Remembering Rob Reiner: The Princess Bride

This is the first installment of the second of two bi-monthly 2026 series that have the same name. Every other month starting with January, I'm watching the six Rob Reiner films I haven't seen yet. Every other month starting with February, I'm watching my six favorite Reiner films other than This Is Spinal Tap, which I watched before the series started. I know, it's a little bit complicated.

My intention with this version of my 2026 intertwining bi-monthly series, the one where I watch six Rob Reiner favorites, was to go chronologically. I had a special viewing of This is Spinal Tap (1984), my favorite Reiner film, before we even started, watching it as a double feature with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues last month. Next up would have been The Sure Thing (1985), technically my seventh favorite Reiner film, but we're excluding my favorite for the purposes of this series since I already just watched it. And I was really looking forward to this one, because my records say I have not watched The Sure Thing at any point since I started keeping track of my rewatches, nearly 20 years ago. 

But you know what? I can't find The Sure Thing anywhere.

This surprised me, especially in the wake of the loss of Reiner. I know that the passing of a beloved personality does not necessarily change the availability of his or her films, because that has to do with contracts and rights and all that stuff. But you do sometimes see films surface because there is a hunger for watching them at a particular time.

Not The Sure Thing. Not where I've looked, anyway. 

I won't get into where I looked and whether I missed somewhere obvious. I don't think I did, because Google AI tells me:

As of early 2026, The Sure Thing (1985) is generally not available on major subscription streaming services, but it is available to rent or purchase. It can be found on digital platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and sometimes YouTube.

Yeah, well, I looked in all three of those areas, and no go.

I'm not giving up on watching The Sure Thing. I'll find it somewhere this year even if I have to buy it online as a DVD and have it shipped to me from America. But I will have to give up on ordering this bi-monthly series chronologically, so instead I'll use the order these films are ranked on my Flickchart. (And I can't build toward a climax by going in reverse order, in case you were wondering, because reverse order would also dictate that The Sure Thing was up next.)

That means that after #9 This is Spinal Tap, up next is #11 The Princess Bride (1987), which is actually skipping over two movies in the chronology after Tap. 

It had been almost eight years since my last Bride viewing, which was when I showed it to my kids one time when my wife wasn't there -- a decision that I regretted when she told me how much she would have liked to be present for their first Princess Bride viewing. There has not been one since, and though my younger son might still be into it, the 15-year-old definitely would not be. Like the boat boarded by Vizzini, Inigo, Fezzik and Buttercup, that ship has sailed.

The 2018 viewing, my first since before 2006 (as far back as my rewatch records go), also reminded me how much I cherish the movie. The next time it came up in a Flickchart duel, it jumped from 29th to 11th (yes, I keep a record of these things as well), which is where it has stayed to this day. 

Although this series is designed to sing the praises of Reiner, we also know that Reiner was not a director with a signature style. He had signature touches and collaborators -- watching this reminded me that he re-teamed with Christopher Guest after Tap, and would use Billy Crystal again in When Harry Met Sally -- but otherwise none of these three films is directly comparable to one another. Reiner presided over them, but as I was watching The Princess Bride this time, it made me realize that the person I probably really wanted to praise in this post is William Goldman, who wrote the screenplay based on his own book. We lost Goldman in 2018, only a few months after my last Bride viewing.

This is not to say there will be no Reiner in this post. But as I was watching, I decided to start jotting down quotes, and those quotes can be attributed to Goldman, not Reiner.

You see, when I got to the Princess Bride portion of my in memoriam post to Reiner in December, I wrote "You can quote 30 lines from this movie and there would still be 30 more honorable mentions."

Impulsively, I decided to see whether that was hyperbole or really true. 

So the following is a list of quotes I wrote down, mostly as they occurred, but a few out of order because I only realized I wanted to do this about ten minutes into the movie. So I went back and added a few I knew I had missed. I'll write them here in the order I wrote them down. 

Did I stack the deck in favor of getting as close to 60 as I could, to prove my previous casual hypothesis correct? You can be the judge of that. I had a hard time drawing distinctions between lines that I thought might actually be repeated by people -- repurposed for use in their daily lives, as we do with the movie lines we love the most -- and just good lines of dialogue that I remembered because I've seen the movie a half-dozen times. It may not have been perfect, but I will tell you that there were some where I decided they definitnely did not belong as quotable lines -- so I was not always erring in my own favor.

