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This list originally ran in 2018 and has been subsequently updated. Rob Reiner<\/a> died on December 14, 2025, at age 78.<\/p>\n Every director has his or her peaks and valleys, but Rob Reiner\u2019s career rose so high and fell so low that you get vertigo just thinking about it. During his peak, he churned out intelligent studio smash hits like it was the easiest thing in the world; at his lowest, you wondered how in the world anyone thought it was smart to give this guy money to make a movie. Reiner could be called a journeyman director, except what kind of journeyman director could make a movie as confident as When Harry Met Sally, or as anarchic as This Is Spinal Tap, or one that juggles as many tones as The Princess Bride? Reiner\u2019s career was so up and down it\u2019s nearly impossible to classify.<\/p>\n Like Ron Howard, Reiner came out of television, and there\u2019s a segment of the population that will know him forever as \u201cMeathead.\u201d There\u2019s another segment that knows him as a bastion of liberal politics, which got him skewered on South Park a full generation ago. But for a stretch of nearly a decade, Reiner was part Frank Capra, part Billy Wilder. It all got away from him, but in recent years, he displayed a hankering to try different projects \u2014 projects that brought him at least a little closer to the star he once was.<\/p>\n You probably don\u2019t even remember a lot of the movies on the bottom of this list. But the top seven or eight films? There\u2019s plenty of debate about which of these beloved movies is the best.<\/p>\n The rare movie in which a review of it \u2014 Roger Ebert\u2019s infamous pan<\/a>, which stated, simply, \u201cI hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.\u201d \u2014 has become more well known than the film itself, and boy, was Reiner fortunate there. Nearly 25 years later, North is just as bad as Ebert wrote, an astoundingly wrongheaded concept executed in the most mealymouthed, limp way possible. Reiner attempts to combine whimsy, satire, and Capra-esque corniness here in a way that is nearly impossible to sit through, and if that weren\u2019t enough, it has Bruce Willis as the Easter Bunny that is worse than anything in Hudson Hawk. If anything, Ebert was being too nice.<\/p>\n In his later years, Reiner focused on films about aging characters who have lost loved ones and are trying to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. After hitting commercial pay dirt with 2007\u2019s The Bucket List, he reteamed with Morgan Freeman for this exceedingly maudlin comedy-drama about an alcoholic writer whose artistic muse has abandoned him. Confined to a wheelchair and grieving for his wife, he moves to a small town, where he is conveniently living next to the vivacious Virginia Madsen and her programmatically adorable three daughters. Clich\u00e9 upon clich\u00e9, The Magic of Belle Isle rests heavy on the considerable charm of its actors and the utterly somnolent predictability of the storytelling. Older viewers have a right to complain that not enough Hollywood films address their reality \u2014 but they still deserve far better than this.<\/p>\n This was around the time when you began to wonder what, exactly, Reiner was even trying to do. This is a paint-by-numbers romantic comedy about a novelist (Luke Wilson) who has to finish a novel in 30 days to pay off a Mafia debt (um, okay?), so he hires a stenographer (Kate Hudson) to write down his notes as the novel they create is acted out by Wilson and Hudson. This might have been an attempt to go after a nature-of-storytelling tale like The Princess Bride, but the two leads have zero chemistry and Reiner\u2019s execution is clunky and disinterested. This movie will not make you miss the rom-com.<\/p>\n With When Harry Met Sally, Reiner made a great romantic comedy about falling in love, but with The Story of Us, he set his sights on something perhaps far more ambitious and rarer at the movies: a story about a longtime married couple trying to navigate through a rough patch. Alas, this comedy-drama doesn\u2019t just lack that previous film\u2019s Zeitgeist-channeling observations about love \u2014 it also doesn\u2019t have a compelling Harry or Sally. Instead, we have Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer playing a sitcom version of a married couple, their story told through flashbacks as we see how their relationship ebbed and flowed. Reiner had a Midas touch for years, but The Story of Us was the third of four clunkers in a row for him \u2014 and more proof that his once-formidable ability to tap into universal themes was starting to slip away.