The Best Coming-of-Age Movies of All Time

Growing up is pretty damn hard to deal with. It's confusing, heartbreaking yet exhilirating. As a kid juggling all of these emotions, very little makes sense, and so you look for any type of guidance, some map. This where the movies come in.

There's a reason why so many people feel gravitate towards coming-of-age movies. Those types of films speak to a turning point in our lives that is critical to who we'll become.

Nowadays, the words "young adult" point to dystopian flicks like The Hunger Games or vampire romances like Twilight. However, director James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now, out in limited release today, is here to remind us that real life matters too. We don't grow up with mythical creatures in our high school hallways—we grow up seeing our exes leaning against someone else's locker or pining over the cute popular kid who doesn't even look at us. It's a refreshing look into a reality Hollywood's ignored for so long, and it's got the potential to be a classic. A classic, that is, just like these: The Best Coming-of-Age Movies of All Time.

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30. The Wood (1999)

Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Stars: Omar Epps, Richard T. Jones, Taye Diggs, Sean Nelson, Duane Finley, Trent Cameron, Malinda Williams, Sanaa Lathan

The Wood is a rarity in the pantheon of time-to-grow-up cinema—it's a film in which the same characters come of age more than once.

The central trio of best friends first grow up as teenagers, experiencing all of high school's good-time highs (gymnasium dances, girlfriends, shooting the shit in local pizzerias) and its painful lows (breakups, rejection) in a series of flashbacks. In writer-director Rick Famuyiwa hands, though, the familiar coming-of-age beats are handled with fun-loving verve, thanks to the endearingly naturalistic performances from his young actors (Sean Nelson, Duane Finley, Trent Cameron) and several genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.

The second coming of age, meanwhile, happens in the present, where one of the fellas (played by Taye Diggs) is suffering from an obnoxious case of cold-feet on the morning of his wedding. His two pals (Omar Epps and Richard T. Jones) are forced to snap him out of his funk, and, in the process, they all embrace adulthood.

That's what you call a two-for-one deal. —MB

29. Empire of the Sun (1987)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson

Steven Spielberg's other, other WWII drama doesn't receive the praise it deserves, overshadowed as it is by Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Empire of the Sun, based on the semi-autbiographical novel by J.G. Ballard, is a much smaller picture, a coming-of-age movie set against the backdrop of the Second World War.

Christian Bale plays Jim, a British schoolboy living with his posh parents in Shanghai. After becoming separated from his parents in the chaos of conflict, he's captured by Japanese soliders. At a POW camp, he finds a father figure in Basie (John Malkovich), but he soon learns he can't rely on anyone else. Yes, Empire of the Sun is like a Beyoncé song. Just one of many reasons why you need to see this underrated minor masterpiece. —RS

28. Whale Rider (2002)

Director: Niki Caro
Stars: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff Curtis

Far more male coming-of-age movies get made than ones looking at young women. Which makes Whale Rider all the more refreshing. Set among the Maori people in Whangara, New Zealand, Whale Rider tells the story of Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes), who wants to become the leader of her tribe. Her grandfather, a member of the old guard, forbids it. He doesn't believe any woman should lead.

Castle-Hughes earned on Oscar nomination for her frank portrayal of a girl who refuses to let tradition keep her from ruling. Bow down. —RS

27. Mysterious Skin (2004)

Director: Gregg Araki
Stars: Chase Ellison, Elisabeth Shue, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet

Not all coming-of-age movies should be rainbows and first finger-bangs. Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin is a sobering look at child abuse. Opening in 1972, the film follows two young men as they negotiate the world in the wake of life-altering sexual abuse.

Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) becomes a hustler in New York. His friend Brian (Brady Corbet) shuts himself off from the rest of the world, obsessing over the possibilities of alien abduction. Unsettling but ultimately a rewarding experience in sympathy and love, Araki's eighth feature is too honest to be ignored. —RS

26. Let the Right One In (2008)

Director: Tomas Alfredson
Stars: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar

Say your friend loves vampires, but her measuring sticks for great bloodsucker characters are Edward Cullen and Bill Compton—first off, we feel your pain. Secondly, it sounds like she's ready for the "Let the Right One In Test."