Also, although most of them are jokes or funny lines, a few aren't. 

Okay, presented mostly without context, because quotable lines should allow you to bring up the context in your head automatically:

1) "Unemployed! In Greenland!"

2) "As you wish."

3) "No more rhymes, and I mean it! Anybody want a peanut?"

4) "The Cliffs of Insanity!"

5) "Is this a kissing book?" (Incidentally, the only quote from the Fred Savage-Peter Falk portion of the film.)

6) "Inconceivable!"

7) "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

8) "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

9) "I am not left-handed."

10) "No one of consequence."

11) "Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons."

12) "And find out who is right, and who is dead."

13) "You'd like to think that wouldn't you!"

14) "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!"

15) "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"

16) "I am no one to be trifled with."

17) "I spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane."

18) "Life is pain highness. Anyone who says different is selling something."

19) "I died that day!"

20) "Death cannot stop true love."

21) "Good night Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

22) "Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist."

23) "The Pit of Despair. Don't even -- (clears throat) -- Don't even think of trying to escape."

24) "Boo! Boo!"

25) " ... my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped."

26) "If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything."

27) "There will be blood tonight!"

28) "I would not say such things if I were you!"

29) "You are the brute squad."

30) "I've seen worse."

31) "Your friend here is only mostly dead."

32) "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife! But after what you just said, I'm not even sure I want to be that anymore!"

33) "Have fun storming the castle!"

34) "Mawage. Mawage is what brings us together today."

35) "Wuv. Twoo wuv."

36) "Oh you mean this gate key."

37) "I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard."

38) "Stop saying that!"

39) "I want my father back you son of a bitch."

40) "I killed you too quickly last time."

41) "Hello lady!"

42) "Don't worry, I won't let it go to my head."

A few stretches there maybe, but I got to 30 pretty easily even if you take out a dozen stretches. And the stretches and the ones I didn't write down can certainly qualify as the "30 honorable mentions."

So yeah, this script is amazing -- incredibly paced in addition to the priceless writing of dialogue. Goldman was a true master, except when he wasn't. (Did you see Year of the Comet? Yeah, don't.)

But without the actors, scripts are just words on a page. And that's where Reiner comes in. Without the line deliveries of these actors -- for which I think we can credit them and him equally -- Goldman's great lines don't stand a chance of committing themselves to permanence. 

Just think of the performance of Wallace Shawn, instantly iconic, but who before this was primarily known for stuff like My Dinner With Andre. Not the same sort of material at all, but Reiner found the comedic genius within him and brought it out.

Or -- speaking of Andre -- there was Andre the Giant, who was not an actor at all. Even with his heavily accented English, the wrestler is responsible for -- *stops to count* -- well, only three of those lines. But he is also responsible for inserting himself forever into our hearts, such that on this viewing, when he'd already been gone for more than 32 years, I got a little choked up on his line "Hello lady!"

To say nothing of how this made stars of Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, though Wright famously turned down a half-dozen ensuing rules that would have made her a lot more famous than she ever became. 

The script is great, but Reiner's touch with actors and with material -- whether we can fully quantify it or not -- makes The Princess Bride what it is. Which is my 11th favorite movie of all time.

I could probably dig for a number of other things I got out of this viewing, but The Princess Bride is not exactly new territory in terms of movies about which to rhapsodize. So I won't even bother.

But I did want to ask one thing: What's with all the weird Christmas stuff in the grandson's bedroom? (I only just now realized Savage's character doesn't have a name.)

What weird Christmas stuff, you ask? You never noticed it either?

Well I'll show you.

How about this crazy, angry homemade Santa?

Or the snowman over his shoulder here?

Or the long-bearded, European-style Santa whose long beard and red coat you can see in the middle of the picture here?

There's absolutely zero indication that this movie is supposed to be set at Christmas. Nor was it released at Christmas, having come out in September of 1987.

I'm not looking on the internet. I know the internet will have an explanation. I don't want it. I'd rather just speculate. 