<\/p>\n Reiner\u2019s first pairing with Michael Douglas was the utterly charming The American President. Their second was this painful rom-com in which Douglas plays a cranky, self-absorbed Realtor who, naturally, only became such an SOB because of his beloved wife\u2019s death. But after a series of lame, convoluted plot twists, he receives what every movie character like this gets: redemption, in the form of a granddaughter he didn\u2019t know he had. Diane Keaton plays his neighbor, also a widow, who reluctantly helps him raise the kid \u2014 and, wouldn\u2019t you know it, she starts to fall for this crab apple along the way. As generic as its title, And So It Goes strands two very talented actors in an irritatingly cutesy comedy that shies away from real pathos and insight.<\/p>\n If you are going to have your movie draw comparisons to The Graduate, well, you better put in the appropriate effort \u2014 and you shouldn\u2019t have as many behind-the-scenes problems as this debacle accrued. (Famously, Rumor Has It\u2019s original director, Ted Griffin, was fired<\/a> by the studio and replaced by Reiner.) Jennifer Aniston plays an obituary writer for the New York Times who discovers her grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) might have been the inspiration for Mrs. Robinson \u2014 and then she has an affair with the man who might have inspired Benjamin Braddock. (Though in this version, he\u2019s played by Kevin Costner.) All this Graduate talk might make you think this is going to be as smart and caustic as the original, but Rumor Has It has no actual interest in the Mike Nichols classic: It\u2019s just an excuse for a pained \u201czany\u201d comedy that wastes a terrific cast (including Mark Ruffalo back when Mark Ruffalo was making romantic comedies). You keep that Graduate out of your mouth, Rumor Has It.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the movie that inspired Godfrey Cheshire\u2019s brilliant observation about \u201990s movies depicting the civil rights era: \u201cWhen future generations turn to this era\u2019s movies for an account of the struggles for racial justice in America, they\u2019ll learn the surprising lesson that such battles were fought and won by square-jawed white guys.\u201d This is one of the worst of them, with Alec Baldwin bravely fighting to bring Medgar Evers\u2019s assassin to justice while Whoopi Goldberg cheers him on and cries. It\u2019s as lazy an approach to this material as you can come up with, and, as tended to be the case for him in this period, Reiner was late on the trigger: These sorts of movies were fading fast. One odd by-product: Twenty years after the fact, James Woods\u2019s dark performance as a virulent racist looks a lot like the real James Woods.<\/p>\n Photo: Spinal Tap\/Youtube\n <\/p>\n It took 41 years for the sequel to the comedy classic to get made, and, boy, do you feel every single one of them. Everybody\u2019s back from the original \u2014 well, everyone who\u2019s still alive, and it\u2019s an impressively high number \u2014 but the inspired improvisation of the first film is dusty, creaky, and, more than anything, so, so tired in this one. The movie barely has the energy to follow through with most of its plot points (we still don\u2019t understand Nigel\u2019s cheese thing with his wife), and most of the gags are rehashes of bits from the original, only slower. The film wheezes through its less-than-80-minute running time, and no one seems all that sad to move on. It\u2019s not so much a bad movie as it is barely a movie at all. You know who\u2019s funny, though? Paul McCartney. His extended cameo as a version of himself who keeps giving unheeded advice to the guys in the band is the movie\u2019s one jolt of deadpan energy; somebody get McCartney his own Curb Your Enthusiasm.<\/p>\n It sure does take a long time going through Reiner\u2019s filmography to get to the good ones, doesn\u2019t it? This is actually better than some of the hackneyed rom-coms Reiner muddled through, a coming-of-age story about two kids\u2019 pseudo-love story from grade school through middle school. The movie is so earnest you can\u2019t really hate \u2014 so vanilla and cheerful that it dares you to be churlish about it. But Reiner had lost any edge he might have had in the Stand by Me years, and this childhood portrait feels safe and scrubbed. Flipped may not be terrible, but it\u2019s instantly forgettable.