The opposite of Twilight and True Blood in every way, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's slow-burning undead drama handles budding love better than Bella/Edward (even though, yes, the suitors are a little boy and an equally little girl vamp) and is scarier in its quietest moments than True Blood's Eric Northman ever is at his most diabolical.

Show Let The Right One In to your friend and see if she's willing to admit its superiority; if not, try not to hide your disappointment beneath a Taylor Lautner shirt. —MB

25. Ratcatcher (1999)

Director: Lynne Ramsay
Stars: Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews, William Eadie, Michelle Stewart

Scottish-born director Lynne Ramsey's debut Ratcatcher is set in Glasgow during the infamous national garbage strike of 1973. The film's quiet and intense protagonist, James, runs around his grimy neighborhood, haunted by the memory of his dead friend. He gets into trouble trying to play with the older boys, has his first taste of sex getting to know the mousy Margaret Anne, and dreams of escaping his increasingly dirty neighborhood. As funny as it is dreamy and poetic, Ratcatcher opens a windown on a particular time and place you haven't seen before. —RS

24. Fresh (1994)

Director: Boaz Yakin
Stars: Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, N'Bushe Wright

Films like Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, while exceptional in their own ways, paint portraits of inner city life that, frankly, one could get on any high-quality gangster rap album. The main characters seem familiar if you've listened to enough N.W.A., MC Eiht, or Spice 1. Fresh, however, released around the same time as those more publicized movies, presents an urban survival story that's, well, fresh, and largely uncharted.

The reason: Its protagonist, Fresh (played excellently by youngster Sean Nelson), is only 12 years old, makes prominent use of chess, isn't about inner city kids just trying to endure—Fresh is trying to get the hell out of Dodge. And to do so, he has to run drugs for a local Washington Heights heroin kingpin, Esteban (Giancarlo Esposito).

Fresh comes of age by witnessing the horrors of life in the projects firsthand, namely seeing a guy shot down in cold blood in the middle of a basketball game. He's been born into a hard place, and all he can do is fight his way out of it, one step at a time. —MB

23. Persepolis (2007)

Director: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
Stars: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian

In 2000 Marjane Satrapi began publishing the segments that would come to form her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, chronicling her childhood in Iran and, later, her time abroad. Upon finding a larger audience when published in English in 2003, it was immediately hailed as a masterpiece, both as a frank memoir, a potent piece of political commentary, and as a great comic book.

Then, in 2007, Satrapi collaborated with Vincent Paronnaud, turning her story into a feature-length animated movie. It didn't change much, aside from flashing her truth into your eyes at 24 frames per second. It was all the better for it.—RS

22. Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Director: Todd Solondz
Stars: Heather Matarazzo, Victoria Davis, Christina Brucato, Christina Vidal

It's impossible not to relate to the preteen outcast. Even the bullies and popular girls of middle school seem to look back on those years as the dark ages. We were all losers. Which probably explains why the indie film Welcome to the Dollhouse was such a hit.

The film follows the awkward and bespectacled Dawn (Heather Matarazzo), a seventh grader with no friends, a family who either drives her insane or doesn't pay attention to her at all, and a "boyfriend" who only becomes her boyfriend because of his repeated attempts to force himself on her (but he turns out to be a nice kid, we guess). In general, the flick walks the fine line between tragedy and comedy, much like everyone's seventh-grade year.

And, proving to be the most accurate coming-of-age tale we've got on our list, there's no real "happy ending" for Dawn. Her only solace is the fact that she made it through another school year and gets to have three months away before she's forced to do it all over again in eighth grade. Real life hurts.—TA

21. Fat Girl (2001)

Director: Catherine Breillat
Stars: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida, Libero De Rienzo, Arsinée Khanjian

It's a sad fact that there are so few women directors working in film today, making an impact with work that gets serious attention. French filmmaker Catherine Breillat is one of those women, and for that you should be glad. But when it comes to enjoying her movies, get ready to alter your definition of that word. You don't enjoy Breillat. You endure Breillat.

