THIS POLL GOES TO ELEVEN: THE ROB REINER DIRECTORIAL POLL

Early peaker. Should probably be sentenced to death for "Bucket List" but pardoned for "Spinal Tap"

As much as I love The Princess Bride (and A Few Good Men), it's got to be Spinal Tap.

I'll rep for Princess Bride if no one else is.

Early peaker. Should probably be sentenced to death for "Bucket List" but pardoned for "Spinal Tap"

YOU SNOTTY BASTARD

http://www.jack-nicholson.info/media/ms/fgm11.jpg

I actually never knew he directed A Few Good Men.

clearly YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

i deserve to be shot for that

Watching A Few Good Men, I'm not sure it was directed.

yeah its stage origins are readily apparent.

I vote Spinal Tap, but am pretty sure Reiner was not really the one holding the reins on that one.

I need to *ahem* "rescreen" Stand By Me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

wow what a horrible track record

I watched Stand By Me a few months ago (before they started running it on AMC every other weekend). It is not that good, apart from a few sequences where River and Cory get to emote. Its funny how there is not a single female character.

well, in Reiner and Stephen King's minds, maybe Phoenix is supposed to be teh fag.

dude it doesn't get any gayer than Wesley Crusher does it?

"You fuckin' people."

http://www.ravenna.com/~forbes/images/fewgoodmen.jpg

The Bucket List was horrible even on a plane with the sound off.

roflz I am totally stealing that line the next time I have to sit through something awful

I am Rob Reiner-free since '92.

just to echo everyone else, crazy how bad most of his stuff is considering he's behind a couple real stone classics. got a real soft spot for princess bride (peter falk! wallace shawn!) but i guess it's gotta be spinal tap. his introduction to that is pretty f'in classic.

The Story of Us is a grim thing to endure on a cold winter's night.

Spinal Tap
Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally
Cliff

The Story of Us is a grim thing to endure on a cold winter's night.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 1:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha oh god.

Watched The Sure Thing a couple months back and it's OK. Straight-up meat-and-potatoes John Cusack comedy

that was, in fact, the first film that let Cusack be Cusack, and I might put it third behind Stand by Me (good of its type) and Tap (which tho funny = shooting fish in a barrel).

The Princess Bride is arch, I prefer that stuff played straight.

I have no problem watching A Few Good Men – serviceable, mindless, juicy.

however, I triple-dog dare anyone to watch North.

I couldn't watch A Few Good Men again, esp if someone put Cruise's drunk scene on a loop: "ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH!"

Kevin Bacon rules in it in a nothing part, however; no wonder miles Davis loved him.

Bacon's fine, and so's J.T. Walsh.

but, yeah, if someone conducted a poll of worst drunk scenes, Cruise's would make the cut.

I voted for Stand By Me. Maybe it had something to do with me being three months away from turning 13 when I first saw it. One of the only Stephen King stories I've ever really enjoyed. And Keifer was meaner in this one than he was in The Lost Boys.

A Few Good Men could've benefited from a pie-eating contest scene as well.

sure thing is toback manqué

isn't Demi Moore's part in AFGM originally a man?

stand by me, princess bride, spinal tap, even when harry met sally are just SUCH childhood favourites of mine, it's hard to look at them with any perspective. he was pretty good in the 80s.

ugh When Harry Met Sally. that's where it all went wrong.

I hope your parents showed you Annie Hall and Manhattan before When Harry Met Sally. "And this is how we learn what a ripoff is."

"Bad, BAD Nora Ephron!"

of course... i still dug it as a kid tho

i dont think i had any idea what any of it meant of course... weird how many movies i LOVED as a kid that went mostly over my head

Morbz OTM re: shitty woody allen ripoffs. not to mention the faked orgasm scene that's stolen from Reiner's dad's film, All of Me.

(All of Me faked orgasm scene also has a better punchline)

In pretty much all those '80s films Reiner is trying to not get in the way of the script and actors. After that, fire should've gotten to the scripts.

MAN did he get so bad. i think alex & emma might be the worst movie i have ever seen.

Just look at Misery – it's impossible to tell James Caan and Kathy Bates apart.

misery is pretty good.

I just bought Stand By Me the other day. It was in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart and I figured it was cheap enough to justify buying it to see if I liked it or not.

When I was in middle school, it was a huge favorite of mine. I probably checked it out a dozen times from the library. It led to lots of weekend adventures following train tracks with my friends. Haven't had the chance to review it yet though.

