Remembering Rob Reiner: When Harry Met Sally ...

This is the second in one of two intertwining bi-monthly 2026 series with the same name. The movies in February, April, June, August, October and December involve revisiting my six favorite Rob Reiner films, except for my favorite, This is Spinal Tap, which I rewatched in conjunction with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues before the series started. 

When I was considering the Rob Reiner movies I'd be revisiting in 2026, I of course came to When Harry Met Sally and thought "Yeah, might as well. I've seen it fairly recently, but it's been a minute so I should see it again."

Nope. It's been more than a minute. In fact, it has been more than 20 years.

I had to double check both of the places I keep track of rewatches, on Letterboxd and in a Microsoft Word document, and true enough, I could not find it in either. I started keeping track of rewatches in July of 2006, so that means that unless I watched this in the immediate few months before I started keeping track, it's been more than 20 years since my last viewing of When Harry Met Sally.

It could not be. It simply could not be.

I feel like I definitely watched it with my wife, and we only started dating at the start of 2005. So probably in that first year together we watched it. But it clearly has not come up for viewing again since then, unless I'm derelict in my records, and I'm rarely derelict. 

I'm reminded again that certain movies are so familiar to you -- this would definitely be double digit viewings for the movie overall -- that you feel like you've seen them recently, even when you haven't. Maybe I just couldn't believe that I feel like I clearly remember my last viewing, or at least that such a viewing had taken place, and yet that was at least two decades ago now. Nor could I believe that I wouldn't have been inspired to watch it again in those two decades, just for old times sake.

Well, high time for a viewing of my #26 movie on Flickchart, which has spent a significant amount of time within my top 20. It's crazy to think that I haven't even seen When Harry Met Sally since I started using Flickchart in 2009. 

Since I've never written at length about this movie on the blog, I should tell you that I've long considered it to be the greatest romantic comedy of all time. Actually, in the couple times I've written about Reiner himself, I have expressed that opinion. So I don't need to go on at length about it now. (And each time I do express this opinion, I also mention that I understand I am excluding many of the romantic comedies from earlier golden ages of cinema. What can I say, I grew up with When Harry Met Sally -- it came out when I was 15 -- and I didn't grow up with those other movies.)

The other thing I should put on record is that it is also one of my favorite New York movies. I had already been to New York at least once, maybe exactly once, before the movie came out, but this was the movie that likely cemented my impression of Manhattan as an idealized, romantic locale. Actually living there disabused me of some of that notion, but there's still a perfect version of the city that exists within the tight 96 minutes of When Harry Met Sally. 

I don't need to spend a lot of time on why the movie works so well, but it's a mixture of the sharp dialogue, the witty performers, the funny scenarios, the keen and sometimes uncompromising wisdoms about relationships between men and women, and the mood-setting jazz piano and crooner music that serves as wallpaper.

I'm willing to bet, though, that the little detail that had the greatest impact on my affection for the movie is the interviews with the old married couples placed sporadically throughout the runtime. I doubt this was actually an innovation by Reiner or by screenwriter Nora Ephron, but it could have been, and it is certainly something that's been imitated since. If I'm connecting Reiner movies, it's a bit of a documentary touch that points back to This Is Spinal Tap, and lends an extra bit of authenticity to everything we're seeing. (And looking forward, Reiner used this tactic in the most recent Reiner movie that I've added to my favorites, The Story of Us.)

Because I know this film so well, I was worried I wouldn't have a lot of new observations on this viewing, so I forced myself to jot down some notes. And as it turned out, there were a handful of things I wanted to mention when writing this post:

1) Did you know this was shot by Barry Sonnenfeld? I did not. 

2) I noticed that this movie uses an Ella Fitzgerald song, just as another favorite New York romantic comedy, Kissing Jessica Stein, would do in what I assume was a fairly explicit attempt to remind us of its forbear. Incidentally, I have seen Kissing Jessica Stein three times since the last time I saw When Harry Met Sally. 

3) When Billy Crysal is alone, depressed, sitting on the floor in his empty apartment, he's playing a little game of tossing playing cards into a bowl that's about five feet away from him. I never remember noticing this previously, but at one point he lands about five in a row -- a pretty impressive feat.

4) I know that some of Meg Ryan's reactions to Crystal's antics are genuine, and you can really tell when they occur. When he's speaking in his funny voice ("pecan piiiieee"), she gives a real laugh at one point and utters "Oh no." Such a genuine reaction because, well, it was.

