I'm shocked and saddened to hear he died by violence. I had assumed he had succumbed to terminal TDS. He made some excellent films, so R.I.P. Rob Reiner.
Maybe it's just the writer in me, but the only one of these I think of as "Reiner" is Spinal Tap, maybe because he appeared in it.
Sure Thing, I had forgotten that was him. It's an above average '80s teen comedy, but otherwise not really that great.
Stand by Me is mawkishly sentimental, but quite good for what it is.
The Princess Bride I think is truly great and will be quoted forever, but I attribute that more to Goldman than to Reiner.
Ditto When Harry Met Sally: who was the real impetus behind that, Reiner or Ephron? I've always believed (or assumed) Ephron.
Misery (which I didn't like) = Stephen King.
A Few Good Men = Aaron Sorkin (don't like him either, but he sure can write). I actually saw this on stage at the Geary in SF before it was a movie. Believe it or not, it was better as a play. Wordier, but the dialogue was awesome. Some of the best lines got cut. And, this will be taken as blasphemy, Nicholson as a colonel never worked for me. Too old and nothing about him says "Marine."
The general assumption about screen entertainment is that writers rule TV while directors rule movies, but I am not so sure that is always true. However, I just saw for the first time a Kubrick movie I had never seen the other night and I was hooked without knowing why, despite the fact that the story was rather tawdry. I stayed with it until the end when the host said "And that was Stanley Kubrick's second film" and I immediately realized "Ah, so that's why didn't click it off and walk away." Kubrick was one of those directors who had a style that superseded whatever material he was working with. Reiner did not. You sort of said this when you said he made many different types of movies, but that just makes him competent in a Hollywood way, not an "auteur" (what a pretentious word).
As for his hypocritical limousine leftism and hectoring anti-normie hyper-moralism, well, that always got on my nerves, but what a horrible way to go.
Then again, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail, which are both basically remakes of When Harry Met Sally, but directed by Ephron, are inferior to When Harry Met Sally, which suggests that Reiner made some essential contribution to When Harry Met Sally.
OK, it sounds like Reiner had a decade long stretch of picking written material that, in hindsight, would work really well on the screen: Stephen King! Nora Ephron! Aaron Sorkin!
William Goldman had been a famous screenwriter for a long time (Butch Cassidy) but nobody else rushed to film his Princess Bride.
Don't forget Marathon Man and All the President's Men, which works both as leftwing propaganda and as an awesome movie. That's when reporters become cool, or at least prestige. And his memoir is probably the greatest Hollywood book ever.
Good job I subscribe to someone who can do my noticing for me. Like other commenters, I had associated him with TDS on social media but that list of films is pretty impressive. Kathy Bates character lives well beyond the film (forever in my mind confused with Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched) and seems a good reason to be afraid of hospitals, although I can't think of any specific lines. Getting a great characterisation from Jack Nicholson doesn't seem so impressive given there are so many but "you can't handle the truth" is a good one and Inigo Montoya must have launched a thousand memes and it's hard not to think that Mandy Patinkin must recall the role with a degree of fondness, mirrored by many of us. As you say, strange drop off yet he carried on directing for a further 30 years with some a lot of A-grade actors in some pretty forgettable movies. RIP
I don't like *Misery* all that much, either the book or the movie, but I agree that the Kathy B character is intense and memorable. I'd give Reiner some directorial credit for that one, because he certainly got a good performance out of her. I'm not sure how great an actor she really is; Mrs C has been watching the recent remake of 'Matlock', starring Kathy Bates, and she's awful in that -- schmaltzy, grating, insufferable.
Yes it's funny, I haven't watched it in a long time and I can't say that I actually liked the movie but there was something terrifying and visceral about that performance. I can't think of anything else I've seen her in so yes serendipity perhaps and credit to the Director for bringing out her best.
I find it unbearable, not least because Kathy B tries to replicate the Andy Griffith down home country boy accent, and does not really succeed. Mrs C is not a native English speaker, so the accent doesn't register with her at all. So that's one hurdle to watching cleared, I guess. Mrs C and I generally have compatible TV/movie viewing tastes, but we've agreed to disagree on this one.
By the way, speaking of IMDB ratings, just now I checked the new Matlock, and it gets a 7.5, so right there in between 'quite good' and 'excellent' in your breakdown.
As was discussed over on the old site, though, that scale is only reliable for movies, especially older ones. TV shows, particularly currently-running ones, tend to get overrated.
Right. New TV shows constantly get rated as if they were Godfather II, whereas IMBD ratings for old movies are quite reliable: E.g., The Sure Thing (7.0) is the least of Rob Reiner's Big Seven Movies, but it's still quite good.
Hasn't anyone heard of the activities of People for the American Way, Reiners's nonprofit? They funded anti-American terrorists and spent decades re-fuelling the radical Left.
Despite his raging TDS, I just saw a clip where he spoke so kindly about Charlie Kirk and Erika. I'm glad to have seen that and will remember him for such kindness. And how much I loved When Harry Met Sally.
Reiner spent the last several decades trying to destabilize America, eliminate incarceration, legalize drugs, open borders, and impose both socialism and a particularly Maoist form of cultural revolution among the young through People for the American Way. PAW is one of the most radical marxist recruitment organizations in the nation, partnering with Soros and amplifying his efforts to turn us into a lawless, borderless, drug-addled, violent, socialism for some state. So it's hard not to see this as anything but one chicken coming home to roost.
I'm shocked and saddened to hear he died by violence. I had assumed he had succumbed to terminal TDS. He made some excellent films, so R.I.P. Rob Reiner.
His activism is precisely of the type that got him killed, so good riddance.
