Rob Reiner’s iconic adaptation of Stephen King’s The Body serves as an all-but-ordinary coming-of-age story, set in 1959. River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Wil Wheaton, and Jerry O’Connell star as a group of young boys determined to uncover the missing body of a local boy for a cash reward. The film is a blend of hilariously crude adolescent humor, saturated scenes of nostalgia, and meditations on innocence, maturity, and friendship.

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Few voyages at sea begin with the shipwreck, but such is the case for Life of Pi, based on Yann Martel’s novel of the same name. Directed by Ang Lee and starring the late Irrfan Khan and Suraj Sharma, the film weaves a spectacular tale of spiritual discovery as a shipwrecked young man navigates the Pacific Ocean while stranded on a lifeboat. (Think Cast Away, but swap the volleyball for a Bengal tiger.)

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The first installment of Peter Jackson’s trilogy adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic epic novels, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring introduces us to the fictional appendix that is all of Middle-earth and its inhabitants. Viewers join the earnest quest of young hobbit Frodo and his caravan of companions, with performances by Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Orlando Bloom.

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Nothing says adventure like two 12-year-olds falling in love and running away together to an island off the coast of New England. This whimsical and peculiar comedy is as Wes Anderson as Wes Anderson can get: peak aesthetic pleasure in its set and costume design, obsessively precise cinematography and writing, and, of course, an overwhelmingly stacked cast of celebrities.

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From the beloved Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, The Hidden Fortress follows two peasants who find themselves on an unexpected quest to escort a man and woman across enemy lines in the midst of a war. The shared journey runs across some comical and dramatic speed bumps, though, when it is revealed that the two men are actually escorting a war general and princess.

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In the first installment of the famed Indiana Jones franchise, Harrison Ford stars as the titular archaeologist on his quest to prevent a group of Nazis from stealing a precious religious relic, the Ark of the Covenant. Directed by Steven Spielberg, this epic is a classic Hollywood archetype of the hero’s journey, with Jones donning a signature whip and, of course, possessing an Achilles heel for snakes.

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Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s adaptation of Clarke’s “The Sentinel,” 2001: A Space Odyssey is something of a monolith in itself within film history, still serving as a subject of analysis for us today. The enigmatic sci-fi thriller, amid its exciting ingenuity in filmmaking, serves as an ominous meditation on man versus machine that will make you feel like you’re staring straight into the beady red monitor of your own existence.

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Tom Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a FedEx engineer who ends up stranded on a deserted island while on a work assignment. In a true case of man versus wild, Noland’s chalk-tallied days spent with his volleyball companion become more than a test of will. They become a test of humanity and the world as he knows it.

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Another larger-than-life blockbuster from Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park follows the aftermath of what one might expect if a billionaire had come up with a way to recreate dinosaurs for a theme park. Shockingly, even movie billionaires don’t think through the ethics of their latest ventures. What some of the movie characters lack in technological savviness, the filmmaking itself makes up for with special effects and animatronics that made the standards of its time seem prehistoric.

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The prototypical adventure movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a western-tinged story of two outlaws who encounter a veteran prospector, then travel together into Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains to strike gold. Though they find treasure, they become quickly beleaguered by bandits and internal strife. Directed by the inimitable John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the film that kick-started the genre.

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In the film that catapulted Ang Lee to directorial superstardom, he sets the scene in 19th-century China, where a warrior entrusts his fabled sword to his beloved, only for the sword to fall into the wrong hands. Come for the adventure through a bygone era in Chinese history, but stay for the breathtaking martial-arts sequences, which remain unparalleled even two decades later.

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In this adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed climate-fiction novel, five female scientists journey into Area X, a sinister and unexplained ecological phenomenon consuming Florida’s coastline. Featuring an all-star cast including Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Oscar Isaac, the journey into the unknown pushes these scientists to the limits of their bodies and their sanity.

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Nothing says adventure quite like an intergalactic romp through trash-covered planets, right? The third film in Marvel’s Thor sequence is the series’ loosest, centering on a madcap adventure through outer space that leaves a powerless Thor stranded on a wacky planet ruled by a sadistic Jeff Goldblum. Directed by Taika Waititi, Ragnarok remains a one-of-a-kind standout in Marvel’s filmology.

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Not all adventures have to be serious. Melissa McCarthy makes a feast of her juiciest role yet in this underappreciated gem from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig featuring an uproarious cast that also stars Rose Byrne, Jude Law, Allison Janney, Jason Statham, and 50 Cent. McCarthy stars as a timid CIA desk jockey catapulted into the field by the sudden death of her partner, sending her on a wild journey for vengeance and self-discovery from the slums of Paris to the casinos of Rome.

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One of the essential early cinematic adventures. Seeing the land of Oz revealed in gorgeous Technicolor will still capture your imagination to this day.

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Christopher Nolan’s space epic truly lived up to the hype, with mind-boggling direction and special effects that capture the strange new galaxy the space crew find themselves in.

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Mad God is a truly unsettling stop-motion experimental horror film by Phil Tippett, a director and animator known for gorgeous visual effects who has also worked on some iconic creatures for Star Wars and Jurassic Park.

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Ron Howard’s historical docudrama adapts the real harrowing tale of NASA’s aborted 13th lunar mission with previously unparalleled technical accuracy. While there were a few narrative and historical quibbles in the end, the filmmakers consulted closely with NASA experts to keep the film somewhat grounded and filmed space scenes on actual zero-gravity flights to accurately show weightlessness.

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This Coen-brothers dramedy turns rural Mississippi in the 1930s into a gorgeous backdrop for a more modern retelling of the Odyssey but with way more country and bluegrass music than before.

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Some may classify Inception as just a sci-fi action thriller, but our dream thieves jet all around the world, even before they sink down into several levels of subconscious to pull off a mind-bending memory-implantation process. With so many richly realized worlds on display throughout the film, it’s hard to argue that the characters haven’t been on an adventure after they’ve woken up.