<\/p>\n Abundantly worthy subject matter undone by unfailingly mediocre execution, Shock and Awe continues Reiner\u2019s recent interest in true-life political drama. Like LBJ, this newspaper thriller stars Woody Harrelson, who plays Jonathan Landay, a Knight Ridder reporter who, alongside fellow journalist Warren Strobel (James Marsden), is determined to expose the lies that the George W. Bush administration was peddling in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. The denigration of a free press, the uprising of a corrupt Republican regime, the distortion of reality: If you think Shock and Awe is as much about 2018 as it is 2003, then you\u2019re on the same wavelength as Reiner\u2019s virtuous film. But despite Harrelson and Marsden\u2019s agreeably give-\u2019em-hell performances, Shock and Awe suffers in comparison not just to All the President\u2019s Men but to 2017\u2019s The Post. (Reiner\u2019s main characters even acknowledge their Woodward-and-Bernstein cosplay.) Cast and crew are emotionally invested in the urgency of the material, but the bland competency of the whole affair saps it of power. If anything, Shock and Awe mostly reminds you how futile living in the madness of a fake-news world can be.<\/p>\n Without question Reiner\u2019s most personal movie, this is the story of a rich Hollywood kid (Nick Robinson) with a substance-abuse problem who keeps escaping from rehab facilities before he (all together now) meets the Right Girl at one of them. Co-written by Reiner\u2019s son, Nick, there are parts of Being Charlie that feel almost uncomfortable as Charlie struggles with an enabling mother and a father who is always away (running for governor of California in the movie, rather than directing movies in real life). It\u2019s in those moments where the movie works, but inevitably, it shies away from them to focus on a love story we\u2019ve seen a million times before. Still: You can see Reiner at least trying to shake himself up a bit here, and that\u2019s welcome.<\/p>\n In 2016, Fox Searchlight released Jackie, a nervy, subjective portrait of John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination told through the eyes of his shattered wife (Natalie Portman). Around the same time, Reiner premiered his own take, which starred Woody Harrelson as Kennedy\u2019s vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who felt underappreciated by his commander-in-chief and then had to live up to his shining example after the man was killed. LBJ didn\u2019t finally hit theaters until almost a year after Jackie\u2019s release, but they\u2019re interesting companion pieces, both depicting how legendary supporting characters in the tale of Camelot reconciled Kennedy\u2019s public persona with their own experiences. Unfortunately, LBJ is a pretty standard modern biopic in that it largely focuses on one specific period \u2014 Kennedy\u2019s murder and Johnson\u2019s attempt to ratify his predecessor\u2019s Civil Rights Act \u2014 and although Harrelson imbues the 36th president with a lot of piss and vinegar, it\u2019s never a fully compelling portrait. LBJ feels like it was made on the cheap \u2014 the period production design and makeup are pretty chintzy \u2014 and the movie has the earnestness of an instructional video geared to middle-schoolers. What saves LBJ, somewhat, is its inherently fascinating Lincoln-like investigation into how bills get turned into laws. But you\u2019ll nonetheless wonder how anybody other than Reiner would have attacked this material.<\/p>\n Proof that even Reiner at his most mawkish can work, though it really does help if you give him two of the most charismatic movie stars of all time. This sappy but effective comedy, about two men (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) diagnosed with lung cancer and crossing off as many activities from their \u201cbucket list\u201d before they die, pioneered the geezer comedy as we know it (if you\u2019ll forgive the bypassing of Grumpy Old Men), for better or mostly worse. The movie has its moments, and again, you can\u2019t go wrong with these two actors, mugging and charming their way throughout. Worth noting: Other than his near-cameo appearance in James L. Brooks\u2019s 2010 comedy flop How Do You Know, this remains Nicholson\u2019s last significant screen performance, 11 years ago now.