Certificate:

Director: Ryuhei Kitamura

Release Date: 10 May 2003

Tagline: From the ravages of war rises the ultimate assassin.

Main Cast:

Aya Ueto … Azumi

Kenji Kohashi … Hyuga

Azumi is a great looking film and very entertaining. The fight scenes are great, which is just as well because there’s plenty of them! And it’s pretty gory too.

The plot is kind of standard fare; nothing too complex. This isn’t an issue though, as I tend to think that this type of film needs an uncomplicated story.

It’s an interesting mix of history and comic book heroes, and I really liked that about it. It also has the best gay goth ninja magician that I’ve ever seen (“magician?” I hear you ask. It’s the roses. Where does he produce them from? My guess is from up his sleeves).

One thing that I couldn’t grasp though was whether it was supposed to be semi-comical. There are funny moments, and it seems to descend into madness towards the end. One of the funniest moments (to me) was the odd sounds made by the above mentioned gay goth ninja magician at the end. They’re reminiscent of Paul Burrows’ sounds of terror during the Bush Tucker Trials in “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!”.

Overall, Azumi is good entertainment if you like this genre of film.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Certificate:

Director: Yimou Zhang

Release Date: 14 January 2005

Main Cast:

Takeshi Kaneshiro … Jin

Andy Lau … Leo

Ziyi Zhang … Xiao Mei (as Zhang Ziyi)

House of Flying Daggers is a visually stunning and thoroughly entertaining film. There really isn’t much for me to say about it other than if you don’t enjoy this, then there’s something wrong with you. The plot works very well. It’s not particulaly complex, but that was fine with me, as I didn’t want to struggle to follow a plot and find that I was not paying full attention to the visuals.

Watch this film. You won’t be sorry!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars