“From the $7,000 “El Mariachi” to last year’s almost $200 million “Alita: Battle Angel,” Robert Rodriguez movies are infused with the energy of someone messing around with a camera in their backyard.
“The best (e.g. “The Faculty”) make that fun infectious and the worst (“Sin City: A Dame to Kill For”) suffer from taking themselves just a bit too seriously, but all of them retain the kind of giddy and un-precious love of the game that Hollywood tends to snuff out of people as soon as they get there.
“It’s probably no coincidence that the Austin-based Rodriguez has always made Hollywood come to him instead — a dynamic he solidified by reincorporating his Troublemaker Studios in 2000 — and the stuff he’s produced there ever since has doubled down on that DIY sensibility in a way that feels admirable even when the movies themselves don’t work out.”
Read more at Indie Wire
