- - Rob Reiner's 6 most iconic films, from “This Is Spinal Tap ”to “Stand By Me”

Randall ColburnDecember 16, 2025 at 3:15 AM

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MGM; Embassy Pictures/Courtesy Everett; Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett

'When Harry Met Sally...'; 'This Is Spinal Tap'; 'Stand By Me'

On Dec. 14, legendary director Rob Reiner, 78, was found dead with his wife Michele, 68, in an apparent double homicide. He left an indelible mark on Hollywood in his wake, especially through his work behind the camera.

After winning a pair of Emmys for his role as Mike "Meathead" Stivic on the CBS hit All in the Family (1971–1979), Reiner directed and costarred in This Is Spinal Tap (1984), an endlessly quotable cult hit that helped popularize the mockumentary comedy genre.

Throughout the '80s and '90s, he brought his roving eye, sharp wit, and big heart to a myriad of genres: comedy, romance, fantasy, horror, and even courtroom drama. Between his own films and the ones produced via Castle Rock Entertainment, the production company he co-founded in 1987, Reiner had a hand in several of the era's most crowd-pleasing movies.

He continued to direct, produce, and act throughout the 21st century, helming hits like Rumor Has It... (2005) and The Bucket List (2007). He wasn't slowing down, either — just this year, he directed Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and played a supporting role in season 4 of FX's The Bear.

And while Reiner's entire career deserves remembering, his cinematic legacy shines brightest in six films that managed to capture the zeitgeist. Any filmmaker would be lucky to have one movie cement itself in pop culture quite like these standouts. Below are Rob Reiner's six most iconic films.

01 of 06

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Embassy Pictures/Courtesy Everett

Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean in 'This Is Spinal Tap'

This Is Spinal Tap stars Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean as the core members of Spinal Tap, a dopey metal band with some killer riffs and an unfortunate habit of killing drummers. Reiner himself costars as Marty DiBergi, a documentarian tasked with chronicling the band's latest tour. A mostly improvised riff on rock documentaries, Reiner's directoral debut helped chart a course for Guest's own mockumentaries, including Waiting for Guffman (1996) and Best in Show (2000).

"The real world of rockers loves the movie. They've come to embrace it," Reiner told Entertainment Weekly of the film while promoting its 2025 sequel. "And I can't tell you how many times I've been approached by rockers who said, 'It's a staple on the tour bus. We watch it over and over again.' The first time I met Sting, he said, 'I've watched this thing so many times. Every time I watch it, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.' Because it's so close to the reality of their lives."

02 of 06

Stand By Me (1986)

Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett

Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell in 'Stand By Me'

Stand By Me is a pivotal film in Reiner's career, marking not only his first adaptation of a Stephen King story, but also a key influence on Castle Rock Entertainment, the production company Reiner co-founded in 1987. (Stand By Me is set in Castle Rock, Maine, a fictional town in the works of King.)

A tender and thrilling coming-of-age story, Stand By Me adapts King's 1982 novella The Body, which follows four adolescents on a journey to find the corpse of a missing boy in the Maine wilderness. Hazy and wistful, it offered audiences a different side of the author, who was best known for his work in horror.

It also made a star of River Phoenix, the late actor whose brief career included vivid performances in movies like Running On Empty (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991).

"I think it’s Rob Reiner’s best, most deeply felt movie," King wrote in a 1999 piece for EW. "I like it because when I watch it, I feel the way I did when I was writing it. In a word, good."

03 of 06

The Princess Bride (1987)

20th Century Fox

Robin Wright and Cary Elwes in 'The Princess Bride'

Reiner captured a different kind of child-like wonder with The Princess Bride, a sweeping adaptation of William Goldman's 1973 novel of the same name. Six-fingered villains, gentle giants, wise-cracking folk healers, and one of cinema's most famous duels serve as a backdrop to the love story of Westley (Cary Elwes) and Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright).

"Part of the brilliance of The Princess Bride is how cleverly it comments on itself and the fairy tale tropes it knowingly invokes — but is never the slightest bit insincere, for all its self-awareness," EW's writer noted on the film's 30th anniversary.

04 of 06

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in 'When Harry Met Sally...'

Following his 1981 divorce from Penny Marshall, Reiner collaborated with writer Nora Ephron (who would go on to author rom-com staples Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail) for a love story a touch more sour than the fantasy romance of The Princess Bride.

The films sees Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan's titular friends-turned-lovers veer in and out of each other's lives across 12 years, their comedic and romantic chemistry so electric that they're still recreating scenes 35 years later.

As Ephron wrote in the introduction to a paperback version of the Oscar-nominated script, she and Reiner worked closely together to bring authentic male and female perspectives to the project. “[W]hat made this movie different was that Rob had a character who could say whatever he believed, and if I disagreed, I had Sally to say so for me,” she said.

Reiner previously told EW that “initially they weren’t going to get together" at the end. “We had it where time goes by, they run into each other in the street… and then they walk in opposite directions," he said. "I’d been single for 10 years after having been married for 10 years, and I just couldn’t figure out how it would work again.”

But it was during the filming of When Harry Met Sally... that Reiner met Michele and, as EW put it then, the director "found the happy ending he’d stopped believing in — and completed the film as we know it."

05 of 06

Misery (1990)

Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures

Kathy Bates and James Caan in 'Misery'

It's wild that one of the most agonizing film sequences of the 1990s came from the same guy who made The Princess Bride, but Reiner wasn't afraid to get ugly for his 1990 adaptation of King's 1987 novel Misery. The story follows Paul Sheldon (James Caan), a jaded writer of tawdry romances who's held captive by his biggest fan, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates).

Once Annie learns that the heroine of her favorite books is killed off in the upcoming volume, she not only forces Paul to bring the character back, but hobbles him with a mallet when he tries to escape. While King's book is ostensibly more graphic (Annie chops off one of his feet), the hobbling is arguably more disturbing.

"The movie has a real kick to it," EW's critic wrote in their review. "As Paul and Annie attempt to outsmart each other, Misery gets nastier and nastier. It turns into a psychotic cat-and-mouse game, and there are some genuine shocks."

And while we celebrated Caan's "slyly funny performance," this is Bates' show. "[She] gives Annie an underlying homicidal gleam, but most of the time she plays her with a hilariously sunny, apple-pie earnestness that recalls Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."

Her disquieting work earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Reiner's Castle Rock Entertainment would later produce another celebrated King adaptation starring Bates, 1995's Dolores Claiborne.

06 of 06

A Few Good Men (1992)

Columbia Pictures

Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Kevin Pollak in 'A Few Good Men'

One of the most talent-packed films of the 1990s, A Few Good Men stars Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollak, and Kiefer Sutherland in a script from Aaron Sorkin, who would go on to create The West Wing (1999–2006) and win an Oscar for writing The Social Network (2010).

While Sorkin wasn't nominated for A Few Good Men, the film received a nomination for Best Picture. Nicholson, too, scored an Oscar nod, for a performance that's more than just his fevered (and memed) declaration that "you can't handle the truth!"

The story of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow soldier (and their subsequent court-martial), the incendiary legal drama is "a thrillingly effective crowd pleaser," per EW's review.

"Like all courtroom dramas, it’s gimmicky and, on some essential level, synthetic," our review continues. "Yet when a courtroom drama has been made with this much skill and star power, it’s an irresistible throwback to the sort of sharp-edged entertainment Hollywood once provided with regularity (and, these days, has just forgotten how to make)."

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