5) I really like the scene where Harry and Sally are dancing cheek to cheek on New Year's Eve, and they are spinning around. It's a very clever way for the camera to capture what they are both thinking in that moment, at a moment when they know the other person cannot see their face, and in this case it's a moment of fear about the physical contact prompting them to do something they fear they will regret. The movie is full of these little mirrored moments, such as when they both make an awkward expression during the social gathering where they play Pictionary, upon seeing the other kiss their current paramour. 

6) I noticed there's a scene where Sally puts on a pith helmet, I believe it's while they're at the Sharper Image, about to be encountered by Helen and Ira. Reiner would also use a pith helmet for Michelle Pfeiffer's character in The Story of Us.

7) Speaking of the Pictionary scene, there are a lot of great lines in that scene, including anything related to the phrase "baby fish mouth." However, I was reminded how much I love Bruno Kirby's frustrated line "Draw something resembling anything!"

8) Speaking of mirrored moments, what I will call the "duelling telephone calls" scene is a masterpiece of execution. It's when Kirby's Jess and Carrie Fisher's Marie are asleep, and for some reason each has their own distinct telephone line on their bedside tables. (Will share a house but not a phone number?) Harry calls Jess at the same time Sally calls Marie, and it's the morning after Harry and Sally slept together. The overlapping dialogue in this scene is terrific, as both conversations go forward naturally while being able to interact with each other, as Jess and Marie realize they are having the same call about the same thing, and that they both invited the other to come over for breakfast at the same time -- an invitation they are relieved to find the other has rejected. It's some real Robert Altman stuff in terms of complexity of dialogue.

9) I always remember, when thinking about moments of romantic bliss in my own life -- when you are most keenly aware of its potential opposite -- the lovely exchange afterward between Jess and Marie: "Tell me I will never have to be out there again," she says. "You will never have to be out there again," he returns. It feels especially touching when you consider that both Kirby and Fisher are now gone. 

10) Random: I noticed the telephone number on the awning where Sally struggles to buy the Christmas tree by herself, without Harry's help. It's 662-4402. Why is this notable? They almost never put phone numbers in movies that didn't begin with 555. Just another touch of this film's effortless sense of realism.

11) If I want to make a really strange connection, between the great Reiner movie I saw this month and the not-great Reiner movie I saw last month for the other bi-monthly Reiner series, it's the ending lines that are meant to serve as a form of reconciliation between characters. When I wrote last month about Being Charlie, the drug addiction movie about and written by Nick Reiner, I noted that one of the few choices I really liked was the character's decision to end by saying to his father "I don't hate you, Dad" -- the closest that character could come to saying "I love you." Well, this movie ends in a somewhat similar fashion, with Sally saying to Harry "I hate you, I really hate you." Which is also a substitute for "I love you."

12) I noticed in the credits there are songs both by Rodgers and Hart (several) and Rodgers and Hammerstein ("Surrey with the Fringe On Top," from Oklahoma!, which Harry and Sally sing in the Sharper Image). I thought that was an interesting thing to see, fresh off last year's movie that featured all three of these characters, Blue Moon. 

These were the only notes I took in the movie, but afterward, when I was looking up other times I mentioned When Harry Met Sally on this blog, I came across this post, and I need to correct the record from it. 

In case you don't want to click, it was a post about the poor realism of the way batting cages are depicted in the Pete Davidson movie Big Time Adolescence. In that post I drew a contrast to how batting cages are depicted in When Harry Met Sally, but I didn't get it completely right.

While it's true that there is nothing that occurs in WHMS that is an actual defiance of the way batting cages work, in that post I stated that the pitching machine continues to pitch balls to Jess and Harry even after they have turned to speak to each other. On this viewing, I noted that's not the case. 

However, it doesn't necessarily undermine the realism of the movie. In fact, it just means that Jess and Harry took the opportunity of no longer being pitched to to turn and talk to each other. These guys are not cheapskates, but they do value a quarter, and they need to keep shovelling them in to get more pitches. (As Harry says to the young kid when they argue about whose turn it is.) They'd hardly let a bunch of pitches go by just to talk face to face about that time Harry made a woman meow.

Okay, if there could ever be enough When Harry Met Sally, we've reached that point for today. 

Next up in this bi-monthly series in June is the current #132 on my Flickchart, Stand by Me -- and it's been a lot more like 30 or even 35 years since I've seen this one. 

A cinematic connection between New York City and Oklahoma!

I didn't expect to be writing about Richard Linklater's Blue Moon again so soon, but I guess that's the risk you run when you write about a movie in anticipation of an upcoming viewing. You never know what the actual viewing will inspire.

This is a superficial observation only, and maybe I could have fit it into one of my year-end wrap-up posts later this week, but let's just do it now and get it out of the way. I have nothing else planned for this particular Wednesday. 