I'll be boring and pick Spinal Tap.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

however, I triple-dog dare anyone to watch North.

Never seen it, but I have a vivid memory of reading Ebert's review.

what a clever thread.

less self-congratulatory than tap or bride, HarrySally is funniest and best. best writing, best location, best music, maybe even best terrible clothes/hair. so it's not Casablanca Annie Hall (i'd rather watch it than friggin annie hall, honestly), maybe not even Memories of Me. big deal. i mean i'm shocked, shocked that a rob reiner movie is cheesy.

a few good men is a mildly entertaining diversion about tom cruise's scrappy underdog wish to graduate from val kilmer to jack nicholson, with demi moore as only mildly challenging foil, bacon as greek chorus, and some lightweight soldiers telling us how to feel

isn't Demi Moore's part in AFGM originally a man?

no

it kinda breaks my heart to say so but annie hall has not aged well

Maybe not, but it's still a fantastic film (in stark contrast to everything directed by Ron Reiner that's not Spinal Tap).

it kinda breaks my heart to say so but annie hall has not aged well

― J.D., Friday, September 19, 2008 4:08 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bullshit.

you really have to give specifics when you say shit like that. (besides it's just not "2008" enough for you. thank God.)

not really. i think you don't have enough perspective on a particular era, and i share some of your old-man-ism.

stfu

no, i do think you have to back that up.

http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/421_ANNIE_HALL

not specific enough

Dave Kehr is a good writer; he also thinks Robert Altman is shit.

Annie Hall has held up amazingly well.

that doesn't explain how it's dated. characters acting in a way that's congruous with their times does not date a movie.

Visually and structurally it's a mess

this is wrong

certainly compared to Take the Money and Run

who comprises this Story of Us cult, tho?

calling annie hall a structural "mess" is just kinda retarded.

2nded. whoever wrote that should read ralph rosenblum's When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor's Story; the structure is part of the movie's genius...

yeah I have to say having watched this movie many times its fluid structure is one of the things that's really engaging about it even after repeated viewings - it jumps around just enough to sustain a breezy forward momentum, and the structure is held together by actual jokes that string a common thread from one sequence to the next.

it's the citizen kane of rom-coms.

the chapter on Annie Hall in the book explores how the structure of the movie was actually developed in the editing room, sculpted from a much longer - and unsuccessful - first cut.

Annie Hall manages to feature two stars more annoying than Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan

BOXCARstfu

he's getting the career Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center. So, they've run out of people to give this to.

surely Kevin Smith is still in line

I'm willing to defend Kevin Smith more than most (although more for other work he does outside of film) and the thought of that even makes me wince.

ghosts of mississippi is insanely bad

Harrelson, oookay, but otherwise God help us

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/woody-harrelson-play-lbj-political-802759

Hadn't watched A Few Good Men since it came out. I vaguely remember thinking it was generically okay at the time, expected about the same today. Surprise, thought it was pretty good. Except for Cruise's corny drunk scene, it's rather low-key. Even the one line that gets played to death in highlight reels is better in context. Cruise and Moore are at the apex of their movie-star moment; I wish Reiner gave them more than a friendly dinner together, but I guess he was worried that sex would muddy the waters.

Haven't seen it since my buddy and I went to a double feature of it and Toys on New Year's Eve, 1992. Thinking back, it was probably the perfect movie for 14-year-olds with pretensions towards sophistication: it walks and talks like an grown-up drama, but there was nothing about it that wasn't fully comprehensible or digestible to me. I'm not sure how it would play for me now, but I'm faintly nostalgic for this kind of "adult" thriller now that they've all but vanished (from movie theatres, at least). I remember Ebert lamenting its BP nomination as a wasted slot. He probably isn't wrong (Unforgiven and The Crying Game are definitely stronger and more unique films, and I'm willing to accept that, at least objectively, Howard's End probably is as well) but something like AFGM being in the running these days would feel oddly comforting.

It's a well-made throwback--as you say, instantly comprehensible to a 14-year-old, but, except for that drunk scene of Cruise's, it doesn't insult your intelligence. (Not mine, anyway--maybe I'm running on empty.)

