14 Rob Reiner Movies and Shows You Either Already Love—or Will Soon

John Cusack’s breakthrough role is in this Rob Reiner-directed college road trip film, where one male and one female New England student travel together cross-country in order to link up with respective lovers in California, but their intense personality clash causes some problems (unless, against all odds, it could lead to an unlikely connection?). Admittedly, this is the one film from Reiner’s beloved early run that gets the least love, but it’s been positively received as an off-kilter counterbalance to the crassness of most contemporary teen sex comedies with more bite than the high school pics that John Hughes was cranking out. As a showcase of a star about to make it big, The Sure Thing is necessary viewing: Cusack was so young during the shoot that producer Roger Birnbaum had to become his legal guardian.

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If you like The Sure Thing and want to see where Reiner cut his classic comedy chops, watch the ‘70s sitcom All in the Family, Norman Lear’s massively influential sitcom set in the home of working class grump Archie Bunker. Reiner starred as Mike Stivic, Archie’s countercultural, facial-hair sporting son-in-law who constantly clashes with the stubborn blue-collar traditions of the household’s patriarch; he appeared in 174 episodes of the show.

Look how quickly we have reached the portion of Rob Reiner’s career where he was making many people’s favorite film of all-time. Stand By Me adapts a non-supernatural but still macabre and confronting story by Stephen King where four Maine boys set off to discover the body of a missing kid who was most likely hit by a train. It’s the summer before they start high school, and a rich, tense melancholy hangs over their journey, with every disagreement, insult-hurling session, and skirmish with danger pushing the rambunctious, immature kids closer to a poignant epiphany about how fleeting their friendships are–and by extension, how little control they feel in their lives. From about halfway through, you will feel something significant stuck in your throat–by the film’s close, you will be swimming in childhood memories that you swore didn’t feel as devastating at the time.

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If you like Stand By Me for all its immature boyish squabbling, you should watch Rob Reiner’s episodes ofNew Girl, where he plays the father of Jess (Zooey Deschanel). The scene where he argues with Nick (Jake Johnson) about the supposed originality of his zombie romance novel has the spirit of two 12-year-old boys bickering until they’re proven right.

Reiner was a tremendous fan of William Goldman’s winking adventure novel The Princess Bride, and by the time that a sterling but unlikely cast was assembled for his adaptation, the only question remaining was whether or not the director could pull off the novel’s combination of sincere swashbuckling romance and winking fairy tale satire. The unwavering, spotless legacy of this film proves he was the man for the job: coaxing impeccable comic performances out of Carey Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, and Andre the Giant without sacrificing any of the earnest genre juice or heart-fluttering fairytale romance (thanks to a young Robin Wright as the ephemeral Princess Buttercup) that made the book both a legitimately great adventure tale and a worthwhile pastiche of the genre. Try reading a kid a bedtime story without thinking about how you used to be a Fred Savage-shaped twerp who was hoodwinked into loving a “kissing story”.

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If you like The Princess Bride because of Billy Crystal’s scene-stealing cameo as Miracle Max, check out Rob Reiner’s cameo in Danny Devito’s Throw Momma from the Train, where he plays a flamboyant, plant-obsessed agent who rapidly upturns the life of his client (Billy Crystal) when he drops him out of the blue. It’s hard to steal a scene from Billy Crystal, but Reiner did it anyway.

At his directing peak, Rob Reiner was a true conductor: able to bring together multiple genius talents to realize the best possible version of a project. Making a great rom-com is a deceptively impossible and infuriating task, but with Nora Ephron’s dazzling script and transfixing lead performances by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan (not to mention Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby, and some of the most romantic shots of seasonal New York ever put on film), Reiner knocked it out of the park. The story of two “will they, won’t they” friends who gradually reckon with their mutual adoration is like a giant, triumphant symphony of laughs, sweetness, and tears; a monument to the romantic comedy that makes a pretty damn good case for it being the ultimate film genre.

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If you like When Harry Met Sally…, Rob Reiner got the chance to deliver some of Nora Ephron’s sparkling and hilarious rom-com dialogue when he was cast in Sleepless in Seattle, which was co-written and directed by the screenwriter. As Tom Hanks’s best friend Jay, Reiner has a boorish confidence that plays off Hanks’s jaded everyman charm, and Jay’s advice for courting the opposite sex has a winning bluntness that Reiner handles like a pro. What do women want, after all? “Pecs and a cute butt.”

Rob Reiner made films about people. The characters could be broad, eccentric, obscene, but relationships were always at the forefront of his filmography. This made him the unlikely-but-ultimately-wise pick to direct Misery, Stephen King’s white-knuckle story of a bedbound writer tortured by his superfan nurse–without the relationship between Paul Sheldon (James Caan) and Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), there would be no movie. Casting Caan was another counterintuitive move that paid off in the film’s favor: Caan is a restless, neurotic performer, and strapping him to a bed for ninety minutes draws out all of his agitation into his face, his strangled voice, his wriggling limbs, while relative newcomer Bates commanded every scene in her snowed-in shack with a lethal mix of homely cheer and psychotic intensity—she went on to win an Oscar for her performance.

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If you like Misery, you can see Rob Reiner treat his own stationary patient in The First Wives Club, where he cameos as a plastic surgeon who brusquely and hilariously critiques Goldie Hawn for coming back for more plastic surgery as her career is fading. He’s far less threatening, but his bedside manner is as blunt as Annie Wilkes’s sledgehammer.

If you like dramatic outbursts in movies, there may not be a better film to throw on. After working with legendary screenwriters like Nora Ephron and William Goldman, Reiner staged an early script by playwright and future maestro of quippy walk-and-talks, Aaron Sorkin. This courtroom drama pits old talent (Jack Nicholson) against new (Tom Cruise) as a military lawyer novice investigating a Marine’s brutal death by his fellow soldiers on Gitmo. Sorkin’s script (adapted from his own play) is, as always, only cautiously critical of America’s institutions, which makes A Few Good Men an early example of Reiner’s future obsession with films that embody American liberalism (although The American President is still remembered fondly), but the film’s exquisite courtroom theatrics speak to Reiner’s sterling ability to direct performances that feel on the verge of bursting but always stay compelling.

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If you like A Few Good Men, then you’ll definitely like watching Reiner’s outbursts during nearly every moment of screen time in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. One of Scorsese’s irascible quirks is casting directors in acting roles, and his dark comedy charting the rise-and-fall of stockbroker and fraudster Jordan Belfort features Reiner as Jordan’s dad Max, who lambasts his son and his cronies over their reckless spending and general obnoxious behavior, especially when it interrupts his TV time. The sheer size and volume of Reiner makes him a major weapon in Scorsese’s typically extensive ensemble.