Blue Moon makes you think a lot about New York City, where it is set, and the show Oklahoma!, which is the catalyst for change among its characters. As I was ruminating on these topics, I was reminded that it is not the only 2025 film that features both of these elements.

Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest memorably opens with drone shots (or maybe they're helicopter shots) of New York City, specifically the part of Brooklyn on the opposite side of the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. And what music, counterintuitively, is playing over it?

Why that would be "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" from, you guessed it, Rodgers and Hammerstein's first and most popular collaboration, the one at the center of Blue Moon, Oklahoma!

But wait that's not all.

Of course in late 2025/early 2026, we're all thinking a lot about Rob Reiner. I've already written about the guy a good five times since he passed. And he's got a role in this as well. 

In Reiner's 1989 classic When Harry Met Sally, in one of their moments of bonding that is interrupted by Harry spotting his ex, Harry and Sally are walking through a store singing "Surrey With the Fringe On Top." The store is, of course, in Manhattan, and the song is, of course, from Oklahoma!

If there are more movies that would fit here, I'm not going to try to figure them out today. 

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. 

When Harry met a ski slope

You might not have noticed it from my continued posting -- I've been pretty fertile lately, and had about three posts already in the can -- but my family has been away on a ski trip since Sunday our time.

Yes, skiing. Yes, I live in the southern hemisphere.

Only about a two-and-a-half hour drive from my house in Melbourne, you can get to a mountain high enough where there's skiing. You might remember I posted about seeing Aladdin on Mt. Buller in 2019, though that was only a day trip with the boys and we didn't ski, just built snowmen and stuff. If you don't remember that and want to go back to read the post, which includes our harrowing adventure getting down the mountain and multiple shenanigans involving snow chains, you can find it here.

No movie this time -- I knew we'd be tired from skiing, and I also knew I'd lose a lot of credibility with my wife. ("You can't even go three days without seeing a movie?" she might ask. And I have, since I haven't watched a single thing since Saturday night before we left.) 

Truth is, I didn't actually feel the inclination, in part because I did scratch that itch with Aladdin four years ago.

I do, however, have a movie tie-in from this trip, and it's an odd one.

We're staying in the little village at the altitude necessary to ski, which costs a pretty penny, but we decided we had to have a "rich person's ski trip" at least once in our lives. Many of the food options are fit for hungry skiers who are not very particular about what they're eating, happier to get out of the cold and take off their ski boots than worrying about the quality of the grub. However, since the people who stay here do have a lot of money -- a lot more than we do, as this is probably a one-time thing for us -- there figured also to be some fine dining.

The place we chose also happened to have a When Harry Met Sally theme.

Sort of. 

As you can see from the art at the top of this post, the place is called Harry Burns, which is the full name of Billy Crystal's character in Rob Reiner's classic 1989 romcom. My wife, who was the one who researched the dining option for our date night, knew it had a When Harry Met Sally theme (sort of) but did ask me why it was called Harry Burns.

"Because that's the character's full name," I responded.

She laughed. I doubt that's a thing a lot of people know about the movie, since they don't make a big deal out of it. In fact, I wondered if I would have been able to produce his last name on my own, or just knew as soon as I heard it that it sounded right. I guess I'll never know.

The place is halfway up one of the slopes along a road that runs up to some of the villas higher on the mountain. You can ski directly in during the day, but we were getting there about 7 o'clock so of course that wasn't an option. My wife had thought of organizing a shuttle, but since I'd seen it from the lift I knew it wasn't that far of a walk. Yeah, tell that to my legs that spent the entirety of the last two days skiing. It was less than a 15-minute walk, but the last ten of those were uphill.

It was worth the hike. The ambience was nice, the food was great, and two alcoholic beverages each -- I had pinot noir, she had an old fashioned -- were just the ticket at the end of a long day of skiing.

But the place had essentially nothing to do with the movie.

It was decked out with just your standard alpine accoutrements, like a wall comprised of firewood, and another decorated with (tasteful) animal fur. 

The artwork on the walls had nothing to do with Billy Crystal or Meg Ryan either. Unless this is supposed to be Meg Ryan:

Well the menu surely has funny drink names related to the movie, right?

It does not. It has standard drink names. 

I tried to think if there's a scene of skiing in When Harry Met Sally, and I could have almost convinced myself that there was. I can see a funny bit of physical comedy where Ryan is trying to carry her ski equipment and the poles and skis are all splaying out in different directions and knocking people over. But that isn't really a scene in the movie.

So what the hell is the connection? Were we even right that it was a When Harry Met Sally-themed restaurant? Could Harry Burns just be the name of the guy who owns this place?