It’s funny that directors keep trying to get cruise to play drunk (Jerry Maguire is another one); he really can’t do it and it makes his space-alien-trying-to-act-human vibe stand out even more. Normally it’s a bit cringeworthy but I do love the long scene in eyes wide shut where he & Kidman are supposed to be stoned, and they’re both acting really weird and not really like stoned people, and it’s still kinda on the edge of cringeworthy but that whole film is so stylised that it works

At one point in that scene cruise seems to lapse into a weird jack Nicholson impression (similar to the one he does in a few good men!) saying lines like “maybe becaaause you’re my wife” in a very Jack Torrance way

Watched When Harry... for the dozens time at Christmas. IMO it holds up much better than Annie Hall, for more than just the obvious reason

*dozenth

u r NUTS

also fuck "the obvious reason" -- Billy Crystal is actually Satan

tho wtg Nora Ephron for dumbing down the WA template and getting a career out of it

Yup

Also tom cruise can't act fwiw

similar to the one he does in a few good men!

I thought his Nicholson impression was pretty funny.

sounds about right

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/shock-and-awe

I'll have to check to see if Hoberman had anything to say about The American President in The Dream Life. What a starry-eyed, almost childlike conception of the presidency as Clinton's first term wound down. There's pointed reference to Clinton in terms of where the public/personal divide exists--still pre-Lewinsky, mind you--and also to the practice of watering down bills to ensure passage, with a little bit of triangulation thrown in for good measure. (No one knew any of this was happening until The American President arrived--Rob Reiner broke this story.) I'm pretty sure I saw this when it came out; in 1995, it probably felt like something out of 1955. With Trump as a backdrop, it's like you're watching some high-concept SNL sketch.

Watch this at your own peril, but it's all kind of accidentally fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK1jJtW9JSQ

watching his face when "you're like Orson Welles without all that genius baggage" is amazing.

Some very bad news, although details are scarce.

Two people have been found dead at the home of director and actor Rob Reiner.

The LA Fire Department said the ages of the two victims is 78 and 68 which matches the ages of Rob and his wife Michele.

https://bsky.app/profile/yasharali.bsky.social/post/3m7ykfvdwwz26

holy shit

oh god

last night we were debating between watching Spinal Tap and Stand By Me with our kid (we went with the latter) and talked a bit about his career after. SBM, still really good, and it feels like a movie that wouldn't get made today. more intense than i remember, actually. it was my first R movie.

this is awful.

Homicide detectives are now reported to be investigating at the home. This is looking really, really horrible.

This is fucking horrible

News is that both were found with knife wounds. They were two of the most politically active Democrats in the country and of course famously Jewish. Very fearful that this was motivated by either of those. Just horrendous.

it's being referred to as a "family incident", whatever that may mean. i have suspicions but it's too early to have any real idea.

Possibly involved his son in some kind of hostage situation.

No matter what was the cause, this is terrible

wtf.

Awful

Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed by their son, Nick, multiple sources confirm to PEOPLE.

RIP. A terrible way to end.

This completely shitty. RIP to them both.

Nick Reiner is the one who wrote the movie about his drug addiction (movie was not supposed to be good, but it seemed sweet of his dad to direct it). I don't remember hearing anything about him since.

This is so bad

Ugh, this is terrible.

Really a bit fucked-up by this news.

Rob Reiner was a lovely man. I spoke to him last night for over an hour. I always enjoyed his company. I met him at his Dad's in 1975. He was telling me about fiming at Stonehenge and his thoughts for the future. This is so awful. I shall miss him. A clever, talented and…

— Eric Idle (@EricIdle) December 15, 2025

^ Eric Idle posting

Rob Reiner was a lovely man. I spoke to him last night for over an hour. I always enjoyed his company. I met him at his Dad's in 1975. He was telling me about fiming at Stonehenge and his thoughts for the future. This is so awful. I shall miss him. A clever, talented and very thoughtful man. So awful.

Oh, man.

God, I thought he meant on the phone.

He was at Rob's Hannukah party the night before.

It's startling to remember how speedily Rob Reiner's ability to make glib sitcom-level entertainment collapse after The American President: never-ending shit after 1995.

yeah i was just looking through his filmography thinking there must have been something worthwhile in that two-decade stretch

I guess the Albert Brooks doc is probably decent but other than that...

Is The Bucket List any good at all? Seemed like a self-indulgent luvvie thing so I never checked it out.

Had the same reaction looking at the list, buncha good-to-great stuff and then ... nothing. Maybe he knew his legacy was secure with that early run and just settled into being a Hollywood liberal. Which is fine!

(have not seen the new Spinal Tap, fwiw)

The only great thing he directed was Spinal Tap, though I recognize my opinion's a minority report (and Morbs would've agreed).

