20 Essential Coming Of Age Movies That Changed Your Life

4. Stand By Me

The 1980s was undoubtedly the decade when Hollywood coming-of-age movies reined supreme, and perhaps the most moving and insightful of them all was Rob Reiner's Stand By Me, adapted from the short story The Body by Stephen King.In King's opinion, Stand By Me was the first movie adaptation which successfully translated his work to the screen. Telling the story of four boys who set out in search of the body of a missing dead kid, it's a poignant reflection on both childhood and mortality which bridges the gap between the two, where innocence and fatalism converge. Featuring a superb cast of young talent including Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and River Phoenix, its legacy is all the most potent considering the fate which befell Phoenix - the untimely death of his character, revealed in the opening monologue, mirroring to some extent the all-too-brief life the actor led in real life