It might be, but that doesn't mean he's ignorant of the connection, and indeed, we found exactly one piece of evidence tying this great restaurant into this great movie:

If you're having trouble reading that, it's the front of the drinks menu, and it reads "I'll have what she's having," partly in fancy curlicue letters and partly in all caps. 

I thought about asking the very nice waitstaff what the deal was with this non tie-in tie-in to the movie, but they were giving off such good vibes that I didn't want to seem the slightest bit miffed about their restaurant, nor make them question their choice of workplace. For all I know, they brag to their friends about working in a restaurant that takes inspiration from -- it's fair to say that at least -- a 34-year-old movie that many of them may be too young to have ever seen.

I checked their website and this is what it says on the landing page:

"'The first time we met, we hated each other.' Instead, it's love at first bite at Harry Burns, newly arrived on Bourke Street and inspired by the movie When Harry Met Sally. Pop in for high-end Modern Australian (cuisine? it doesn't say) and signature cocktails in a cosy cabin style restaurant with open fireplace in the heart of Mt. Buller Ski Village."

Yeah who knows.

My wife and I wondered if the person who opened the restaurant just loved this movie and decided this was the best way to show that love.

It's debatable, but the food was sensational. 

That's not how batting cages work

A younger friend here in Australia recommended I watch Big Time Adolescence, explaining that it was a point-by-point retelling of our friendship. This was a joke of course. We have a bigger age difference than the characters in the movie, who are only seven years apart, but those being the crucial seven years of age 16 to age 23. I think I'm more like 13 years older than this guy, but wet met as adults when I was 41 and he was probably 28, though I must say I don't know his exact age.

The bad influence could be said to go both ways. He gets me to stay out later than I should and I get him involved in useless movie projects.

I don't have a big takeaway about Big Time Adolescence -- it was very enjoyable until a somewhat flat ending -- but I do have a small thing about it I want to nitpick.

The characters in this movie go to the batting cages, but they don't work like any batting cages I've ever seen.

Anyone who has gone to the batting cages knows that you put in your money, step up to the plate, and get something like 30 pitches, either until the balls run out or the timer runs out. The place I go here in Victoria, with a different friend who plays on my baseball team, has a system where you pay for a full block of time, and press a start or stop button when you want a break, to switch batters or to replenish the balls.

When the machine is pitching, it pitches you another ball maybe every five seconds. Which gives you long enough to recover from your previous swing and reload for your next, but not so long that you start to get bored between pitches.

I don't know what the director of Big Time Adolescence was thinking, but the batting cages in this movie worked nothing like that.

So one of the recurring jokes in this movie is that the 16-year-old played by Griffin Gluck is really terrible at baseball, and his older friend (Pete Davidson), who is his older sister's ex-boyfriend, tries to give him pointers on how to fix his swing. They're bad pointers because one of the points of this movie is how all of Zeke's advice to Mo is bad. (Incidentally, I'll throw this in here -- this makes two 2020 movies, with The King of Staten Island, that involve Davidson's character's relationship to baseball and his giving or receiving of tattoos.)

When the two are at the batting cages with a couple other of Zeke's friends, though, the pitching machine pitches a single pitch, then maybe another a minute later, or none at all -- though the hitters keep standing at the plate in their crouch, expecting the next pitch to come.

Maybe director Jason Orley couldn't figure out how to stage or properly direct a scene in which there were also baseballs entering the shot every five seconds. Maybe he should have watched When Harry Met Sally.

Although a trip to the batting cages has been featured in numerous films -- like the squash court, it's a trope that has allowed male characters to have intimate conversations -- the one I always think of is the trip to the cages taken by Harry (Billy Crystal) and Jess (Bruno Kirby) in When Harry Met Sally. You remember the one. It ends with a dumbfounded Kirby asking Crystal, "You made a woman meow?"

The thing I always remember about this, for some reason, is that the balls keep coming in behind both characters even though they have stopped swinging to speak to each other. Because of course. Because THAT'S HOW PITCHING MACHINES WORK.

The fact that Orley didn't notice or didn't care that his pitching machines weren't working that way gets at one of the reasons I can't recommend this movie more highly. It has some smart observations and Davidson has some really hilarious line deliveries -- like when the guy who is tattooing him asks how his name is spelled, and Zeke says it doesn't matter -- but there's a certain disconnect that prevents it from more fully resonating, accentuated by that flat ending. I still give it a positive rating overall, but three stars out of five is a good measure of my hesitation.

I was sure it would be a bigger hit with me, so to speak, especially since the other 2020 movie featuring Davidson as a stunted manchild was my #2 of that year.

If I convert the three out of five to a batting average, though, it's still .600, just not the 1.000 that The King of Staten Island was.

Maybe realistic batting cages would have gotten it that much closer to perfection.

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.