Every Robert Rodriguez movie, ranked
From the indie innovation of El Mariachi to the family fare of Spy Kids, we're taking stock of all the films directed by the Austin auteur
Film Features Robert Rodriguez
Hit or miss seems like the best way to describe Robert Rodriguez’s films. The indie darling-turned-hot shot action director famously raised a few thousand dollars to shoot his game-changing debut, El Mariachi, which gave Rodriguez and his Mexican cast a chance to show how they can make a few months of rent look like a few millions of dollars on screen. Hollywood soon took notice of how effective the writer, director, and editor was at giving maximum bang for very few bucks and helped him make a significant dent in action cinema starting in the mid-’90s.
Considerable peaks (Sin City and the gets-better-with-age From Dusk Till Dawn) and valleys (most of the Spy Kids sequels) would follow in terms of Rodriguez’s creative output, but the auteur of doing it fast and cheap has spent more than three decades (including two decades as the head of Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas) proving to audiences that his stylistic, “go for broke” approach to narrative is no fluke. With Spy Kids: Armageddon—the latest installment in the franchise—hitting Netflix this week, The A.V. Club is running down every feature-length movie Rodriguez has ever made. (Yes, Film Bros, we know he contributed a short to Four Rooms. But since we’re focusing on his feature efforts, and Four Rooms is eye-rollingly bad, it stays off the list.)
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Battle Angel below the Faculty? Craziness.
“Rodriguez’s indie sensibilities allowed for Sin City to be shot mostly on green screen”
Yeah, the movie is 100% greenscreen because of his indie sensibilities. You know how indie films generally have indoor sets that are entirely covered in green so that they can be manipulated in post?Yeah, THOSE indie sensibilities…
team-up of the prodigy of the world’s greatest secret agentsI can only assume this is supposed to be “progeny,” not “prodigy.”
Really scraping the bottom of the listicle barrel here.
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The best part of The Faculty is that the teens avoid being taken over by aliens by doing drugs.
Get high to save the world, kids!
Man, I just wonder how many alien invasion’s I prevented in Highschool but was to stoned to realize
they also snort it, which was pretty unusual for a teen movie back then.
It’s such a great message to our youth. I remember seeing it in high school at the theater and walking out thinking wow, drugs really are cool.
Really cool? Of course! Don’t you remember that awareness program, Drugs Are Really Exciting?
How could I forget.
Kind of undermined by the whole dumb “oops, looks like it was actually fake drugs the whole time!” twist at the end, which I assume was imposed by the studio.
The entire ending of The Faculty was a cop out, to the extent that I guess it was an intentional pastiche of The Breakfast Club. One of the reasons I preferred Disturbing Behavior – if the Faculty was Coke, that other one was a weird regional cola that comes in an oddly sized bottle.
I cannot explain or justify my love of ‘Alita’, but there it is. Endlessly rewatchable and the perfect “home sick on a rainy day” flick.
Alita is good! Being good is justification enough.
A LOT of it comes down to Rosa Salazar’s performance in the title role. She’s so damn charming, and really conveys the character’s enthusiasm for living. It’s got strong visuals and enough character to overcome some structure issues (which come down to trying to adapt the first chunk of a fairly big manga series- the climax isn’t much of one) but also I just think Alita’s own personal charisma is infectious.
I haven’t seen the movie but clicking past the still in this article I thought “Damn, that is a great Doc Octopus!”
Not like a battle for last place means anything, but All the Time In the World is waaay worse than Sharkboy & Lavagirl.
Remember finding El Mariachi at the local video rental store. Great Film, I often wonder how many more directors/movies i miss out on because they get lost in all these streaming options. The content is easier to access than it was in the 90s, yet so much harder to find.
I’m surprised the MPAA allowed a full-length feature film to be titled Shorts! That’s like naming your band Broadway Soundtracks A-G.
Planet Terror doesn’t work on its own. You really need the full grindhouse experience, with the silly fake trailers and the double feature with Death Proof. I really can’t believe they tried to split them up and release them separately after the theatrical release
well i think the issue is that death proof works totally fine on its own, and the double feature was a massive flop, but it was a blast.