<\/p>\n For Stephen King \u2014 who wrote The Body, upon which this movie is based \u2014 Stand by Me was a personal one, with elements of the story drawn from his childhood. But it was also a labor of love for Reiner, who told Variety in 2016<\/a>, \u201cIt was the first time that I did anything that was closely connected to my own personality. It had some melancholy in it and also had some humor in it. It was more reflective, and I thought, \u2018If people don\u2019t like this, they\u2019re not going to like what I like to do.\u2019\u201d After delivering the comedies This Is Spinal Tap and The Sure Thing, Reiner seemed to respond to Stand by Me\u2019s emotional nuance and nostalgic tone. Of his first three films, it\u2019s fair to say that this wistful adaptation, about a group of young guys (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O\u2019Connell) in search of a corpse, proved truest to Reiner\u2019s own temperament. There are better, wiser films about boyhood. But for kids who grew up in the \u201980s, Stand by Me will always reside in a special corner of their heart \u2014 fitting, perhaps, for a film that\u2019s so invested in looking fondly on the past.<\/p>\n One of the first \u201980s sex comedies that showed you could bring some warmth to the proceedings rather than just gross Revenge of the Nerds crudeness, The Sure Thing demonstrated that Reiner\u2019s heart was always going to be in the right place. He\u2019s perfect here in the story of a teen (John Cusack, only 16 when he was cast) who travels to California for his \u201csure thing\u201d yet ends up falling in love with his travel companion (Daphne Zuniga). It\u2019s a simple, straightforward, heartwarming comedy, but Reiner was still ambitious enough at this point in his career to keep things from getting overly sappy. Cusack is the perfect fit here, too, the ideal actor to carry the \u201980s romantic comedy into its next phase.<\/p>\n Photo: MGM Studios\n <\/p>\n \u201cI was already working on Misery when Harry Met Sally came out and not a day went by when someone didn\u2019t say, \u2018Keep making those kinds of films,\u2019\u201d Reiner said in early 1990<\/a>, just a few months before Misery\u2019s release. \u201cAnd I kept thinking, \u2018Geez. What are they going to think when this movie comes out?\u2019\u201d After years of lighter fare, he decided to challenge himself with Misery, a very funny but also very dark Stephen King story about a successful novelist (James Caan) who tries to reinvent himself \u2014 and the homicidal fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), who won\u2019t have it. This was the period where it really did seem like Reiner could do anything, breezily moving from one genre to the next with smooth, audience-friendly efficiency. Misery remains resonant in its depiction of the uneasy relationship between artists and their public, who are always demanding that their needs be served first and foremost. (See: all the modern-day Annies who\u2019ve been liberated thanks to social media.) Bates\u2019s witty, monstrous performance won her an Oscar \u2014 the only Academy Award bestowed on a Reiner film.<\/p>\n The movie that marked the end of Reiner\u2019s golden age as a master of (well-made, well-reviewed) populist pictures, The American President found him reuniting with A Few Good Men screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to deliver an idealistic, grown-up romance about a widowed president (Michael Douglas) courting an impassioned environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening). This is the sort of expert hogwash that Reiner, for a while, did better than anyone. The American President is as much a fantasy about progressive politics as it is about the belief that love can conquer all, but it\u2019s done with such intelligence and relative restraint that you believe in the film\u2019s fantasy. Amid a run of portraying oily, morally suspect individuals, Douglas took time out to play the most charming, hopeful movieland president ever, and he and Bening radiate old-school Hollywood chemistry. As for Sorkin, his savvy, insider-y mixture of personal and political would help inspire his next great achievement, TV\u2019s The West Wing \u2014 which promoted this film\u2019s chief of staff, Martin Sheen, to POTUS.