Her film Fat Girl, about two sisters first experimenting with sex, is an angry affair that complicates gender stereotyping and makes sexism horrible in the manner of a horror movie. From a distance. Within the grasp of the film, the viewer just feels gut-punched. To say anything else would spoil the the fun. —RS

20. A Bronx Tale (1993)

Director: Robert De Niro
Stars: Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Lillo Brancato, Francis Capra, Taral Hicks

Robert De Niro clearly learned a thing or two from his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese. With his directorial debut, A Bronx Tale, De Niro brought intelligence, grit, and a no-holds-barred emotional undercurrent to the coming-of-age genre.

As seen through the eyes of young Italian American teenage Calogero (Lillo Brancato Jr.), A Bronx Tale is the ultimate depiction of what it takes to become a man. In one corner of Calogero's complicated life is his father, Lorenzo (De Niro), a hard-working, blue collar bus driver who is determined to keep his only son away from the mob. In the other corner there's local gangster king Sonny (Chazz Palminteri, who also wrote the script), a charming but dangerous man who's taken in the trustworthy Calogero like the son he never had. Making life even harder for Calogero is the fact that he's living in late-1960s NYC, where racial tensions are simmering. This complicates Calogero's budding romance with a black classmate (Taral Hicks).

The resolutions to Calogero's many dilemmas aren't pretty, nor are they in any ways cheats. Palminteri's screenplay stays true to the environment in which its set, with death, disappointments, and broken hearts happening without fail. Yet A Bronx Tale is ultimately an uplifting experience, due to the lessons the viewer can take away from Calogero's arduous journey from adult-minded boy to battle-scarred man. —MB

19. Coraline (2009)

Director: Henry Selick
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, John Hodgman

British novelist and comic book scribe Neil Gaiman penned a children's novel called Coraline in 2002, and it swept awards for genre novellas in 2003. It wasn't long before the film dropped, turning Gaiman's creepy tale of a young girl who travels to a different world where nothing is what it seems (first sign? Her parents have buttons for eyes-it's terrifying) into a gorgeous stop-motion animation masterpiece.

Seeing as Gaiman had a hand in the production, Coraline couldn't miss. It's also one of the few films worth seeing in 3D. —RS

18. Heavenly Creatures (1994)

Director: Peter Jackson
Stars: Melanie Lynskey, Kate Winslet, Sarah Peirse, Diana Kent

Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson can hang out with Bilbo, Frodo, and all those other pint-sized Middle Earth dweebs all he wants, but studied movie lovers know what's up: Jackson's best movie remains Heavenly Creatures, a small, dark, emotionally devastating drama he made seven years before anything related to J.R.R. Tolkien came about.

Melanie Lynskey (who later, unrecognizably, co-starred on Two and a Half Men as Charlie Sheen's obsessive neighbor) and a then-unknown Kate Winslet play a couple of New Zealand daydreamers who fantasize about a fictional land called Borovnia, get disturbingly close to one another, and, ultimately, get caught up in a murder.

There's a creepy sexual undercurrent alive throughout Heavenly Creatures, adding tons of uneasy subtext to the film's lavishly shot, hallucinogenic dream sequences. By playing the real-life-inspired subject matter as more fantasy than reality, Jackson blurs the line between innocence and psychosis. It's the anti-Frodo. —MB

17. This Is England (2006)

Director: Shane Meadows
Stars: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley, Andrew Shim, Joseph Gilgun, Vicky McClure

The winner of the 2006 British Independent Film Awards, This Is England tackles skinheads and white nationalism in the UK through the eyes of 12-year-old named Shaun (Turgoose).

Shaun is initiated into the skinhead group when the leader, Woody (Gilgun), feels sorry for him after a fight in school. Soon after, another member of the group, Combo (Graham), is released from prison; the ex-con begins rallying the support of his superiors for his nationalist and racist views, leaving Shaun torn. —TA

16. Boyz N the Hood (1991)

Director: John Singleton
Stars: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne

Before the then-23-year-old John Singleton emerged with the poignant Boyz n the Hood, filmmakers stayed clear of the urban black life.

