The Best Coming-of-Age Film

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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People, for some reason, seem fascinated with the stage of life between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps that is because of physical changes. Or, what happens to people when their experience levels hit a critical milestone. The period is, often, when people leave their homes. What is their first adventure, post early family life? Often college. Sometimes a first job. The transition can be jarring, which makes it fertile ground for books and films.

To identify the best coming-of-age film, 24/7 Tempo constructed an index using average ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator. We considered all the coming-of-age movies in our database, using various IMDb lists focused on the category. Movies were ranked using the combined index score. (Information on cast and directors also comes from IMDb.)

Many of the films we considered are were culturally and historically significant, and are still celebrated by cinephiles to this day — among them “The Breakfast Club” (1985), “Stand By Me” (1986), and “Almost Famous” (2000).

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In “Stand By Me,” based on a Stephen King novella, four youngsters embark on a quest to find the body of a missing boy, meeting numerous challenges along the way. While it was nominated for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, among other honors, it didn’t take home any major awards — but today it is considered one of the key youth films of its era and has even inspired an annual Stand By Me Day in Brownsville, Oregon, featured in the film.

Other coming-of-age movies on this list include thrillers, screwball comedies, adventure stories, and Disney films.

The best coming-of-age film is A Bronx Tale. Here are the details:

> Starring: Robert De Niro, Chazz Palminteri, Lillo Brancato, Francis Capra
> Director: Robert De Niro

Adapted from actor Chazz Palminteri’s autobiographical 1989 play of the same name, this crime drama tells the story of an 11-year-old Italian-American boy living in New York City who becomes fascinated with the local mob boss despite warnings from his blue-collar father — played by Robert DeNiro, who also made his directorial debut with the film. It was named by the American Film Institute as on of the “Top 10 Gangster Films.”

Click here to read The 25 Best Coming of Age Films

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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