His acting/comedy chops stayed pretty strong. He was good in the most recent season of "The Bear." I forgot he was in "The Wolf of Wall Street," but iirc he was good in that, too. Didn't he play Zooey Deschanel's dad on "New Girl"? People liked that show.

he was great in TWoWS just being exasperated trying to keep the company semi-functioning. RIP

I'd probably add The Princess Bride to the "great" category, with Stand By Me and A Few Good Men as superior genre entertainments. I liked WHMS when it came out and I was an impressionable late adolescent, I have a feeling it would feel pretty creaky at this point. I remember liking The Sure Thing but I haven't seen it in forever so can't vouch for it. (John Cusack movies about dickish guys feeling like they're owed something by beautiful women is an objectively regrettable subgenre.)

i know this is the rob reiner movie criticism thread but maybe it could take a day off being that thread idk guys

Why? No one's been nasty yet. When would be appropriate?

i really enjoyed the sure thing. when harry met sally is deathless imo, much as i hate heterosexuality, marriage, the couple, it captures something that other movies of its ilk don’t

and that something is: billy crystal’s beautiful sweaters

yah otm -- the post-Huxtable mastery of the multicolored sweater.

Reiner had a sense of humor about criticism fwiw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eB8yqgFlyg

Oops that link was supposed to start at the 22-minute mark, go there.

Why? No one's been nasty yet. When would be appropriate?

You don't think "never ending shit after 1995" is nasty?

very telling if you're first thoughts to post on here after someone was murdered were to trash them

Maybe it would have been sadder if his brutal murder had been preceded by better films post 1995? Is that the take?

the man basically spent his entire career trying to get people to smile/laugh - a+ in my book regardless of if you agreed/disagreed with his output.

xp - wow

I’m agreeing with you!

Super weird to think it's not OK to assess somebody's work after their death. Especially on a thread that literally ranks their work right at the top. I get that it's a rough weird time all around, but jeez. Chill out, everybody posting here is a Reiner fan.

This is Spinal Tap is an all-time banger, obviously. For the next ten years or so after that, he excelled at the kind of middlebrow 80s-into-early-90s entertainments I've expressed my fondness for elsewhere on the board (the likely exception being North, which I'll just assume is every bit as wretched as Siskel & Ebert famously claimed it was). If his work after that is consistently less notable--and tellingly, I don't think I've seen anything he's directed post-'95--it sorta makes sense that his career as a filmmaker mirrors the decline and eventual erasure of a certain type of popular Hollywood filmmaking.

I suspect that he remained so strong in the popular consciousness over the last few decades largely owing to the goodwill still generated by things like Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, and The Princess Bride, but his regular appearances on talk shows and supporting roles in film and television shows might've had even more to do with it. Whenever he'd show up in something, it was always a good time.

absolutely forgot that was him in Wolf of Wall Street

You're right, I apologize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC9uDbq6WWE

His son has now been charged.

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/rob-reiner-son-nick-police-custody-death-director-wife-1236608760/

I could have watched a whole episode of Reiner, Uncle Jimmy, and Computer arguing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4ESHPRYOOs

The LAPD could not confirm to Variety whether Nick Reiner is in custody related to the homicide investigation into the deaths of Rob and Michele but listed Nick’s booking description as “gang activity.”

uh, hmm

I've been wondering about that.

Can’t really read anything into it at the moment, they haven’t filed an official charge yet so they probably just needed to put something. Might just be a handy catchall code. Or maybe there’s more to it, I suppose we will learn.

I knew instantly after seeing the headline it was Nick from Dopey.

Holy shit I had no idea that was him in The Bear!

Holy shit at this whole thing obviously.

It's probably being discussed on threads I won't read, but Trump's response to this tragedy is about what you'd expect.

Truly disgusting. (A friend didn't believe it was real, which was understandable.)

Yes it’s over on the Trump thread, which is the right place for it.

Sorry, and yeah---we don't need that here.

No matter how one feels about his later work, the cultural impact of his early run of films was basically one definitive '80s genre exercise after the next. "Spinal Tap:" definitive mockumentary. (Skipping "Sure Thing," but I recall it being a better than average take on essentially a teen sex comedy.) "Stand By Me," definitive coming of age story. "Princess Bride," definitive kids movie. "When Harry Met Sally," definitive rom-com. "Misery," definitive elevated horror film. "A Few Good Men," definitive legal thriller. Even "North," which I've never seen, I knew of because it was infamously one of the most definitive "Siskel and Ebert" pans, lol. It even gets its own Wiki section.