For critics and moviegoers alike who'd only heard about ghetto hardships in rap songs, Boyz n the Hood exposed them to a real world where dreams don't seem attainable. A world where a promising, college-bound high school athlete gets needlessly gunned down; one where a charismatic and intelligent teenager choose drug-dealing over school because, well, school doesn't offer the same kinds of financial rewards.

Singleton lets his characters act genuinely in the most challenging of situations, never leading them down sentimental paths in ways that lesser filmmakers very well could have. Boyz n the Hood works as a slice-of-life film that just so happens to take place in the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, which, back in 1991, was a setting that had yet to get any mainstream attention from the movies. And the powers that be rewarded Singleton handsomely: He became both the youngest person ever and the first African-American filmmaker to be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars. —MB

15. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Director: Stephen Chbosky
Stars: Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd, Emma Watson, Nina Dobrev, Reece Thompson, Mae Whitman, Dylan McDermott, Kate Walsh, Melanie Lynskey

With its young cast and high school angst vibes (seen via the early batches of promotional stills and trailers), writer-director Stephen Chbosky's adaptation of his own popular young-adult novel gave non-readers of the book the impression that, at best, it'd be a somewhat more thoughtful version of American Pie. Boy, were they dead wrong.

The emotional wallops stored inside the vastly underrated The Perks of Being a Wallflower are some of the most poignant felt in teen movie history. Hats off to young stars Logan Lerman (as an insecure kid looking for friendship while battling depression and other personal demons), Ezra Miller (as the perky yet susceptible-to-pain gay teen who befriends Lerman's character), and Emma Watson (Lerman's bubbly, heart-melting, seemingly unattainable love interest), each of whom give honest, raw performances that go well beyond the usual high school cinema levels and do justice to Chbosky's beloved characters.

Although some will argue the film is all too new to top an all-time list, we can guarantee you that just like the original book is a staple in every lonesome kid's locker, a copy of the movie will be a permanent fixture on the shelves of viewers (and not just movie lovers) everywhere. —MB, TA

14. Fish Tank (1991)

Director: Andrea Arnold
Stars: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing

Most moviegoers know Michael Fassbender as X-Men's young Magneto or Shame's swinging dick. But in the coming-of-age tale Fish Tank, Hollywood's most reluctant leading man plays Connor O'Reilly, the handsome new guy dating 15-year-old Mia's mom. Mia, played by Kate Jarvis, loves rap and wants to become a dancer (Sidebar: this movie uses rap better than 90 percent of movies). When O'Reilly initiates an inappropriate relationship with Mia, the film begins taking shocking turns that will leave the viewer breathless. —TA

13. Sixteen Candles (1984)

Director: John Hughes
Stars: Molly Ringwald, Justin Henry, Michael Schoeffling, Anthony Michael Hall

Truthfully, we should most identify with Anthony Michael Hall's accurately nicknamed “The Geek” in Sixteen Candles, one of writer-director John Hughes' best movies. Throughout the film, Hall's character habitually tries to score with his crush, Samantha (Molly Ringwald, solidifying her '80s dream girl status here), until, in an awesome moment of nerdy triumph, Samantha lends The Geek a pair of her panties for him to show off to his friends. It's a delightful payoff for a dude who's not unlike most of us back in grades nine through twelve.

Whenever we reflect on Sixteen Candles, though, all sentiments and fondness point right towards Samantha, due to Ringwald's tender performance, a showcase of adorable sweetness and sympathetic vulnerability. Rightfully so, Ringwald's Sixteen Candles' role has become the poster-girl for the prolific '80s teen comedy genre. Like the movie's top geek would be, we're not mad at that. —MB

12. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Stars: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ariadna Gil

Guillermo del Toro's boundless imagination spills onto the screen in Pan's Labyrinth, the filmmaker's indisputable masterpiece. A sort of bloody Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, it's as much a fable about fascism as it is a coming-of-age tale.

