When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: And that may be part of the—completely subjective, not at all the fault of the film’s—problem. I haven’t seen it in years. Lora and I were even talking about it while we were watching it, and I’m not entirely sure she and I have ever watched it together in the sixteen years we’ve known each other. Lora seems to think we have, but I’m really not that sure.

The film always seems like—with its trips to The Sharper Image where one can act like they invented karaoke, deep connections over the same movie playing on TV*, and a sweater or two—a time capsule.

It’s also an emotional time capsule, though. If you’re not trapped in a decade-long cycle of will-they/won’t-they, does it play the same? Say, if you’re somehow more like Marie (Fisher) and Jess (Kirby) and despite some troubles have largely settled that part of your life, does the dithering and navel gazing of Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) still hold any meaning after all these years?

It’s probably a better question than that old, hoary cliché of wondering whether or not Harry and Sally are still together in the ensuing years, but not an entirely unrelated one. I tend to think that if the two protagonists didn’t come to some kind of peace about themselves, the quirks that caused them to come together in a fit of romantic whimsy would probably come back around to make them run for the hills.

But then, if my mind can’t help but go to these kind of quibbles, is it possible the entire genre of the romantic comedy has completely lost its meaning? That’s possible, and would still allow this film to keep its crown as the superlative entry in the genre.

*Given that might, in fact, be a method of connecting over movies that has reached essential extinction, the moment where Harry and Sally disassemble the ending of Casablanca (1942)  hits a bit harder than anything else.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

Have I Seen It Before: Hmm… Tricky question. Obviously the film is brand new, so…

Let’s just get into it.

Did I Like It: I always say that the the most disappointing* thing that a documentary can be is feel like a DVD special feature. I’m not even saying that I necessarily dislike a DVD special feature. Occasionally they can be entertaining. Occasionally they can have some insight. Often, it feels a little antiseptic, so as to be so careful not to overshadow the film its built to support.

I laughed at several points in the film, but I didn’t have that vaguely, but pleasurably unsettled feeling that this is a work of deeply demented people who have honed their eccentricities into one of the most finely tuned comedies ever made. Exploring the fine line between clever and stupid, if you will.

Expecting that much from a sequel 40-plus years after the original is likely unfair, but the comparison is tricky if not impossible to avoid. The over-under on Reiner and the cast is 80, and the notion that someone can still revolutionize their form seems absurd as I type it.

And yet, this could have been something more, other than an above-average item on the special features menu of a 40th Anniversary Blu Ray**. It could have had fewer celebrity cameos. The thing is chock-a-block with them. Paul McCartney is practically a fourth member of the band, and what little third act the film has is tied to how much time they were willing to get from Elton John. It could have fewer callbacks to the first film. Yes, Stonehenge makes an appearance. They try to make it different than the last time, but it’s entirely too self-conscious to work on its own.

*Not the worst thing, mind you. We leave the worst to Leni Riefenstahl. Let’s just be clear about that.

**Yeah, I get it. It needs to be 4K. I’ll get there eventually. Just not today.

The Princess Bride (1987)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Robin Wright

Have I Seen it Before: Well, sure. But this is where I am going to have to open up this review with a confession.

Did I Like It: Is this somehow going to be more controversial than my review of Halloween Ends (2022)? Ok. Truth time. I’ve never liked it as much as some people. Some people love this movie like it would be able to patch the hole in the ozone layer and always smell like freshly popped popcorn.

It’s a frequently funny film. There are large swaths where it is thrilling and heartwarming. Every inch of this film is designed to be likable, and it delivers on those goods… I think one could make the case that there is nothing particularly wrong with the film?

And yet?

Doesn’t it all seem a little too slim for it’s own good? Maybe complaining that the film is “too short” is praising the movie with faint damnation, but aren’t there like three dozen characters jammed into just over 90 minutes?

Isn’t every great, well-remembered moment of the movie just a catchphrase pre-packaged for the meme era? Do we really love “My name is Inigo Montoya” and “Have fun storming the castle,” or is it just that their both easily imitateable?

And I can get over all of those complaints, but somehow there are people who with great earnestness proclaim this as their favorite movie. There are people out there who have built their entire identity around this movie. We’re never likely to get a proper memoir from Cary Elwes, because he figured we were all good after he got through all of his stories from The Princess Bride. I see the appeal. I just don’t see that much of the appeal.

Is it just that I’m nuts?

Inconceivable, I’m sure.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. A small note about this screening though. I stumbled upon a factory-sealed DVD at a used dealer at the Flea Market. That’s unusual enough, but the case hailed from an era when DVDs were frequently stolen commodities (kids, ask your parents) and the case had not one, not two, but three security seals on every open end. Those things were annoying to take off in the early aughts, but the glue on these suckers had two decades to seal, and I nearly had to rent a sledgehammer to get to the chewy movie at the center.

Did I Like It: By this point, the mockumentary has been played out to death. TV shows upon TV sows have used the format, and the instant one used that milieu and wasn’t any good, the magic was probably gone.

But this is something special. It didn’t invent the wheel as far as mockumentary comedies go. For that, we’d have to (but probably shouldn’t) look at least a year earlier to Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983), or maybe even as far back as his Take The Money and Run (1969). 

Or maybe the better precursor to what we have here is A Hard Day’s Night (1964), because not only does this film tap into that precisely correct demented vein of absurdity that is the lifeblood of every great comedy, but the music also works. That’s directly tied to the unusual skills of Messrs. Guest, McKean, and Shearer. They are at the top of their game here comedically and they could have made an honest shot at being rock stars, had they possessed that ambition. Hell, look to A Mighty Wind (2003) and those three men could have made decent-bordering-on-great musicians of any genre.