Maybe it's just the writer in me, but the only one of these I think of as "Reiner" is Spinal Tap, maybe because he appeared in it.
Sure Thing, I had forgotten that was him. It's an above average '80s teen comedy, but otherwise not really that great.
Stand by Me is mawkishly sentimental, but quite good for what it is.
The Princess Bride I think is truly great and will be quoted forever, but I attribute that more to Goldman than to Reiner.
Ditto When Harry Met Sally: who was the real impetus behind that, Reiner or Ephron? I've always believed (or assumed) Ephron.
Misery (which I didn't like) = Stephen King.
A Few Good Men = Aaron Sorkin (don't like him either, but he sure can write). I actually saw this on stage at the Geary in SF before it was a movie. Believe it or not, it was better as a play. Wordier, but the dialogue was awesome. Some of the best lines got cut. And, this will be taken as blasphemy, Nicholson as a colonel never worked for me. Too old and nothing about him says "Marine."
The general assumption about screen entertainment is that writers rule TV while directors rule movies, but I am not so sure that is always true. However, I just saw for the first time a Kubrick movie I had never seen the other night and I was hooked without knowing why, despite the fact that the story was rather tawdry. I stayed with it until the end when the host said "And that was Stanley Kubrick's second film" and I immediately realized "Ah, so that's why didn't click it off and walk away." Kubrick was one of those directors who had a style that superseded whatever material he was working with. Reiner did not. You sort of said this when you said he made many different types of movies, but that just makes him competent in a Hollywood way, not an "auteur" (what a pretentious word).
As for his hypocritical limousine leftism and hectoring anti-normie hyper-moralism, well, that always got on my nerves, but what a horrible way to go.
Then again, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail, which are both basically remakes of When Harry Met Sally, but directed by Ephron, are inferior to When Harry Met Sally, which suggests that Reiner made some essential contribution to When Harry Met Sally.
OK, it sounds like Reiner had a decade long stretch of picking written material that, in hindsight, would work really well on the screen: Stephen King! Nora Ephron! Aaron Sorkin!
William Goldman had been a famous screenwriter for a long time (Butch Cassidy) but nobody else rushed to film his Princess Bride.
Don't forget Marathon Man and All the President's Men, which works both as leftwing propaganda and as an awesome movie. That's when reporters become cool, or at least prestige. And his memoir is probably the greatest Hollywood book ever.
RIP. Unfortunately, like Stephen King, his over the top TDS tainted all his works to me.
Rob Reiner was great in The Wolf of Wall Street: https://x.com/dpinsen/status/2000422913598791974?s=20
Good job I subscribe to someone who can do my noticing for me. Like other commenters, I had associated him with TDS on social media but that list of films is pretty impressive. Kathy Bates character lives well beyond the film (forever in my mind confused with Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched) and seems a good reason to be afraid of hospitals, although I can't think of any specific lines. Getting a great characterisation from Jack Nicholson doesn't seem so impressive given there are so many but "you can't handle the truth" is a good one and Inigo Montoya must have launched a thousand memes and it's hard not to think that Mandy Patinkin must recall the role with a degree of fondness, mirrored by many of us. As you say, strange drop off yet he carried on directing for a further 30 years with some a lot of A-grade actors in some pretty forgettable movies. RIP
I don't like *Misery* all that much, either the book or the movie, but I agree that the Kathy B character is intense and memorable. I'd give Reiner some directorial credit for that one, because he certainly got a good performance out of her. I'm not sure how great an actor she really is; Mrs C has been watching the recent remake of 'Matlock', starring Kathy Bates, and she's awful in that -- schmaltzy, grating, insufferable.
Yes it's funny, I haven't watched it in a long time and I can't say that I actually liked the movie but there was something terrifying and visceral about that performance. I can't think of anything else I've seen her in so yes serendipity perhaps and credit to the Director for bringing out her best.
Yeah, the new "Matlock" seems terrible in the 90 seconds I watched.
I find it unbearable, not least because Kathy B tries to replicate the Andy Griffith down home country boy accent, and does not really succeed. Mrs C is not a native English speaker, so the accent doesn't register with her at all. So that's one hurdle to watching cleared, I guess. Mrs C and I generally have compatible TV/movie viewing tastes, but we've agreed to disagree on this one.
By the way, speaking of IMDB ratings, just now I checked the new Matlock, and it gets a 7.5, so right there in between 'quite good' and 'excellent' in your breakdown.
As was discussed over on the old site, though, that scale is only reliable for movies, especially older ones. TV shows, particularly currently-running ones, tend to get overrated.
Right. New TV shows constantly get rated as if they were Godfather II, whereas IMBD ratings for old movies are quite reliable: E.g., The Sure Thing (7.0) is the least of Rob Reiner's Big Seven Movies, but it's still quite good.
He also made an excellent Meathead. May God rest his soul.
Hasn't anyone heard of the activities of People for the American Way, Reiners's nonprofit? They funded anti-American terrorists and spent decades re-fuelling the radical Left.
He seemed like he cared about happiness a lot. Sad way for such a life to end.
Despite his raging TDS, I just saw a clip where he spoke so kindly about Charlie Kirk and Erika. I'm glad to have seen that and will remember him for such kindness. And how much I loved When Harry Met Sally.
Reiner spent the last several decades trying to destabilize America, eliminate incarceration, legalize drugs, open borders, and impose both socialism and a particularly Maoist form of cultural revolution among the young through People for the American Way. PAW is one of the most radical marxist recruitment organizations in the nation, partnering with Soros and amplifying his efforts to turn us into a lawless, borderless, drug-addled, violent, socialism for some state. So it's hard not to see this as anything but one chicken coming home to roost.