This year had pretty much already broken me, but if there could be said to be a final straw, it might be the death of actor and director Rob Reiner this past weekend. (Though there are still two more weeks of 2025 left, and the way things have been going, it’s entirely possible for new horrors to arise and render recent ones small and insignificant by comparison.)
It’s not just that Reiner directed two of the movies that greatly shaped me as a person, as a cineaste, and as a film critic, but that the manner of his passing — as it looks as of this writing, at the hand of one of his own adult children, a troubled man who struggled with addiction even though his family had, seemingly, all the resources needed to cope with it — and the utterly unhinged and sociopathic response from the piece of shit who sits in the Oval Office seem to be emblematic of, and indeed even an acceleration of, the ongoing decline of the United States of America as a social and cultural global power.
As an American who has been living outside the USA for the past 15 years, it’s not like I can say that this is necessarily a bad thing. But it’s definitely a thing. And it highlights the in-progress global destabilization of what has been the planetary steady state (relatively speaking, and for better or for worse) in the post-WWII era.
Anyway.
When I say that Reiner’s work shaped me, I mean that his 1984 movie This Is Spinal Tap — which maybe didn’t invent the mockumentary subgenre but arguably made it viable, to whatever degree it is actually viable — and his 1987 fantasy comedy The Princess Bride helped hone my sense of humor on a par with Sahara-dry British satire like that dished out by Monty Python and Douglas Adams and my beloved Doctor Who of the 1970s and 80s (which was very funny in a very caustic, cynical way). There isn’t a lot of American comedy that works on a similar level to the acerbic English humor that I was always drawn to, even as a kid, but Reiner’s approach spoke to me. Maybe that’s because I was, like him, a child of the Bronx, of New York City, a metropolis that always was, and is still to this day, more European than American.
So, as I continue my attempt to get my head back in the film game, I invite you to check out these two movies that so deeply inform my criticism, and in honor of Reiner’s gentle and wide-ranging genius. If you’ve never seen them before, you’re in for a real treat — I envy your discovery of them. If you’re revisiting them, I hope you find new heart and new humor in both.
(Read my 2000 review of This Is Spinal Tap and my 2001 review of The Princess Bride, and check out my book The Totally Geeky Guide to The Princess Bride, available globally on Kindle.)
This Is Spinal Tap:
US: stream on HBO Max; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
The Princess Bride:
US: stream on Disney+ and Hulu; buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on YouTube (with ads); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See This Is Spinal Tap at Letterboxd and The Princess Bride at Letterboxd for more viewing options, including in all other global regions.
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Thank you for this post, it’s a kindness to read such a heartfelt tribute to great artist….From a longtime reader on rss.