Rob Reiner

Rob Reiner (1947–2025) moved between registers with unusual ease — from deadpan mockumentary to coming-of-age elegy to courtroom drama — without ever settling into a single mode. His early films, This Is Spinal Tap and Stand by Me, show the range most clearly: one a precisely controlled parody, the other a genuinely felt portrait of boys on the edge of loss. The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally... favor wit as a kind of emotional armor, while Misery and A Few Good Men turn the pressure inward, testing characters under confinement and institutional power. What holds the work together is an interest in the performance of conviction — who believes what, and what it costs them.