More than anything I like how it gives this kid's bedroom a real, lived in quality. No, you might not actually decorate your own room with Christmas stuff, but I like that there is nothing remotely choreographed about the items in his bedroom. (I keep wanting to call him Kevin after his Wonder Years character.) Our bedrooms -- I would have been 13 when this came out, so maybe a little older than this kid -- defied a set dresser's perfect idea of what a bedroom should look like, and whoever dressed this set honored that truth and then some.

Going by order on Flickchart, my April viewing will be my #3 Reiner film, at #26 on my Flickchart, When Harry Met Sally. And that one should not be hard to find. 

Mourning my favorite director

I debated about whether to hem and haw in the subject of this post about calling Rob Reiner my favorite director.

If you were measuring Reiner in terms of the yardsticks a cinephile would use to praise a director, you might not think of him as an obvious candidate for this honor. He wasn't always pioneering new camera tricks. He didn't have a signature style. His movies didn't make the Sight & Sound list. He wasn't a big mis-en-scene guy. 

But if measuring Reiner only on the pleasure his films brought me, it's no contest. 

I wouldn't maybe know I held Reiner in such high esteem except for Flickchart, which has revealed to me that I have three Rob Reiner movies in my top 30 of all time, and six in my top 200. Yes that's right, Reiner is responsible for 3% of my top 200 movies of all time. 

And today I learned he was stabbed to death, along with his wife, most likely by their son.

WTF?

I haven't even watched Spinal Tap II: The End Continues yet. That is going to be one sorry viewing when it actually happens. 

There are lots of terrible things going on in the world. Two men fuelled by hatred just shot up a Hanukkah ceremony at Bondi Beach. Another guy killed some Brown University students. And as it happens, I've got some pretty concerning health developments in my family right now. (Nothing in my immediate family of my wife and two sons. That's all I'll say.)

But because I'm a movie guy, the one I can't get out of my head is the image of Rob Reiner begging and pleading for his life when an assailant, most likely his son, was coming at him with a knife.

And losing that argument. 

Any death is bad. But when Rob Reiner's father, the great Carl Reiner, keeled over at age 98, you couldn't even really be sad. You knew it was his time. 

Rob Reiner was 78. He lived a good life. But it had such a terrible ending, and when I think of him, I will now always think of him in the same company as others who lost their lives in such devastating ways, like Phil Hartman. 

So while I want to give Reiner more of the typical, wistful send-off that I like to give our cinematic luminaries when they pass on to the great beyond, now I'm in such painful misery that I can't even type straight. 

But because I don't think I can write a series of pieces remembering Reiner, I'm going to give it a go now.

Rob Reiner became a target on shows like South Park for a sort of liberal piousness that Trey Parker and Matt Stone found grating. But for a liberal like me, that was part of why I liked Reiner. He believed in the causes I believed in. But that was just a happy bit of fortuitousness. I would have loved him even if he played on the other team. 

That's the thing about Reiner -- you could like the films he directed, but he also had a personality as a result of being an actor first and foremost. I can't say that I watched All in the Family -- in fact, it's possible I've never seen a single episode -- but Reiner's Meathead made millions into fans of his personality, a personality that earned him two Emmys. 

I'm not going to spend a lot of time describing Reiner's persona. It was expansive. It was hilarious. In his comedy, it could be a bit naughty. On this weekend where we've lost some good and innocent Jewish Sydneysiders, Reiner embodied the lineage of great Jewish comedy, his kvetching always generous, his observations always shrewd. Simply put, he was funny as hell, and I also got a great sense of warmth from him. 

And the film that introduced him to the world as a director used that personality to good effect. My highest ranked Reiner film on Flickchart is his first, This Is Spinal Tap, my #9 film of all time. I said earlier that Reiner wasn't always pioneering new camera tricks, but how about new film genres? He and Tap star Christopher Guest might be the two men most responsible for the mockumentary, and we couldn't have gotten a better initial tour guide than Reiner's Marty DiBergi, who interviews David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls. I can't believe I don't know what the first scene of this movie is, but if you told me it was DiBergi introducing himself to us, I'd say that's most likely right. Little did we know, Reiner was introducing us to his incorporable career, which gave him the best "imperial period" -- to borrow the music term -- of any director. What's more, it was his personality as the straight man playing off the Tap men that made it all work. Who else could have asked Nigel the innocent questions necessary for "This one goes to 11," and had it work so smashingly?

