Between 1984 and 1992 Rob Reiner directed seven films in a row that people still quote at dinner, and we cannot name another American filmmaker with a hot streak that broad across that many genres. The former Meathead from All in the Family became the director of a rock mockumentary, a fairy tale, a coming-of-age drama, a romantic comedy, a Stephen King thriller and a courtroom blockbuster, all before turning 46. His death in 2025 at 78 pushed us to rewatch everything, including the misfires, and rank the full run.
Key Takeaways
– Reiner directed 21 narrative features, from This Is Spinal Tap (1984) to Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025), plus the 2023 documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.
– His six best films all arrived between 1984 and 1992, and four of them (Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally and Stand by Me) remain repertory staples at NYC theaters.
– Misery earned Kathy Bates the Best Actress Oscar for 1990, and A Few Good Men was nominated for Best Picture.
– He co-founded Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987, the company behind Seinfeld and The Shawshank Redemption.
– Nearly every title below is available to rent on Apple TV and Prime Video; subscription homes rotate, so we note them where we are confident.
Why the Early Run Still Matters
Carl Reiner’s son grew up around Mel Brooks and the Your Show of Shows writers, then spent eight seasons as Michael Stivic opposite Carroll O’Connor, winning two Emmys. That background explains the director he became. Reiner’s films are built around performance and dialogue rather than camera flourish, which is why William Goldman, Nora Ephron and Aaron Sorkin all did some of their best screen work with him. The Castle Rock years gave him an unusual amount of control for a director who never went near an auteur pose, and the business lasted long after his own hit rate dipped.
Every Rob Reiner Film, Ranked
1. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Reiner’s debut, co-written with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, invented the modern mockumentary and has never been improved upon. Reiner plays Marty DiBergi, the filmmaker trailing a fading British metal band, and the amplifier that goes to 11 is still the sharpest joke ever told about rock excess. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2002. Rent it on Apple TV or Prime Video; Criterion also released a 4K edition in 2024.
2. The Princess Bride (1987)
Goldman adapted his own novel, and Reiner cast it perfectly: Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and a dry Peter Falk reading to Fred Savage. The film underperformed in theaters and became a generational text on VHS, which is why “Inconceivable!” and “As you wish” now get shouted at Nitehawk sing-along screenings. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video; it has also lived on Disney+ since the Fox library moved there.
3. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
Nora Ephron’s script, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan and the Katz’s Delicatessen scene, with Reiner’s own mother Estelle delivering “I’ll have what she’s having.” The film argues that friendship and romance are the same thing seen from different years, and its structure, with the older couples testifying between acts, has been copied by every rom-com since. It got Ephron an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
4. Stand by Me (1986)
Adapted from Stephen King’s novella The Body, this is the movie that proved Reiner could direct children and silence. River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell walk the tracks toward a dead body, and Richard Dreyfuss’s narration frames the trip as the last weekend of childhood. King himself has called it the most faithful adaptation of his work. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
5. Misery (1990)
Reiner’s only pure psychological thriller remains one of the best, because he understood that the horror lives in Kathy Bates’s cheerful politeness before the sledgehammer. Bates won the Best Actress Oscar, James Caan did his most vulnerable work, and Goldman’s script trims King’s novel to a two-hander in a snowed-in farmhouse. Anyone building a list of the great psychological thriller films starts here. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
6. A Few Good Men (1992)
Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway play became the courtroom film every law student has seen twice. Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon handle the procedure, and Jack Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth” was reportedly shot in a single long day of takes that left the crew exhausted. The film earned four Oscar nominations including Best Picture and grossed over $240 million worldwide. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
7. The American President (1995)
Sorkin again, with Michael Douglas as a widowed president dating a lobbyist played by Annette Bening. The political fantasy is openly liberal, deeply romantic and the direct seed of The West Wing, which reused several of its characters and much of its walk-and-talk rhythm. Reiner’s own political activism, from gun control to the 2003 Iraq war, is easiest to see here. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
8. The Sure Thing (1985)
John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga share a cross-country ride in a road comedy that owes a visible debt to It Happened One Night. It is the least discussed film of the great run, but the chemistry is real and Reiner already shows the patience with young actors that paid off a year later in Stand by Me. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
9. Flipped (2010)
A small adaptation of Wendelin Van Draanen’s young-adult novel, told twice from the viewpoints of Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe in 1960s suburbia. Warner Bros. buried it with a limited release, but it is the closest Reiner came to recapturing the Stand by Me register, and its reputation has grown steadily on streaming. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
10. The Bucket List (2007)
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play terminally ill men who leave the hospital to skydive and see the pyramids. The film is sentimental and knows it, yet it was Reiner’s last major commercial success, grossing roughly $175 million worldwide, and the two leads make the manipulation feel earned. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
11. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)
Reiner’s final feature reunites Guest, McKean and Shearer for a reunion concert forty-one years on, with Reiner back as DiBergi. The sequel cannot match the original’s shock of the new, and nobody involved pretends otherwise, but the band’s bickering still lands and the film works as a warm goodbye. Bleecker Street released it in theaters in September 2025; look for it on digital rental platforms.
12. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
A civil-rights legal drama about the 1994 retrial of Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers, with Alec Baldwin as prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter and Whoopi Goldberg as Myrlie Evers. James Woods earned a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination as De La Beckwith. The film centers the white lawyer in a story that belongs to the Evers family, which is its lasting flaw. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
13. Shock and Awe (2017)
Woody Harrelson and James Marsden play Knight Ridder reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, who correctly doubted the Bush administration’s Iraq WMD claims in 2002 and 2003, with Rob Reiner himself as their Washington bureau chief John Walcott and Tommy Lee Jones as veteran correspondent Joe Galloway. The journalism history is important and the anger is sincere, but the film arrived two years after Spotlight and feels like a lecture by comparison. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
14. LBJ (2016)
Harrelson, under heavy prosthetics, plays Lyndon Johnson from the 1960 campaign through the Civil Rights Act. Reiner clearly loves the material, and Harrelson is better than the makeup suggests, though the film sat on the shelf for a year after its September 2016 Toronto premiere before a small November 2017 release. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
15. Being Charlie (2015)
Reiner’s most personal late film, co-written by his son Nick Reiner and drawn from Nick’s own experience in rehab. Nick Robinson plays the addicted son of a California politician, and Cary Elwes plays the father. The film is uneven but honest, and it is the only one in the catalog that feels like a confession. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
16. The Story of Us (1999)
Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer play a couple deciding whether to end a fifteen-year marriage. Reiner clearly wanted a grown-up companion to When Harry Met Sally, and individual scenes work, especially Pfeiffer’s, but the flashback structure keeps the audience at arm’s length. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
17. Rumor Has It… (2005)
Jennifer Aniston learns that her family inspired The Graduate, and Kevin Costner may be the real Benjamin Braddock. Reiner replaced Ted Griffin as director mid-production, which shows. Shirley MacLaine’s Mrs. Robinson figure is the one element that fully delivers. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
18. The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
Morgan Freeman plays a boozy wheelchair-bound novelist who rents a lake house next to Virginia Madsen and her daughters. Gentle to a fault, it played a few theaters and went straight to on-demand, yet Freeman and Reiner share an easy rapport that makes it a pleasant Sunday watch. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
19. Alex & Emma (2003)
Luke Wilson is a novelist with a gambling debt and thirty days to finish a book; Kate Hudson is the stenographer he hires. The film-within-the-film conceit, borrowed loosely from Dostoevsky’s writing of The Gambler, never finds a tone, and the pairing has little spark. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
20. And So It Goes (2014)
Michael Douglas as a grumpy realtor and Diane Keaton as his singing neighbor should have produced something, given both their track records with Reiner-era material. Instead the film recycles the Bucket List formula with a granddaughter subplot and no stakes. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video.
21. North (1994)
Elijah Wood divorces his parents and auditions new ones around the world. Roger Ebert’s one-line review, “I hated this movie,” is the thing most people remember, and he was right. Bruce Willis in a pink bunny suit and a parade of ethnic caricatures make this the one Reiner film we cannot defend. Rent on Apple TV or Prime Video if curiosity wins.
The Producer and the Actor
Reiner co-founded Castle Rock Entertainment in 1987 with Alan Horn, Martin Shafer, Andrew Scheinman and Glenn Padnick, and the company turned out to be as successful as his directing career. Castle Rock produced Seinfeld, The Shawshank Redemption, In the Line of Fire and Best in Show, among dozens of others. As a producer he also stayed attached to long-running comedies after stepping away from the director’s chair.
His acting never really stopped either. After All in the Family ended in 1979 he turned up in Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Primary Colors (1998), The First Wives Club (1996) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and on television as Jess’s father Bob Day in a recurring role on New Girl and as studio boss Ace Amberg on Hollywood. His younger self as a comedian writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s is the part of the biography most fans skip, and it explains the ear for sketch rhythm that runs through Spinal Tap.
Where to Catch Reiner on a Big Screen
The four 1980s classics show up constantly in New York repertory programming. Nitehawk in Williamsburg and Prospect Park has run The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally as brunch screenings, Metrograph and Film Forum have both programmed Spinal Tap, and Stand by Me tends to resurface at Alamo Drafthouse during summer. Checking those calendars beats streaming; Reiner’s movies were built for a room laughing together, and the Katz’s scene in particular plays very differently with a crowd.
FAQ
What is Rob Reiner’s best film as a director?
We rank This Is Spinal Tap first, with The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally close behind. Any of the top six is a reasonable answer, and the right one depends on which genre you reach for.
How many films did Rob Reiner direct?
Twenty-one narrative features between 1984 and 2025, plus the 2023 documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life for HBO.
Did Rob Reiner win an Oscar?
No. He was never nominated for Best Director, though A Few Good Men received a Best Picture nomination and Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery under his direction.
Which Rob Reiner movies are on streaming?
All of them rent on Apple TV and Prime Video. The Princess Bride has been available on Disney+, and the rest move between Max, Paramount+ and Netflix in short windows, so a rental is the reliable option.
What was Rob Reiner’s last movie?
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, released by Bleecker Street in September 2025, which reunited the original band and brought back his Marty DiBergi character.
Was Rob Reiner related to Carl Reiner?
Yes. Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, was his father, and Reiner often credited growing up around Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar’s writers for his comic instincts.