A stronger defence than what I offered above, but yeah, I agree.

his 1984 to 1992 run is extremely high quality entertainment, and it's easy to forget now but he was one of those directors whose films were always considered good Hollywood product (til the mid '90s hit), but he wasn't alone in that respect. there were a lot of directors who followed a similar career path. very few directors made multiple iconic films of my youth but he was one of them. I think at the time, before i became a "film guy", i probably regarded him as some sort of cinematic giant. and i guess in a way, he was.

He was solid as a non-auteur in that realm -- as the Wiki screenshot going around shows, the only one he had a writing credit on was Spinal Tap itself. A director in the old studio sense during his heigh, but one with an eye for what could be good as he went no matter the source, making the Castle Rock move make even more sense.

It's been many, many years since I watched WHMS and I guess I should. The problem was, I watched it after Annie Hall and as a sidenote I'm not a Meg Ryan fan (there's no reason why you couldn't direct an AH variant, of course); but I've been meaning to give it another peek because the number of times slightly older college students cite it surprises me.

A Few Good Men is always on somewhere. I guess my problems with the film are with Aaron Sorkin's creaky plot mechanics (as S&E pointed out, Tom Cruise spells out his courtroom strategy and...that's what happens) and Cruise's unwatchability. The two Kevins and Jack Nicholson and whoever plays the judge walk away with the movie.

The last time I watched WHMS it definitely came across as an Allen derivative, but I don't think I can ever bring myself to watch another WA film again so in a way it serves a higher purpose now.

I've been meaning to rewatch Stand By Me after some younger friends of mine (late 20s) watched it for the first time recently and, somewhat to my surprise, thought it was excellent. I'd kind of consigned it to the 80s boomer nostalgia zone that I later resented being so exposed to as a kid.

having watched Stand By Me on Saturday night, for the first time since I saw it in the theater, i can say it holds up as a meandering a pretty dark movie. it's not a fuzzy bit of nostalgia, these kids are all effectively briefly running away from fucked up homes as much as they're trying to find a body.

*as a meandering, pretty dark

(the "meandering" is a compliment)

Echoing what ivy said upthread, WHMS seems like a total dud on paper but it works so perfectly in practice. Couldn't tell you why, perhaps it is the sweaters.

"Men and women can't be friends" tho is a level of puerile pseudo philosophy that I don't think even Allen would have resorted to - thankfully iirc it ends up having very little relevance to the film as a whole.

The child performances are terrific; River Phoenix pops off the screen.

The ending with Sad Nostalgic Richard Dreyfus typing nostalgic thoughts on his computer needed to get scissored out.

(Skipping "Sure Thing," but I recall it being a better than average take on essentially a teen sex comedy.)

It's a classic for Daphne Zuniga's dull older boyfriend's obsession with how flannel sheets get softer as they age alone.

WHMS is Allen-derivative BUT a) Billy Crystal is v v funny as the Allen-esque lead, which ensures it never gets mired in unconvincing angst, b) it doesn't have the pseudo/on-the-sleeve intellectualism of the great Allen movies and is better for it, c) BRUNO FUCKIN KIRBY AND CARRIE FUCKIN FISHER, I WOULD HAVE WATCHED THEIR OWN MOVIE, d) I don't have to think about how the filmmaker is a fucking paedo while watching it. Annie Hall is possibly a better movie, but also maybe WHMS pips it, even if it's a more normcore approximation of the Allen romcom voice: it makes it universal, while still making it work.

Been trying to convince my 11yo to watch The Princess Bride for years, no dice, tempted to give up and start campaigning for her to watch It's A Wonderful Life with me instead.

Sort of want to rewatch that lovely, lovely Albert Brooks doc with Reiner in it now, too.

The Princess Bride will be on at some point over the holidays. Just start watching it and I’m sure M will join you by the fifth minute.

WHMS one of the great NYC movies - I had to go to Katz's Delicatessen on my first tourist visit.

When Harry Met Sally is a favorite repeated rewatch for me

What deepened it last time was realizing that a lot of the phone conversations between Harry & Sally are recreations of actual convos between Crystal & Reiner, and it’s that extra richness of their off-camera friendship that adds an extra layer to the specificity that’s already in Ephron’s script.