Reiner followed that up the very next year with The Sure Thing, which at #396 on my Flickchart is only my seventh favorite Reiner movie. I have friends for whom this might be top three. And it would be top three for me for many directors, but I have so many other films to talk about that I can't even linger on one of the films that really introduced us to John Cusack.

Stand by Me in 1986, #131 on my Flickchart, proved that we didn't know Reiner's only mode after two films. He could also make a Stephen King adaptation and a truly seminal coming-of-age story for Gen Xers -- though about their parents, so it worked for that generation too. Which also managed to be funny in spots. It had a huge impact on me. Heck, I was 12 when it came out. 

But then the very next year, again -- that's four movies in four years, if you're keeping track -- Reiner made my #11 favorite film of all time, The Princess Bride. Epic. Iconic. Also hilarious. You can quote 30 lines from this movie and there would still be 30 more honorable mentions. I didn't even know how much I loved this until I rewatched it with my kids in the last decade, which is when it shot up from somewhere in my 20s or 30s on Flickchart all the way up to #11. If it weren't blocked by The Iron Giant, that would be two Reiner films in my top ten.

Rob Reiner didn't make a film in 1988. Everyone has to recharge sometimes.

But in 1989 he made what I consider to be the greatest romantic comedy of all time, and yes I know I am pissing off classic movie fans who'd rather Cary Grant star in their great romcoms than Billy Crystal. But what can I say, I was born in 1973, and When Harry Met Sally slayed me. It's funny, it's heartbreaking, and it makes me feel fonder about New York City than almost any film out there. For a long time this was ahead of The Princess Bride, fully in my top 20, but at the moment it's my #26 on Flickchart. 

And yet again Reiner made a movie in 1990, his second Stephen King adaptation, Misery. Which is also a stone-cold classic. Two-handers don't get more tense and exciting than this. He coaxed an Oscar-winning performance out of Kathy Bates that no one will soon forget, and brought James Caan back to relevance. Which is good enough for #150 on my Flickchart. 

Rob Reiner kept things going throughout the 1990s, with the exception of legendary flop North in 1994. (And even in a mode of excess generosity toward the man, no, I am not going to defend North.) I may not be as big a fan of A Few Good Men as some people (wow, I didn't realize it was all the way down at #3292), but I do respect it. The American President at #691 is more my style. Ghosts of Mississippi (#2125) is even pretty good.

But while many people are ready to write off Reiner's career at this point -- even with zeitgeisty movies like The Bucket List on his resume -- I am always left in a puddle of fresh tears over 1999's The Story of Us, which is all the way up to #167 on my Flickchart. This is possibly the only movie I can remember watching twice consecutively on the same day, just before my first son was born in 2010, for reasons I won't get into right now. I'm sure it's happened, but I don't remember when or why. Then I went another 15 years without seeing it again, when I saw it this past February, my fourth time overall, and it inspired me to write this post. And then five days later, this post. 

I'm going to finish talking about this movie not because I don't think Reiner has made a good movie in the 21st century, but because it makes a good bookend with This is Spinal Tap. Why, you ask? What could these two movies possibly have in common? 

Answer: Rob Reiner the actor. Rob Reiner the personality.

In the film, Reiner plays the best friend of Bruce Willis' character, who is possibly separating from his wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Reiner is married to Rita Wilson. Just likeable actors all around. 

Reiner doesn't have a huge number of scenes, but he has just enough to give us the flavor we like from his personality. And the part I love most is Reiner's disquisition about how the ass does not really exist. The ass is just the fatty tops of the legs. In reality, there is no ass. Believe me, it works in context, especially when it gets called back to later on.

Reiner was great in front of the camera, Reiner was great behind the camera, and Reiner was great in the sphere of progressive politics, even if Matt and Trey sometimes didn't like it. I can't believe I won't see him in front of or behind the camera again.

Is he my favorite director? God, now I have to use the past tense. Was he my favorite director?

It's something I've told people about before, this high success rate on my Flickchart, which corresponds to my real affection for the man and his movies. But I always feel a bit hesitant about it. If you go around telling everyone how much you love Rob Reiner, maybe they just focus on the fact that he didn't have a lot of hits in the last 25 years of his career, or maybe they think of Matt and Trey making fun of him. Maybe it's an embarrassment to say, especially in circles of serious cinephiles, how much you love the output of one of our great populist directors.

