The Scariest Part of Weapons Is What It Refused to Explain

"Thank you, Dana and Justin, for those lovely tributes to Rob Reiner, a man who always seemed like a mensch in addition to being someone whose big- and small-screen contributions were inconceivably enormous. I love the way you put it, Justin, that Reiner had "an anti-auteurist touch" throughout that incredible eight-year run of films he directed. It's true that each of those classics works miraculously well without bearing the insistent marks of an individual's creative ownership."

"But part of me also wonders if the reason I personally took Reiner's directorial output for granted is that those films are such load-bearing parts of popular culture, so influential and beloved in their respective genres, that it's easy to forget that they weren't always there and that someone had to make them. I must have seen a dozen things inspired by This Is Spinal Tap and heard multiple people quoting from When Harry Met Sally ..."

"April and Sound of Falling are definitely more about immersion than unfurling a plot, intent on dropping the viewer into the perspective as well as the sensory experiences of their female protagonists. But while I'm absolutely with Bilge that to treat movies as merely vehicles for narrative is to miss the point of the medium entirely, I've noticed that many of the features that spoke to me most this year didn't depart from storytelling so much as they maintained a testy"

Rob Reiner's films combined a humane sensibility with broad cultural impact, often lacking visible auteurist signatures while becoming foundational genre touchstones. Many of his eight-year run of directed films function without obvious singular creative ownership yet achieved deep popular saturation. Questions arise about whether future filmmakers will reach similar cultural ubiquity, especially as the industry produces fewer Castle Rock-style movies. Films like April and Sound of Falling prioritize immersive, sensory perspectives of female protagonists over conventional plot mechanics. Treating movies only as narrative vehicles misses cinematic potential, and several admired features preserved storytelling while testing its boundaries.

Read at Slate Magazine