<\/p>\n Reiner had shown he could do mainstream comedies and even a dark Stephen King adaptation, but this was Reiner in perhaps his rarest role of all: the Hollywood craftsman, the guy who can give you a good old-fashioned yarn with big massive movie stars and a corny but deeply effective courtroom scene to wrap it up. There isn\u2019t much in Aaron Sorkin\u2019s script that rings the slightest bit true \u2014 this is a very movie version of the military \u2014 but Reiner is smart enough to simply hand the wild, showy moments to Tom Cruise and Demi Moore and (especially) Jack Nicholson and get the hell out of their way. This is total hokum, but what addictive, relentlessly watchable hokum it is.<\/p>\n During his \u201980s and \u201990s heyday, Rob Reiner had plenty of hits, but none of them so profoundly impacted the culture as When Harry Met Sally. Other Reiner films have great lines or memorable scenes, but this bittersweet romantic comedy seemed to speak to the eternal, universal insecurities of dating in such a way that many of Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally\u2019s (Meg Ryan) debates still rage on. The film was famously inspired by the friendship of Reiner and late screenwriter Nora Ephron; she interviewed her buddy to hear his stories of romantic woe, incorporating elements of him and her into the two characters. Set in New York and filled with the witty, urbane back-and-forth familiar from dozens of Woody Allen movies, When Harry Met Sally felt like a sophisticated, wised-up love story amid a sea of teen comedies and emerging blockbusters. And it\u2019s also an argument for what a director like Reiner could do so well: There\u2019s no auteur stamp on When Harry Met Sally, but it\u2019s an exceedingly buoyant, smart, funny, romantic movie that seems to know exactly what it\u2019s doing at all times. If that looks easy, notice how hard it is for other filmmakers to pull it off \u2014 hell, look at how hard it became for Reiner after a while.<\/p>\n Four pages of outline, almost no dialogue: From such humble origins came Reiner\u2019s glorious directorial debut, a movie born out of improvisation and a general sense that it would be fun to mock a fictitious metal band on its last legs. At this late stage, to explain why The Godfather of mockumentaries is funny is to waste everyone\u2019s time \u2014 it didn\u2019t just create a genre but also suggested a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants comedy style that, like it or not, has since overtaken Hollywood \u2014 so let\u2019s instead focus on the film\u2019s surprising depth and genuine pathos. If David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) were simply sexist jerks, This Is Spinal Tap would merely be spitefully humorous; it\u2019s because they\u2019re sweetly clueless, improbably entitled, and touchingly vulnerable that they\u2019re grandly tragic figures. And as Marty Di Bergi, the nonplussed documentarian following Tap on their American tour, Reiner is the movie\u2019s marvelous straight man. Next time you watch This Is Spinal Tap, pay close attention to his performance: He never winks or leans into the joke, making all the inspired idiocy around him that much more hilarious.<\/p>\n Photo: MGM\n <\/p>\n What Reiner did so well here is what he, for some reason, was unable to do in his lesser movies: Maintain a sincere, good-hearted view of the world, ride the edge of sentimentality, and ground it all in an ironic, seen-it-all nudge to the ribs. He\u2019s the cornpone sentimentalist who grew up loving Bob and Ray<\/a>. When he loses control of this instinct, the results are borderline unwatchable. But when he gets it right, like he did with The Princess Bride, it\u2019s simply perfect. This is a movie about storytelling that both undermines and embraces the whole idea of storytelling, winking at the hokiness of fairy tales while still believing in them \u2014 a satire of the Happily Ever After story and also a prime example of the genre. That it happens to have about ten eternally memorable characters \u2014 including a truly touching performance from Andre the Giant! \u2014 is just one more aspect of its impossibility. Not having this be No. 1? Inconceivable.<\/p>\n Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly and host a podcast on film<\/a>. Follow them on Twitter<\/a> or visit their site<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n ![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/199cd4b2694bdef52613ac244bf4719ce0-spinal-tap.rhorizontal.w700.png\")
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