No makeup budget.) The movie's strengths are its script, the cleverness of its zombie action and its characters.

In just this short amount of words I've already repeated about a third of my review, and since I've dawdled enough in posting this it's already up.

But I wanted to spend a moment to express my surprise and joy about how this movie gives us something new in a genre that would seem to be depleted. You'd figure that over however many seasons there have been of The Walking Dead (I lose track with all the half seasons and mid-season finales) and however other many zombie movies and TV shows there have been over the last decade, we'd have seen all the types of zombie endangerment that were possible. However, any number of the set pieces in Seoul Station were things I hadn't seen before. Granted, I'm a season (or is two?) behind on The Walking Dead, I haven't seen any of Fear the Walking Dead, and there are at least a handful of zombie movies that have escaped me. But I doubt any of these would dull the freshness I found in this movie.

Logistical difficulties in getting to this movie? Yes, there was one. The tram took forever to arrive, meaning I had to hoof it up a hill to get to the theater, rather than wait for the second tram that would have given me a ride. In the end, I and that tram ended up arriving at around the same time, but it wasn't something I could have known when I left. I didn't miss any of the movie, in any case.

I have another double feature tonight (Wednesday) and possibly one more movie on Saturday.

Whew.