The Don’t and Thanksgiving trailers are absolute works of art. The final, rapid-cut parts of the trailer where you see the killer fucking the turkey was especially inspired. I think they’re actually making a real Thanksgiving movie, which I can’t imagine will be great.
Love Planet Terror. The extended cut is great on it’s own.
Oh shit does it restore that missing reel? I need to check that out either way.
I’ll generally prefer to watch Planet Terror over Death Proof, given the choice.
just rewatched Planet Terror, and holy shit it’s a blast. McGowan really is great as the standup comedian.
The complete theatrical edition of Grindhouse was one of the first blu ray discs I bought. I’m glad to own it, but man I must have watched that movie… twice.
Is a good background party movie honestly. Its long and since its two movies and trailers its the kinda thing you can watch a bit and then go do something else and watch a big more later.
Desperado is better than From Dusk Till Dawn. Full stop.Its one of the great popcorn action flicks ever made.
Desperado is his best movie, full-stop. I understand putting El Mariachi there for it’s cultural significance, but it has nothing close to the style and muscularity of Desperado.
Plus it’s maybe the sexiest movie ever made. Antonio Bandaras and Selma Hayek are maybe the most attractive on-screen couple ever and have the absolute horniest chemistry I have ever seen between two performers.
Everybody’s line delivery is perfect. Even the dude who plays the other henchman (Tavo?) next to Cheech in the bar is great, and he’s not a full-time actor (he’s a singer).“The beer tastes like piss.”“That’s because we piss in it…and that’s not all!”
I actually liked Once Upon a Time in Mexico more than either of them – with the caveat that I haven’t seen any of those movies in 20 years.
Ugh, I didn’t like that movie—-for two reasons, one, the demise of a certain character, and two, every outlandish (but still awesome) action scene from Desperado is basically taken to ludicrous “wire-fu” superhero levels.Yes, the first (well, second) movie had many “suspension of disbelief” moments, but not the ridiculous “physics bending cartoonish” levels of OUATIM.Also, Antonio’s legendary character pretty much takes a backseat to Depp’s decent but not mesmerizing crooked agent for the whole runtime.
the alita army terrifies me but i hated hated hated that stupid fucking movie.
From Dusk til Dawn is worth it just for the bar scene when all hell finally breaks loose. The guitar made out of a torso with a leg shoved into its abdominal cavity is my favorite touch.
Lets not forget the character whose penis is a gun. Or wore a gun strap on or something? I was never clear on how that worked.
I like most of Robert Rodriguez work , but my god! is Sin city a load of hackneyed old misogynistic wank and should be below the bottom of this list along with its sequel . Also Frank Miller is as always a fucking hack, who should have packed it in back in the 80s .
Sin City was completely pointless. Why do an adaptation of a comic book if it brings nothing of interest to the source material?
Fuck off, it’s great
I actually tried rewatching a few weeks ago (the first time since it was released) and couldn’t get thru it.
I loved Desperado when I was 9 but it has not aged well. Alita deserves to be in the top 5 IMO.
What makes From Dusk Till Dawn so great is that it just changes genres halfway through with no explanation. For the first, it’s a typical crime thriller. Then, they get to the bar and after a slow build… BAM!!!! It’s a vampire movie now!!!! Don’t like it!? Too bad. Thank you! Fuck you! Bye!
Yeah I used to love showing that movie to people who knew nothing about it.
My sister was so upset. She was down for a Tarantino-penned crime thriller, but it when it turned into a vampire flick halfway through, she was pissed. Guess she never saw any of the trailers…
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Robert Rodriguez is a B-movie director. Give him $20,000 and he’ll make a B-movie; give him $200 million and he’ll also make a B-movie. It’s what he does.
Basically, he should stop making kids movies.
“ Spy Kids: Armageddon isn’t as good as Spy Kids, but it’s better than all the other sequels.”*proceeds to rank it five spots below one of those sequels*
More and more like a Buzzfeed listicle site everyday. Sad, sad decline.
I haven’t heard of half of these movies.
He casts Latino actors, not “Latinx” actors.
that sure is a list of bad movies.
You missed his second movie: Roadracers. He also wrote a second book about his experiences with shooting this film and the movement from doing it all by himself to having a crew and studio interference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadracers_(1994_film)