A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

“Stand by Me” is a moving coming-of-age comedy drama directed by Rob Reiner. Adapted from Stephen King’s novella The Body by screenwriter-producer Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, this 1986 comedy drama follows the misadventures of four pre-teen boys (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell) who hike through the woods outside the small town of Castle Rock, Oregon to look for a missing teen’s corpse. Like director Robert Mulligan’s “Summer of ‘42” and other coming-of-age movies, “Stand by Me” is not a plot-driven movie. It’s a character piece that focuses on Gordie (Wheaton), Chris (Phoenix), Teddy (Feldman) and Vern (O’Connell) during a weekend-long trek in the Oregon woods to find a dead kid’s body before a band of teenage hoodlums led by Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland) does. On the surface, “Stand by Me” is one of those “small” films that are better suited for after school television specials than the silver screen. But King’s well-written novella is...

“A Few Good Men” (1992) Directed by Rob Reiner Written by Aaron Sorkin, based on his stage play Starring: Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak Rob Reiner’s courtroom drama “A Few Good Men,”  an adaptation of Aaron Sorkin's stage play,  starts with a brutal act of extra-legal disciplinary action against Marine Pvt. William Santiago at the Marine barracks in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, located on the southeast tip of Cuba.  At “Gitmo,”   two of Santiago’s fellow Marines, Lance Cpl. Harold Dawson (Wolgang Bodison) and Pfc. Louden Downey (James Marshall), stuff a rag into his mouth, hogtie his arms and legs with duct tape. Then they watch in horror as their squadmate starts bleeding copiously. Santiago dies, and Dawson and Downey are accused of conspiracy and murder. A few days later, Lt. Commander JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore), a Navy legal officer assigned to the Judge Advocate General's Internal Aff...

In July of 1989, Columbia Pictures released “When Harry Met Sally…” a witty romantic comedy written by the late Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle”) and directed by Rob (“Stand by Me”) Reiner. Starring Billy Crystal as Harry Burns and Meg Ryan as Sally Albright, “When Harry Met Sally…” is a clever, humorous, yet unexpectedly moving look at the relationships between men and women. It covers various aspects of love and gender roles, but its most famous theme is Can men and women really be friends?   “When Harry Met Sally…” follows the course of the titular characters’ relationship over a 12-year period that begins in 1977 and ends roughly in the movie’s Present Day. As Ephron and Reiner set up the scenario, Harry and Sally have jgraduated from the University of Chicago and are headed east to start new lives and careers in New York. They have never met before, but Sally’s a friend of Harry’s girlfriend Amanda (Michelle Nicastro) and has agreed to take Harry along as a co-dri...

One of director Rob Reiner's best films is 1987's “The Princess Bride,” a witty-yet-sweet comedy/fantasy written by two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman, who adapted his own novel about the beautiful maiden Buttercup (Robin Wright) who lives in the faraway land of Florin and whose true love, a young farmboy named Westley (Cary Elwes), goes off to sea to seek his fortune, telling Buttercup that he would come back for her. But when Buttercup learns that Westley's ship has been attacked by the Dread Pirate Roberts she swears she will never love anyone again, an oath she keeps even when she accepts a marriage proposal from Florin's Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), a handsome yet shady fellow who probably could give Machiavelli some lessons in, well, Machiavellian diplomacy. Humperdinck’s scheme is simple: take over as King of Florin as soon as his father passes away, get bethroded to a beautiful engaging commoner, then stage her kid...

Book Review: The Princess Bride William Goldman’s 1973 novel “The Princess Bride: S. Morganstern’s Classic Tale of True Love & High Adventure” is a warm-hearted and funny book for readers of all ages. As conceived by the man who wrote “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and adapted Cornelius Ryan’s “A Bridge Too Far” and Stephen King’s “Misery” for the silver screen, “The Princess Bride” is supposedly an abridged – the “good parts” – version of a much longer book written by S. Morganstern. Goldman, who wrote “The Princess Bride” when his two daughters asked for stories about “princesses” and “brides,” cleverly mixes elements of adventure, comedy, fairy tales, fantasy, and romance in his tale about a beautiful maiden, Buttercup, and Westley, the handsome farm boy she loves. As in director Rob Reiner’s beloved 1987 film (for which Goldman wrote the screenplay), Buttercup and Westley live in a farm in the (mythical) country of Florin during the Renaissance. She’s...