I think it becomes a better movie when viewed through that lens? Especially if you maybe only only ever cursorily viewed it as men are from mars women venus romcom pablum.
idk. Maybe it’s just me

Ah, true, Suzy!

WHMS one of the great NYC movies - I had to go to Katz's Delicatessen on my first tourist visit.

I just saw the poster again and it made me pine for NYC.

I keep meaning to rewatch the DVD with the Ephron/Reiner commentary turned on. I love Directors Commentaries, but they are an anathema to my partner - but she definitely has expressed an interest in watching this one.

I think we watch it once a year at the very least.

God knows how many times I've seen Spinal Tap. Totally burned myself out on it as a teen, actually would get a little depressed by it when I was in my early 20s, starting out as a music journalist, riding in tourbuses for days and days and realising that every single frame of it was real, but laughed like an absolute drain again the last couple of times I saw it. Heh, maybe my 11yo would be up for seeing Spinal Tap??

Spinal Tap is probably #2 in quotability amongst my friend circle, right after Fast Times

I regularly say "Excuse me, are you reading Yes I Can by Sammy Davis Jr" in public

just grimly speculating that if Nick had (allegedly) killed somebody else, his father probably would've hired the #1 top criminal defense attorney in California.. now he'll probably get some first-year public defender

What?

"Princess Bride," definitive kids movie.

that's what makes it so great, to me it barely even feels like a kids movie because the comedy/fantasy/romance elements are so good. its crazy to see a movie with such great cross-genre AND cross-generational appeal which also happens to be one of the funniest movies ever made. some Pixar films pull this off I guess but those feel more explicitly like kids movies to me.

I forget if it was Reiner or Stephen King or someone else close to the movie (maybe Lynda Obst?) who talked about the groupthink of "movie jail" at the time (not being hire-able after a turkey or two), who mentioned that no one even considered Richard Gere for Misery (which he would've been amazing in) because it was before his Pretty Woman comeback.

Richard Gere in the Kathy Bates role?

Been trying to convince my 11yo to watch The Princess Bride for years, no dice, tempted to give up and start campaigning for her to watch It's A Wonderful Life with me instead.

― I said awfully coy u are. (stevie), Monday, December 15, 2025 2:28 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I asked my daughter to watch that movie with me for many years, but she never bit. One day, we were hanging out on the couch together, she was on her tablet playing video gamess, and I was like "you can just keep doing what you're doing, but I'm going to watch The Princess Bride. It'll just be on in the background." She immediately left the room and didn't return until the movie was over.

I took my kids to a theatrical screening of it when they were maybe a little too young to fully engage. They thought some parts were funny and were clearly bored by other parts.

Honestly, it's not like Caan was at the top of his game or anything, either, but I think he's great in it. The scene where he is pleading politely but clearly panicking before he is hobbled ... "Annie, whatever you're thinking about doing ..." I've never seen Gere in vulnerable mode, I don't think.

Gere would have been great in the Bates role!!!

The ending with Sad Nostalgic Richard Dreyfus typing nostalgic thoughts on his computer needed to get scissored out.

Reading this now I think I probably merged this scene with Daniel Stern's narration of The Wonder Years and unfairly misremembered it as being a bigger part of SBM. I also watched Dogfight for the first time the other day (omg so good!) and have been intending to rewatch some River Phoenix.

SBM is a movie that absolutely didn't need the narration at any point, it felt a bit cloying in a way that the rest of the movie wasn't. but it wasn't so bad that it had a major effect on the film, it was just thoroughly unnecessary for the most part.

. I also watched Dogfight for the first time the other day (omg so good!) and have been intending to rewatch some River Phoenix.

Nancy Savocs forever!

The Princess Bride, the book, is for adults*. The movie is all-ages, not for kids.

*so, fine for teens who’ve read widely.

It was Goldman btw who told the Gere/Misery story, in Which Lie Did I Tell?

I was eleven and already a Stephen King when Stand By Me came out, like I'm not even sure if I can articulate what absolute lock that movie had on me & my friends especially by the following summer when it had come out on home video and we had watched it zillion times, that movie truly stamped itself on my brain.

My late cousin was around the same age as you. When she was a tween, her faves were Labyrinth, Stand By Me, and The Princess Bride. I’m both really missing her right now and kind of relieved she didn’t experience this loss herself.

I don’t think WHMS is anything like a Woody Allen movie.