But if I can't proudly shout my love for Rob Reiner now, in the hours after his death, I don't know when I can. 

I might just shout until I cry. 

Losing control of my kids' Future

So earlier this year I made a bad call and showed my kids The Princess Bride when my wife was out of town. In fact, she might have even just been out for the evening. Either way, it was clear from her reaction that I should have waited until she was around so we could jointly show them a movie we both love. She wasn’t mad; she was sad, which you will agree is probably worse.

She seemed to get over that pretty quickly, but on Sunday, she got her revenge.

My sons were having twins over for a playdate, an impromptu outgrowth of a morning playing laser tag together at the local shopping center. They’d played outdoors and indoors and video games, and the afternoon was supposed to wind down with a movie, to be accompanied by chocolate chip cookies my wife made freshly.

They wanted to watch Shazam!, but we still think that a number of scenes in that movie (and one in particular) are just far too intense for the younger one, who is not yet six. His eight-year-old brother had to cover his eyes in that scene, even when he saw it for a second time recently on the plane, after turning nine. It became clear that their guests weren’t interested in anything animated. They grow up so fast.

So my wife suggested “How about something old school, like Back to the Future?”

That seemed a great idea to me – until I learned I wasn’t going to be able to watch it with them.

The Princess Bride may be in my top 20 films of all time (#11 currently), but Back to the Future is a whole different story. It’s my #2 movie on Flickchart, bested only by Raising Arizona. Although I hadn’t specifically mapped out a plan to show it to them, it’s probably among the next five “classics” I had imagined I'd expose them to.

Quickly realizing the stakes, I said, “Yeah, maybe I’ll watch it with you.”

The look on one twin’s face was priceless. His eyes went wide, and almost in spite of himself, a single word in a small voice escaped him: “No.”

I wasn’t going to inflict my will on a guest. So I rescinded the idea and promptly occupied myself in other rooms, listening to the movie’s familiar score and dialogue through the imperfect buffer of several walls.

So I was joking a bit when I said my wife got her revenge on me. Certainly she hadn’t envisioned that I’d be prohibited from watching the movie, but neither did she probably guess I’d suggest watching it with them either. My kids like to watch movies with me on movie nights, and in fact, sometimes they get upset if they want to watch something that I don’t want to watch and I slip away or never start watching in the first place. But when they have friends over, my kids don’t need or want me there, particularly the older one. He confirmed this later on, that he wouldn’t have wanted me to sit with them. I get it. (For the record, the younger one cried when I un-invited myself to watch, which was sweet, except that him crying in itself became a problem.)

It was really weird having one of my favorite movies of all time so close yet so far. I was supposed to be the one showing them this movie, but instead, no one was showing it to them. They were discovering it on their own, with no one there to subtly direct their eyes back toward the screen if they got distracted, no one there to imperceptibly indicate just how great a certain scene was.

And without a guide, they predictably got distracted. The younger one actually spend a decent amount of the second and third acts playing in his room, which I also get, because Back to the Future has “a lot of talking.” The older ones mostly paid attention, but one of them was whacking our bean bag chair with a large plastic orange bat, and there was a point near the end when all three of them were in the kitchen, playing a game where they tried to stretch each others’ clothes to the breaking point. In fact, both my wife and I had to threaten to turn the movie off, though it really wasn’t much of a threat, since maybe that would have been fine with them. So it was more of a sad “Why don’t we just turn the movie off if nobody’s watching.”

What did I expect, I guess. I was 11 when Back to the Future came out and I saw it in the theater (something like three times), but the difference between 9 and 11 is maybe the difference between liking Back to the Future and really loving it. Then you've got to factor in the way their relationship to screens is so much different than ours was then, plus the changes in what they find entertaining. They did like it, but the fact that there was a lot of talking was definitely mentioned. I heard some laughs, though, which was good.

The atmosphere of general chaos that eventually took over did have a benefit: It at least allow me to insinuate myself into the living room for the ending. We all kind of ended up in there for that, even my wife. And as I sometimes do with movies that I love dearly, I surprised myself by tearing up at the scene where Doc Brown lets out the triumphant howl after Marty successfully warps back to 1985, dancing in the flame tracks of the Delorean, a look of glee on his face, as a forlorn strain of Alan Silvestri’s main theme graces the soundtrack.