Pre-teen Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) is shy yet resilient, having to forego living a normal kid's life in favor of coping with her bed-ridden mother's ailments and her tyrannical, military stepfather's heartlessness. The only way she's able to withstand the constant emotional turmoil is by retreating into her own imagination, a magical make-believe labyrinth in which she has to outsmart large toads, a ghoulish creature with eyeballs in the palms of its hands, and the leader of them all, a faun named Pan.

Alternately scary and heartbreaking, Pan's Labyrinth the kind of powerful, vital fairy tale that's better for adults than kids. —MB

11. The Last Picture Show (1971)

Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Stars: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson

The Last Picture Show trades in nostalgia for somber introspection. Widely celebrated director Pete Bogdanovich's monumental classic uses its 1951 high school backdrop as a gateway into a much bigger and gently tragic narrative. A young Jeff Bridges is amongst the actors who play teens living in a dying Texas town, where minimal funds gradually turn their neighborhoods into quasi-tombs. Heartbreak, death, and the collective sorrows over a closed movie theater comprise The Last Picture Show's most heartbreaking elements; high school movies don't get much more mleancholy than this. —MB

10. Almost Famous (2000)

Director: Cameron Crowe
Stars: Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, Jason Lee, Bijou Phillips, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin, Zooey Deschanel

Touring with a band for an article in Rolling Stone, rubbing elbows with gorgeous groupies (Hudson, in a role that snagged her the Golden Globe for best supporting actress), and knee deep in the trenches of the rock lifestyle—it's safe to say William's (Fugit) summer vacation is better than yours will be. And to add insult to injury, he's still in high school.

Cameron Crowe's affecting tale of a teenager thrust into a life-changing opportunity is not just envy inspiring fiction. William's vacation of a lifetime is actually a semi-autobiographical story based on Crowe's own experiences as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone, which explains why Almost Famous, despite seeming implausible, feels so genuine. —SC

9. The 400 Blows (1959)

Director: Francois Truffaut
Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Albert Remy, Claire Maurier

After spending nearly a decade working as a film critic, Francois Truffaut knew what made film work, and when it came to sit down and write his feature debut, The 400 Blows, the auteur kept things personal. A key piece of the Nouvelle Vague, Truffaut's best known film treats adolescence with a respect and restraint.

The film's preteen protagonist, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud), is a deeply unhappy kid who, following accusations of plagiarism at school, gets sent by his asshole father to live behind bars. Thanks to Leaud's controlled performance, The 400 Blows never descends into the goofiness you've come to associate with movies about precocious youngsters. —MB

8. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Director: Wes Anderson
Stars: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Frances McDormand

So what if writer-director Wes Anderson always makes the same kind of quirky little comedy? When they're as superbly made as Moonrise Kingdom, there should be no reason to complain, haters-especially since this might be the best of Anderson's illustrious 16-year career.

Set in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom feels more like a fable come to life than a traditional movie. The perfectly cast young duo of Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward play an orphaned boy scout and an eccentric dreamer, respectively, who, guided by a shared first-time love, run away from their homes and cause a formidable cast of grade-A actors (including Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Bill Murray) to drop everything and search for them. Bizarre shenanigans, tender (and somehow not creepy) kiddie romance, and unpredictable storytelling ensue. —MB

7. The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Director: Noah Baumbach
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Laura Linney, William Baldwin, Anna Paquin, Jeff Daniels

Like a mad earnest Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach focuses on brainy, white, artist types who excel at hurting each other. He doesn't write jokes so much as write barbs for the characters to stick in each other, and if you laugh from discomfort, know that you're not alone. The Squid and the Whale takes viewers to Park Slope circa 1986, where one marriage is falling apart, and two young brothers will deal with that dismantling in very different ways, neither positive.

Not only does it encapsulate Park Slope before Brooklynland (or whatever we're supposed to call it), The Squid and the Whale pins down the squirming weirdness of budding male sexuality in a way that no contemporary film has come close to touching. —RS

6. The Outsiders (1983)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Stars: Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez

Besides the super-cast of young talent (we're talking young Cruise, Swayze, Lowe and Diane Lane, and we'll also mention the film helped start The Brat Pack of the '80s), The Outsiders is one of the most exhilarating gang films ever produced. Which is pretty dope, seeing as how it was based on a novel written by a 16-year-old girl, S. E. Hinton, in 1967.

