In self-defense, Mr. Reed insisted to The Times in 2018 that “I like just as many films as I dislike. But I think we’re drowning in mediocrity,” he continued. “I just try as hard as I can to raise the level of consciousness. It’s so hard to get people to see good films.”
On more than a few occasions, he landed in trouble of his own making. He was known to trash films he had barely watched, and some critics of his said he occasionally had assistants conduct his interviews.
When Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, won best actress at the 1987 Academy Awards for “Children of a Lesser God,” Mr. Reed wrote that she had benefited from a “pity vote.” Bizarrely, and wrongly, he insisted that Marisa Tomei did not really win the 1993 Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in “My Cousin Vinny” and that the presenter, Jack Palance, had read the wrong name. Mr. Reed once mixed up Benicio del Toro, a Puerto Rican actor, and Guillermo del Toro, a Mexican filmmaker, misspelling Benicio to boot.
Eyes really widened in 2013 after Mr. Reed, writing in The Observer, cruelly described Melissa McCarthy in “Identity Thief” as “tractor-sized,” likening her to a “female hippo.” In response, Ms. McCarthy said she “felt really bad for someone who is swimming in so much hate.” His own reaction was that she owed him an apology, for she went on to lose weight after his review.
A couple of times he ran into trouble with the law. In 1988, he pleaded guilty to and received a $2,000 fine for trying to evade New York State taxes. Twelve years later, he was accused of shoplifting at a Tower Records store on the Upper West Side after being found with Mel Tormé, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee CDs in his coat pocket. It was all a mistake, he said, and the charges were dropped. When she learned of the incident, Ms. Lee sent him a complete set of her recordings.
Rex Taylor Reed was born in Fort Worth on Oct. 2, 1938, the only child of James M. Reed, an oil company supervisor, and Jewell (Smith) Reed, who claimed a distant relationship to members of the Dalton Gang and whose father, she said, was rocked as a boy on Jesse James’s knee.