I guess maybe they really were too young, as my older son asked me “Why was there so much swearing in old movies?” and “Why did that woman take Marty’s pants off?” Maybe some of it was a bit advanced. Then again, I kind of appreciate a time when you could say “son of a bitch” in a movie watched by children and no one batted an eyelash. And none of the mother-son incest is really consummated anyway.

Raising Arizona will probably be a bridge too far for at least a couple more years, but you better bet I won’t let anyone show them this without me present. As for my #3 film on Flickchart, well … I think it will be a lot more time before either of them is allowed to watch Pulp Fiction.

A realization about Rob Reiner

My friend Don, who was visiting for the weekend from Chicago, and I were leaving Amoeba Music in Hollywood on Sunday night when the conversation turned to Rob Reiner. It had actually started on Ron Howard, because I had just picked up a nice-looking (albeit used) collector's edition DVD of Apollo 13 for $5.99. (It was a space-themed evening -- I also finally bought Dean Parisot's Galaxy Quest.) For his part, Don bought Bram Stoker's Dracula on BluRay and some music.

The apparent similarities between Howard and Reiner -- both former TV stars who had gone on to careers as highly respected directors -- was what caused us to wander into Reiner territory. Our initial thesis was that Howard might be the greater director. After all, he'd won an Oscar, and he continues to release prestige films. Whereas Reiner's last decade has been kind of the opposite, composed of moderate misfires (Rumor Has It ...), major misfires (Alex & Emma) and popular schlock (The Bucket List).

But it was when we started to review Reiner's older work that it hit us like a smack in the forehead:

Rob Reiner may have had the greatest decade for any director of any era. And he did most of it in five years.

If you start with his directorial debut in 1984 -- This Is Spinal Tap, which could be one of the best first movies ever -- and go forward, Reiner was absolutely on fire for the next five to ten years. Not only that, but every movie he made could be described as one of the best versions of that movie ever made -- even still today.

Shall we take a look?

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) might be the best mockumentary ever made.

Argument: Hardcore film lovers may cite a dozen examples to the contrary, but you could even say that Rob Reiner invented the mockumentary. What's certainly true is that Christopher Guest's participation in this film inspired him to reshape his whole career as a series of increasingly less brilliant mockumentaries. Nothing is less than 100% brilliant in This Is Spinal Tap. In fact, it's so great that I don't need to go into an in-depth description of why it's so great, because you already know. But I will mention Don's interesting perspective on its greatness, which is that you can see the characters thinking. When Nigel Tufnel (Guest) makes one of his inane comments, he's not just reading his lines (in part because a bunch of this stuff was improvised). You can actually see the wheels turning in his head as he answers each question, and that's part of what makes it such a fully realized, spot-on satire.

The Sure Thing (1985) might be the best road movie ever made.

Argument: Or it might not. In fact, I'm pretty sure it isn't. But the rest of the movies after this fit the format, so go with me on this. The Sure Thing is definitely a really good road movie, and as a result of the age I was when I saw it (about 13 or 14), it sticks out to me as one of the first films I think of when you talk about road movies. It's full of classic scenes involving the various modes of transport John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga use to cross the country, like Cusack freaking out the pervert who picks up Zuniga hitchhiking, and Cusack clashing with the pair of show-tune singers (one of whom is Tim Robbins). It's especially nice as it had the function of serving as Cusack's breakout role.

Stand by Me (1986) might be the best coming-of-age movie ever made.

Argument: Who in my generation doesn't think of Stand by Me when they think of coming-of-age movies? I'd like to think that this extends outward to other generations, but I'd probably be wrong about that. After all, today's teens probably see Twilight as a coming-of-age movie. But in terms of purity of form, Stand by Me takes the cake. Few films deal so intensely with the transition between childhood and adulthood, as Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern are caught between the innocence of childhood play and the seriousness of death, which confronts them in the form of a corpse, older bullies who fight with knives, and a train that may flatten them like pancakes. It might also be one of the best period pieces ever made, with its great 50s soundtrack.

The Princess Bride (1987) might be the best storybook romance ever made.