As with most comedies, it’s never the most memorable lines that make the film truly great. You can talk about “this one goes to eleven” forever, but it’s the briefest pause the band takes before offering their reaction to “shit sandwich” that I think is both so insanely funny and so pathetically human.

Also, you can’t go wrong with a few dead drummers and a Stonehenge megalith. It’s easily the broadest comedy of which Guest is at the forefront, but anyone’s got a problem with that is the type of person who would let “shit sandwich” get printed in a magazine.

Misery (1990)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I never fail to get a little pang of nausea as Untitled goes up in flames. Good argument for the cloud, if ever I heard one. (Says the man who still hand-writes his first drafts…)

Did I Like It: It’s going to feel trite to say “the book was better” but… ahem… The book is better. It’s a picky thing, but Stephen King’s novel is—horrifying though it might be—one of the best books about the love—and perhaps obsession—that is the writing process. After everything Paul Sheldon (Caan) goes through, he does not destroy Misery’s Return. He put real work into the book, and he wasn’t about to let Annie Wilkes (Bates) destroy another book.

Destroying both books may have a certain catharsis for the civilians, but it doesn’t do it for me.

Otherwise, the film is without flaws I can readily identify. Plenty of films try to imitate the trappings of a Hitchcock film, but few can tap into what a Hitchcock movie could do. Rob Reiner doesn’t get nearly enough credit for creating superlative films in disparate genres. I guess people are still stuck on Meathead at the end of the day.

Bates plays the terror of Wilkes not as some kind of boogeyman, which easily could have been the inclination. Instead, she is deeply (probably irretrievably) ill. As much as Paul Sheldon is a prisoner at the Wilkes farm, so too is Annie a prisoner in her own head.

The supporting turns from Farnsworth and Sternhagen might very well be the movie’s secret weapons. Every time they inhabit the frame, we’re instantly disarmed by their folksy charms. It makes the scenes with Wilkes and Sheldon far more harrowing, and Buster’s eventual fate is even more shocking when the two worlds inevitably collide. His small town detective as the engine for the film’s plot walked so that Frances McDormand could run in Fargo (1996).

A Few Good Men (1992)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Again, sure. I’ve been watching a lot of film adaptations of stage plays lately, and incidentally the film an television work of Aaron Sorkin as well. Now, the Venn diagram collapse in on itself, and I’m thinking it may be the best of both worlds.

Reiner does the needed work to actually adapt the material for the screen. Far too many plays turned into films never rise above their claustrophobic trappings, but I never feel that way watching this film, even in the courtroom scenes, where it all could have been forgiven. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing a live production of the story, and it’s been several years since I’ve read Sorkin’s original stage play, but my faint memory seems to think there is very little lost in the adaptation, and the scope of the story is somehow increased.

Sorkin’s work here is superlative as well. It’s terrible to say, but I do wonder if the author had ever recovered creatively from gaining sobriety nearly twenty years ago. The TV and movies he has written since then have had a very similar quality, with him even repeating certain turns of phrase as if he’s trying to strike the match of his true genius without poisoning his body at the same time. This effort, however, is Sorkin at his hungriest. While the stage play had enjoyed some positive reviews during its broadway run, he was far from the go-to man for Oscar bait screenplays. He wrote this on cocktail napkins during bar tending stints for La Cage Aux Folles. There was no guarantee of success. No sign of future writing work. He was hungry, and it showed.

It’s probably impossible to make him hungry again. He can run slightly afoul of his glory days in television, but he simply chooses not to write for television anymore. I don’t think he should go back on cocaine, but there’s got to be a better way to harness what he had before.

The American President (1995)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox

Have I Seen It Before?: My DVD copy is one of those weird half-cardboard numbers Warner Bros. put out in the world twenty years ago? Whatever happened to those? This is all to say I’ve spent several years putting it on just as regular of re-watch as my DVDs of The West Wing, which is quite a bit.

Did I like it?: Criticism of the work of Aaron Sorkin be a tricky thing. One either has no taste for him, or absolutely adores him. You’d think that this divide might exist with some correlation to political differences, but that isn’t always the case. Certainly, he has a propensity for writing women character who are by all rights intelligent and self-possessed, but somehow end up spending a great deal of time having passages of Intro to US Government explained to them by male characters. He uses certain lines* across his work so often that I’m a little worried he doesn’t remember having written them before his sobriety.

But plenty of people—yours truly included—who have tried to imitate him, so I don’t quite buy the temerity of the latter-day naysayers. At the very least, I am in the camp that lives and dies with his writing, and this was a test-bed for everything that made his greatest work as good as it was. The optimism and decency leaps from the words and lives within you. At least, it lives within me. Your mileage may vary.

Beyond that idealism that admittedly confirms my own thinking about the world, this might even work better as a pure romantic comedy than it does as a polemic. Even then, I can’t conceive of a conservative who might be warmed by the proceedings, even though Ted Cruz somehow managed to plagiarize the climatic speech President Shepherd (Douglas) uses to win Sydney Ellen Wade (Bening) and the country back when he was defending his wife from attacks by the garbage fire that eventually won that election. So, who knows?

* “All you have to do at the end of the day is come home.” “This isn’t camp. It’s not important that everyone gets to play.” “If you had invented/written/created Facebook/Whatever the hell was so goddamn important on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” Google common Sorkin lines; there are gigabytes of articles on the subject.