6. Stand By Me
Of course, not all summer excursions are family-oriented, nor do they involve hundreds of miles of travel. The summer days are long, and when you're a kid and not in school, you've got lots of time to go out and do the sorts of things that you're not able to do any other time of the year. It's the perfect time to go camping with friends, go to the movies or to the mall... or take a walk down the railroad tracks looking for a body, as the kids do in Stand By Me, Rob Reiner's brilliant film adaptation of Stephen King's equally brilliant novella "The Body." The film revolves around Gordie LaChance (Wil Wheaton) and his friends Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman), and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) as they venture down the railroad tracks into the woods, looking for the body of a young boy who's been hit by a train. They're in a race against local hood Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland) and his gang (Casey Siemaszko, Gary Riley, Bradley Gregg, Jason Oliver), who are determined to be the first to find the body so that they can gain their fifteen minutes of fame. While we follow both groups as they close in on the body, we stay the longest with Gordie's group, watching them during light moments as they sing theme songs together and talk about stuff like comic books, TV shows and movies, and during tender moments, such as when Chris laments the fact that everybody in town thinks that he's no good, due to his family's low social status. The movie climaxes with a face-off between Ace's gang & Gordie's, which is surprisingly suspenseful for a film of this type. What makes Stand By Me work is how real it feels. Rob Reiner is a master at coaxing great performances from actors, and he worked really well with the kids in this film; it doesn't feel like anybody in the film is acting but just being themselves (which they may have been, to a certain point; Reiner says that he cast the film with actors who were really a lot like the characters they played). The writing contributes to the feeling of verisimilitude, as well; all of the things we see the kids doing are things that all of us have done at some point in our childhood, and the things that we can sense them feeling are universal feelings. The film comments on our lives and has the power to move us deeply, and any movie that can do those things is a masterpiece.