There's a 5th movie? Let's talk about it.
I think Rodriguez's films, PT included, are usually so great because you can see they made it with a lot of tongue-in-cheek, it doesn't take itself very seriously and tries to find the boundaries of what makes it work. Even movies like Shark Boy and Lava Girl (although far from great) and Spy Kids 2&3 (prolly even 4, but I haven't seen that) make his movies enjoyable up to a certain extent.
PT, Machete, even From Dusk till Dawn play with their genres and has a bit of fun with it, up to the point of going over the top. And that's how we get great classic elemenst like machine guns on legs.
As for DP... I thought that was a very self-indulgent movie: Tarantino showing off what great dialogue he can write... unfortunately dialogue we heard several times before and this time all the characters are like that... BLEEH...
He certainly had a good come back with IB...
Yeah liked True Grit.
As I say, there are always exceptions.
But for every one goodun, there are invariably 4 shite ones to satnd with it.
Heard New Fright Night was panned, but Ive not been able to check the remake out yet, and you say its good, so I will reserve judgement myself..(Whereas before I assumed it was shit due to what I'd heard...)