Well, I mean, it's a *little* like a Woody Allen movie, lol, come on. Anyway:

https://wilwheaton.net/2025/12/this-is-such-a-painful-loss-my-heart-is-broken/

damn. that one messed me up.

Nora Ephron was writing that way, with that voice (in her journalism, anyway) before Annie Hall

this thread is inspiring me to track down Stand by Me... if I saw it then, I've mostly forgotten it and keep conflating it with the Altman film where Huey Lewis finds a body in the river on the fishing trip

Can't find it on YouTube, but he had a good cameo on Larry Sanders (the charity benefit episode).

also loved him in New Girl as Deschanel’s Dad.

A lovely statement given the source.

this thread is inspiring me to track down Stand by Me... if I saw it then, I've mostly forgotten it and keep conflating it with the Altman film where Huey Lewis finds a body in the river on the fishing trip

― Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, December 15, 2025 7:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i need to go back and watch OC and Stiggs

Huey Lewis finds a body in the river

they say the heart of this young woman's not beatin

The kids in Stand By Me didn't fuck the dead body iirc

how did I forget Reiner was in Wolf of Wall Street.

lots of details coming out about the night of the murders:

The three Reiners attended Conan O’Brien’s gathering together. One person said Nick Reiner had at least one interaction that left partygoers concerned.

He is alleged to have interrupted a conversation involving comedian Bill Hader. When Hader told him the conversation was private, the source said, Nick Reiner appeared to stand still and stare before “storming off.”

they also seem to be uncovering photos of him where he looks like a total psycho rather than a bookish indie content creator

Every family photo I've seen picked up in the press has Nick looking like a total psycho, across different decades and in different styles of hair and dress. Basically everyone smiles or at least looks happy, and he looks disconnected and unpleasant like something's wrong. With the benefit of hindsight, Rob Reiner and Nick Reiner's PR appearances for the film they made together comes off as terribly unsettling, where Nick Reiner has convinced his father that he should be listening to his crazed and violent son and not to any of the professional help his father has consulted, where it's his father that's wrong for putting him into rehab when rehab "doesn't work for me." The film (which Nick Reiner wrote) sounds self-serving in that regard, and I don't think I'd have the stomach to see it now. The fact that he now has the same lawyer that represented Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein feels terribly appropriate - I imagine he's going to plead not guilty.

One unnamed source apparently said that Nick Reiner had “always been hostile and volatile” toward his family over the years, that his “problems were going on for so long, so while everyone is in a state of shock right now, it’s not entirely surprising...A lot of his anger was directed at his parents for many, many years. They did everything a parent could possibly do to help him. Even in his younger years, they really tried to get him help.”

i.e. 'We Need To Talk About Nick'

Not really looking forward to the weeks ahead of mass quarterbacking of what family members should do (or, worse, should have done) when one of them is an addict.

Obviously addiction and mental illness feed off each other, but from the little that's out there his mental illness seems very deep. Sad and scary in any family.

I was struck by this piece in the LA Times, about the film alluded to above:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-rob-reiner-nick-romy-toronto-drug-addiction-20150915-story.html

Rob Reiner seems to put the blame for his son's addiction on himself. And the intended message - that traditional rehab is bogus - doesn't have the same impact now that it did in 2015. Bizarrely Cary Elwes plays the Rob Reiner figure, although in the film he's an actor rather than a director.

"Self-involved and at times harsh toward his son, Elwes' Rob Reiner stand-in is decidedly unsympathetic. The actor incarnated the character in this manner even while the man he was playing was a few feet away from him, helming the scene. "There were times when I would want to tone it down and Rob would just tell me, 'No, turn it up.' He would tell me he didn't handle it well and we had to show that.

One striking aspect of the film is how little it seems to value traditional recovery wisdom. Though the counselors all mean well, they have little success in reaching Charlie, who remains skeptical of the system even at a moment when many other movie protagonists give in to it.

"The program works for some people but it can't work for everybody," Rob said. "When Nick would tell us that it wasn't working for him, we wouldn't listen. We were desperate and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son." Michele added: “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he's a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them."

A climactic scene in which David apologized to Nick for being cruel in pushing his son toward recovery - "I'd rather you hate me and you be alive," essentially - was taken almost verbatim from their own lives, and in fact developing the movie helped them achieve that level of communication."

Every family photo I've seen picked up in the press has Nick looking like a total psycho, across different decades and in different styles of hair and dress.

