Stand By Me (1986)

This might be by far one of the greatest movies to ever come out of the 80's and the last 30 years. It's the story of lost innocence on a journey to find the body of a fellow 12 year old boy whose body was missing. It's a coming of age or as my professor liked to put it a rite of passage type of movie. It's where a character goes through this journey, the separation stage, the initiation stage, and the return. The separation would be the fact that Vern (Jerry O'Connell) comes and tells his friends Chris Chambers (The Late River Phoenix), Gordy Lachance (Wil Wheaton), and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) that if they wanted to see a dead body, he knew it's whereabouts from hearing his brother talk about it. So, they go on the journey to try and find the body. The initiation stage is the troubles that they face on their way to try and find the body. From Teddy trying to play chicken with the train and Chris pulling him away, to their ordeal with Milo Pressman (William Bronder) and his dog chopper, to trying to dodge the upcoming train, to the ordeal with the leaches, to actually finding the body and making sure Ace (Keifer Sutherland) didn't take it. The return stage is them coming home and feeling like the town had become smaller even though it didn't. The reason for that is the body changed their perception in how fragile life is. Anyone and everyone can relate to this story because this characters are so real to us. We all deep down inside knew a Gordy or a Teddy and why we did the things we did and when we were kids we all wanted to be adults so we did adult things. The movie also stars Casey Siemaszko (Public Enemies) as Vern's brother Billy, Bradley Gregg (Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade) as Chris's brother Eyeball, Marshall Bell (Twins) as Gordy's dad, Richard Dreyfuss (What About Bob?) as The writer, and a cameo by John Cusack (2012) as Gordy's dead brother Denny. I give this movie an A+