The film focuses on the mounting tension between two gangs who are polar opposites on the social ladder, the Socs and the Greasers. Gang wars, noble deeds and winning the affection of girls is all covered in the teen angst piece disguised as a badass brawl.—TA

5. Harold and Maude (1971)

Director: Hal Ashby
Stars: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort

According to Harold and Maude, the best way to come into adulthood is to form a romantic relationship with a real adult. That is, a 79-year-old woman. Harold (Bud Cort) is the classic 20-year-old: he's depressed, he constantly fakes suicide to try to draw the attention of his distached mother, and he's entirely disillusioned by life. Then, he meets his own version of a manic pixie dream girl, in the form of the lively old lady Maude (Ruth Gordon).

The dark comedy of the unlikely romance may seem kind of, well, gross, but while viewing Gordon's Maude, it's completely believable that someone would fall for the energetic and charming elder and would be better for it, finding joy in everyday life. —TA

4. The Graduate (1967)

Director: Mike Nichols
Stars: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross, William Daniels

Let's be real. Most coming of age movies aren't as, uh, interesting, as The Graduate. Typically, you've got kids going from childhood to adulthood dealing with the same struggles—discovering certain bodily functions, falling in love for the first time, or losing a parent. In other words, whatever mushy sentimental story is your cup of tea.

The Graduate is a departure from the norm, which has made it a classic coming-of-age film. Why? Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin, is pretty much already a man. He's just graduated college, and his journey becomes one from the classroom to the bedroom (yes, in the sexual way). Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) teaches the much younger Benjamin the ways of seduction, and shows him the importance of being himself and challenging authority. Of course, that doesn't mean his life will get any easier, as evidenced by the incredible ending. —TA

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

Director: Robert Mulligan
Stars: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Robert Duvall and Brock Peters

To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the greatest novel-to-film adaptations of all time. Thanks to its stars, the amazing Gregory Peck and the adorable Mary Badham, Harper Lee's story, loosely based on her own childhood with her neighborhood friend, Truman Capote, comes to life. The movie, just like the book, has the perfect combination of a coming-of-age story and court room drama, as the threads of the story eventually intersect in the character of Tom Robinson, a black man on trial for the raping a white woman. —TA

2. The Breakfast Club (1985)

Director: John Hughes
Stars: Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall

Like Martin Scorsese is to Catholic guilt, or Stanley Kubrick to chilly sociology, John Hughes is the king of the teens, and The Breakfast Club is his best work. Written and directed by the late Hollywood maverick, The Breakfast Club takes an everyday high school set-up—kids locked up in detention—and uses the situation to explore the psychology of teenagers both popular and socially ostracized. It might be set in 1985, but Hughes' funny and revelatory flick speaks volumes about modern-day young adults, just like it did 26 years ago.

Cleverly, Hughes chose the most stereotypical caricatures just to rip through the preconceptions. The abrasive hoodlum (Judd Nelson) is really a lonely basket-case with serious daddy issues; the star athlete (Emilio Estevez) makes his classmates envious yet can't seem to make his father happy; and the popular girl (Molly Ringwald) that all the guys want to sleep with is actually a mega-prude. The Breakfast Club is like a group therapy session, just much more fun to watch. —MB

1. Stand By Me (1986)

Director: Rob Reiner
Stars: Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?" An older man's observations on the virtues of young friendship set the tone for the timeless story (based on Stephen King's "The Body") that follows a ragtag crew of kids on a quest to become local heroes by finding the body of missing boy.

Their coming-of-age story is the kind of adventure you can only have on a summer vacation, when long nights and possibility-filled days create crystallized memories you'll recall in detail for the rest of your life. Four kids who find themselves during the length of a break from school could read as too convenient, that is, if it weren't so remarkably relatable. —SC