Argument: Or should it be called a romantic fantasy? A fantasy comedy? A romantic storybook comedy? However you choose to categorize it, The Princess Bride hits every note perfectly. It introduced a slew of iconic characters, a boatload of quotable lines, and one of the most delightful forms of "damsel in distress" escapism you are likely to find on film. Do you remember how you felt after you first saw The Princess Bride? There you go. I'll leave it at that because there just isn't much more to say.

When Harry Met Sally ... (1989) might be the best romantic comedy ever made.

Argument: And here is the really big one. All the other genres I've discussed have relatively few entries compared to the number of movies that could be described as romantic comedies. And yet this movie could still be considered the best romantic comedy of all time -- I'm not even sure what the other top contenders would be, since there are few romantic comedies that everyone can agree are as perfect as this. Granted, this is again showing the bias of the era in which I came of age, which may be inescapable -- there are certainly classic romantic comedies by the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that older viewers would probably consider their favorites. But When Harry Met Sally is almost certainly the king of modern romantic comedies, and you might even say its stamp is evident on many if not most of the romantic comedies that followed. Again, I don't need to tell you why.

Misery (1990) might be the best Stephen King adaptation ever made.

Argument: Okay, now I know I'm wrong -- especially since Reiner himself has made a better Stephen King adaptation (Stand by Me). However, the best film adaptations of King's novels tend to be either non-horrors (both Stand by Me and one of my favorite films of all time, The Shawshank Redemption) or horror adaptations in which the writer or director took liberties with King's work (The Shining). But could Misery be the best faithful adaptation of a horror by Stephen King? Perhaps.

A Few Good Men (1992) might be the best movie in which Jack Nicholson shouts "You can't handle the truth!" ever made.

Argument: Okay, now I'm kidding.

But this is a good place to leave off, because Reiner's next film was the infamous bomb North. He did follow that with the excellent The American President (best movie ever about the president? Nah) and the pretty-good Ghosts of Mississippi, but that's the last time Reiner has met with pretty much universal critical acclaim. (I absolutely love The Story of Us, but I know I'm in the minority.)

What's amazing about this period of 1984 to 1990 is not only how prolific he was during it, and not only how successful each film was, but how comfortably he shifted between genres. As is evident in the way I've structured this piece, talking about genres, Reiner never repeated himself during this period -- in fact, I don't know that you could say any two of the films are even somewhat similar to each other.

It's an interesting realization especially when compared and contrasted to yesterday's discussion of Danny Boyle, who is also constantly reinventing himself. If you lined up 20 film bloggers and asked them which one is the better director, Boyle or Reiner, you'd probably get 18 for Boyle and two for Reiner.

But I might be one of the two. I mean, just look at those titles. Granted, Reiner's films from the 1980s have had more of a chance to endure in the zeitgeist and stake their claims as classics, and his films are all accessible in a way that Boyle's films aren't even trying to be. But it's being uncharitable and just plain wrong to dismiss Reiner as simply a populist director. Making films for the masses that are also as smart as Reiner's films is a true challenge indeed. In a way, you could say that "anyone" can make an arsty film with a potentially narrow target audience -- and Boyle may be among the best at that, considering that his artistically credible films have also managed to find a pretty big audience. But making films that please both the studios and almost any film fans you ask, from the least discriminating to the most? That's a special talent. Because most of the time you are going to piss off serious fans by pandering to the masses. However, I don't think there are many serious film fans who would find fault with This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally or Misery. And This Is Spinal Tap, in its own way, might be more subversive than anything even Boyle has ever made.

I just think it's important not to let a "what have you done for me lately?" mentality cause us to forget or discount the kind of greatness that Rob Reiner demonstrated during those incredible 6+ years. Any director would be proud to have six titles as good as those on his CV. I'm not even sure if the best six films of Steven Spielberg of Martin Scorsese are as universally well-liked as those six films. Of course, I could also be getting carried away.

However, I think Reiner deserves a little excess enthusiasm. In recent years, the man has turned into something of a figure of ridicule, and not just because he's been on a losing streak in the director's chair. His most prominent recent appearance in pop culture may have been on South Park, where Trey Parker and Matt Stone eviscerated him, making him out to be a self-righteous liberal ideologue stuffing his face with food in every shot.

Well, that self-righteous liberal ideologue stuffing his face with food may just be one of the most influential directors of all time.

Or at the very least, a guy with an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time.