Azumi 2 - Death Or Love (2005)

Picking up from where the original left off, Azumi 2: Death Or Love sees the cute, young assassin and her one surviving colleague, Nagara (Yuma Ishigaki), heading off to slay the final warlord, the last of the troublesome triumvirate, whose death they believe will bring peace to Japan.

Soon, Azumi (Aya Ueto) and Nagara fall in with a Robin Hood-style bandit, Ginkaku (Shun Oguri), who happens to be the spitting image of Nachi, the beloved friend that Azumi was ordered to kill as the final part of her training (this is because Nachi and Ginkaku are played by the same actor).

Also joining their little gang is a zealous neophyte ninja, Kozue, played by the instantly recognisable Chiaki Kuriyama (from the awesome double bill of Kill Bill Volume 1 and Battle Royale).

Azumi's final mission proves to be her toughest as the last warlord, Masayuki Sanada (Toshiya Nagasawa) has gotten into bed - literally - with the head of a ruthless, and warmongering, ninja clan, a superhumanly fast harridan called Kunyo (Reiko Takahashi).

On one level Azumi 2 is more of the same as Azumi, although the blood-letting is considerably more restrained in this second film, but it still delivers a smart plot looking at honour, friendship, blind obedience, betrayal and the lengths some people will go to to see their mission fulfilled.

As before there are numerous glorious set-pieces, beautifully choreographed and shot, with the "poison spider web" in the bamboo forest being the most inventive.

While Chiaki's performance is, as usual, both memorable and menacing, the film - as with the first one - belongs to Aya Ueto, whose Azumi is one tough cookie who could give Buffy a run for her money any day. 

However, the two volumes of Azumi films share certain characteristics with the structure of Quentin Tarantino's two Kill Bill films; both have their largest and most gruesome fights at the climax of the first volume and their heroines have to carve their way through a number of sub-bosses before facing off against the final Big Bad at the end of volume two.

This final confrontation stands out not so much for the actual conflict but for the position Azumi is put in by her own side, when Sanada suggests he would be willing to withdraw his troops from the impending war if Azumi is left to face him in single combat.

Azumi 2: Death Or Love doesn't quite touch the giddy heights of the first movie, but is still a more satisfying conclusion to the tale than Kill Bill Volume 2 was to Kill Bill Volume 1.

Inside Predjama Castle: Slovenia’s Most Haunted Castle

Folklore YouTuber The Jolly Reiver takes us to:

"Predjama Castle, considered to be the most haunted in all of Slovenia. Here you'll learn about the last stand of Erasmus of Lueg, the 'Robin Hood of Slovenia', as well as the spooky tales of the supernatural associated with this site."

Putting The Fun Back in Defunding The Rich, To Give To The Poor

The trailer for the new "gritty" Death of Robin Hood movie led to a brief conversation with author Phillip Reeve about the paucity of "fun" Robin Hood films that hove closer to the original legends.

This got me thinking about the wonderful vintage TV serial, The Adventures of Robin Hood, which is still a fixture of Talking Pictures TV's Saturday morning line-up years after I first found it on their schedule.

Starring Richard Greene as Robin, this is the show whose theme music became an the immortal earworm:

One of the other reasons I love this rollickin', rebellious, series from the mid-1950s is that I soon realised every episode could supply me with either a top-notch story hook or an interesting non-player-character (often both) for whatever pseudo-Medieval roleplaying game I was noodling with at the time.

After loyally watching the half-hour show, week-in, week-out, for months on Talking Pictures, I eventually invested in the 18-dsic box set, containing all 143 episodes.

My discs

The Adventures of Robin Hood is most definitely a "fun", Boy's Own Adventure take on the legends of Robin and his Lincoln Green-sporting band of Merry Men, and one of my favourite iterations of the outlaws of Sherwood Forest.

The best is, of course, the mid-80's Saturday evening TV show Robin of Sherwood, where Michael Praed and then Jason Connery (after a mystical bit of Time Lord-style regeneration) took the title role in a show that blended arcane magic and myth with traditional tropes to create a truly unique and memorable programme.

This was another show oozing with very British ideas for a particular take on Dungeons and Dragons-kind of gaming.

Robin of Sherwood

Robin Hood and His Not-So-Merry Men

Hugh Jackman Old Man Logan's Robin Hood in A24's intriguing-looking The Death of Robin Hood.

Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, Robin Hood finds himself gravely injured after a battle he thought would be his last. In the hands of a mysterious woman, he is offered a chance at salvation.

From writer/director Michael Sarnoski and starring Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett and Noah Jupe, A24's The Death of Robin Hood has no official release date yet (beyond "coming soon").

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)

It has taken just over a century to transform outlaw Jesse James into a mythical 'Robin Hood'-style character, but Andrew Domink's 2007 epic The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford goes a long way towards balancing the scales and showing that Jesse James was just a flawed human being.

In fact, Brad Pitt's portrayal of the younger James brother shows him to be seriously unbalanced and generally quite unlikeable.

Following the events that unfold after the James' gangs final train robbery, as the gang fractures and Jesse becomes increasingly paranoid about the law closing in on him, The Assassination Of Jesse James... takes its time to lay the groundwork for the inevitable conclusion and its rather sordid and pathetic aftermath.

The two-and-a-half hour film, which is a more a slice of Western life than a traditional "Wild West" movie, shows up nearly all of Jesse's gang as social rejects, perverts and lowlifes... only his older brother, Frank (Sam Shephard) and Robert's brother, Charlie Ford (Sam Rockwell), come out with their dignity intact.

The slowly unfolding tale, a damning indictment of the seemingly 21st Century "cult of celebrity", centres around young Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), his hero worship of Jesse James fuelled by press cuttings and dime novel accounts of the outlaw's exploits, and the crashing realisation that the man doesn't measure up to the myth.

While most people with a passing knowledge of the Old West will know the story of Bob Ford shooting Jesse James in the back, it was what happened next that came as an eye opener to me; Bob Ford's misguided belief that he, in turn, would become as big a celebrity or even be declared a hero rapidly unravelling into a cheap life of 'kill-and-tell' revelations (with his touring play substituting for the tabloid magazines of today) and eventual ignoble death in a mining camp years later.

The Assassination of Jesse James... is a fine film for fans of revisionist westerns, from Open Range and Unforgiven to Deadwood.

Although maybe not as pacy as its predecessors it still carries the viewer along with its sweeping landscapes and the poetic rhythm of dialogue that gives these pieces that certain verisimilitude that earlier Westerns, where everyone spoke Hollywood/Californian, might fall short on.