Sorry but I'm with Eazy here, and I gotta push back against this kind of reductiveness. There are a number of photos across the years where he's in with his family, smiling and looking well, and it's too easy to look at the 'bad' photos and immediately draw conclusions. There was an interview with Barry Markowitz, well established cinematographer who worked with Reiner on a variety of his films (including Being Charlie) and was a longtime friend, and who had stayed recently at the Reiner home in November while he was in town for a premiere. Markowitz was clearly very distraught, but said repeatedly that Nick seemed very well, was helping out with chores and things in the house, that there was laughter and love, and so forth.

Apologies, point taken and I concede I got carried away with making judgments based on photos that obviously could have been cherry-picked and not accurately reflect the complexities of the family's relationships.

All four of Nick Reiner's appearance on the Dopey podcast have been compiled into one long episode. It's grim listening. He talks about the 17 different rehabs he went to and is perceptive about economics and dogma of the recovery industry but never breaks out of the high schoolish "I know what they're all about maaaan" attitude. Elsewhere he's been described as a writer, but in these interviews he doesn't offer up any evidence that he's interested in anything other than continuing to be a nihilistic drug fiend with the means to sustain the addiction/mental illness feedback loop.

When he talks about the first time he got caught, there's a sense that things could have gone another less-tragic way. I would have liked to believe him, but his words are indistinguishable from the meandering justifications of junkie talk. If I was listening to this in 2018, I would have assumed that he would have OD'ed or committed suicide by now.

The most chilling part of the conversations is when the talk turns to cocaine and meth-induced paranoid psychosis. According to Barry Markowitz, Nick Reiner self-reported that he (NR) been clean for several years. This is only my theory, but I believe NR decided to full-strength speedball his way through a stressful event (like, say, a holiday party with lots of famous people) and had a total psychotic break. I suspect the defense's argument at trial will be similar.

Because we can't stop talking about the murders, we watched Being Charlie last night. Midway through I blurted out "does Rob Reiner hate his son?" before the story sinks into a Hollywood addiction/redemption story seemingly at odds with the lived reality of those who are in it. In that Dopey interview, NR says that the movie was a mistake that didn't bring he and his dad together but drove them further apart and I can see how that's the case.

I can't imagine he hated his son. I can imagine his role as a parent was very painful and frustrating, agonising even. But it seemed - from a very facile perspective, no real insight here - like he loved his son very much. I think recent history is littered with people struggling with addiction that their friends, families, etc, weren't able to 'rescue'. I can't imagine what that must feel like, the powerlessness of it. I hope I never experience it, as a parent myself. But even in my very limited experience of parenting a superstar kid, the limits of your protection, your - for want of a better word - control over your kid is very humbling, and not a little terrifying. And I can't imagine how it must feel, to have a kid stumble into addiction, to try every option your money can buy to treat it in the ways our culture recognises as healthy, and for all those methods to prove useless, and perhaps even more damaging.

I think recent history is littered with people struggling with addiction that their friends, families, etc, weren't able to 'rescue'.

by which I mean celebs. the idea that Kurt Cobain's management, or Amy's father, were perpetuating their golden goose's addiction for their own benefit seems a less compelling theory to me than sometimes it's really fucking hard to save someone from themselves.

i really hesitate to say too much about this specific thing because it feels gross to gawk, but one thing this brings to mind is that sometimes codependent relationships can keep an addict from ever reaching "rock bottom". ofc sometimes that's not what's going on at all.

Hi Map, can you explain a bit what you mean with that last sentence?

sometimes it's really fucking hard to save someone from themselves.

I've had cause to think about this in particular these last couple of months, and I know Elvis T. is of the same mind. It's incredibly hard to see.

Sorry if this has been noted already--kind of amazing. (Remember the episode well.)

https://ew.com/rob-reiner-and-anthony-geary-shared-scene-on-all-in-the-family-11869911

Hi Map, can you explain a bit what you mean with that last sentence?

― thono, Thursday, December 18, 2025 4:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

mainly it's a hedge because i really don't know anything about this relationship or dynamic at all. there is just a faint whiff of what i've gleaned from the story that brings to mind something i've noticed, in my own experience, which is that sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is remove yourself from their life.

but addiction is weird and gnarled and stubborn of course. a big complicated knot unique to each individual. so much of what works for some does not work for others.

also I have a feeling “rock Bottom” is different for different people.

Gonna watch When Harry Met Sally for the first time in 30 years.

Looking forward to your thoughts in 2056!

lol

lol x2