Once Upon a Time in Mexico Movie Review

The third film in Robert Rodríguez’s “Mariachi” trilogy takes its title, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as an homage to Sergio Leone. The title reputedly suggested by friend Quentin Tarantino, who told him that this was his “Dollars” trilogy (in reference to Leone’s three spaghetti westerns featuring Clint Eastwood, the third of which is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and in which Once Upon a Time in the West plays no part). None of that matters, though, because Rodríguez and Tarantino love to riff on the culture of coolness. They love being in the know and they love to throw little tidbits in for their fans who are also ‘in the know’.

Movie Review: Desperado

Let's play.

Some cinema experiences remain permanently etched in my memory. One of those is Robert Rodríguez’s Desperado, the sequel to his 1992 breakout indie hit El mariachi. I was 17 years old when a large group of us went to see Desperado at our local second-run cinema (when they still existed). We sat up in the balcony and laughed and cheered our way through ridiculous action sequences, a hilarious opening action sequence with monologue accompaniment by Steve Buscemi and two gorgeous leads in Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek.

We recognized at the time that what we were witnessing was not your typical studio action extravaganza, but a very sharp send-up of such action rubbish. In the process, Rodríguez also crafted a pretty decent action flick in its own right.

Indie Classic Movie Review: El mariachi

Watching El mariachi again makes me wistful for the indie film movement of the early ‘90s, when directors like Robert Rodriguez burst onto the scene by going out and making cheap films and getting noticed by studios. The story of his first feature is the stuff of indie legend: he wrote, directed and edited the film on a budget of $7,000 and then shopped it around until it was picked up for distribution by Columbia Pictures. Rodriguez’s gift is stretching his budget and making it look like double (or more) on screen. Yes, El mariachi looks low-budget, but it looks like a hell of a lot more than 7K.