So you’re sitting in traffic in your 1989 Chevy Corsica which keeps making a funny noise you can’t place and has a giant crack that runs the entire length of the windshield. It’s a cold, blistery winter morning and your heat still hasn’t kicked in and the fog is starting to accumulate on your windows. Who purchased this life? Would it be too much to ask to be cruising down an abandoned desert highway, the wind ruffling your hair as you throttle your chopper ala Peter Fonda or Dennis Hopper? But it’s only a movie! And only one of many that represent life on the road as a wonder to behold. Good, bad, or otherwise, here is our list of our top five road movies of all-time.

1. Easy Rider (1969)

Although visually it is a breezy and enjoyable road movie about two friends on their way from Mexico to Los Angeles and then on to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, Easy Rider doubles as a scathing commentary on American society at the end of the 1960s. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda starred (and Hopper directed) in this classic that has stood the test of time as one of the all-time great road flicks.

2. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)

One of the funniest road movies in movie history, Steve Martin and the late, great John Candy make the perfect comedic odd couple. Martin plays an ad executive who just can’t catch a break as he tries to get from a business seminar in New York City to his family in Chicago in time for Thanksgiving. Along the way he meets Candy who is a traveling salesman just looking for a little companionship as he makes his rounds around the country for the umpteenth time. The movies lives up to its name as these two make their way cross country in planes, trains, and more than a couple automobiles without much luck and dwindling patience for one another.

3. Midnight Run (1988)

Charles Grodin and the legendary Robert De Niro star in this comedy/action road movie about a bounty hunter and his bounty. Perhaps the easiest but most effective road trip scenario is from New York City to Los Angeles and that is point A and point B for these two. De Niro is a bounty hunter hired to bring Grodin, a white collar criminal, to L.A. for arraignment. The fact that these two will be in for a long haul on the road together is confirmed in the beginning of the movie when Grodin weasels his way out of the airplane in New York because he is “afraid of flying.”

4. Road Trip (2000)

A college student and his zany, ragtag misfit group of friends must make it from Ithaca College in New York to the University of Texas in Austin (1800 miles) before an incriminating video tape of adultery reaches his high school sweetheart. Hilarity, obviously ensues as the group must overcome their fair share of obstacles along the way including stops at a sperm bank and all-black fraternity. This is a commendable entry not only into the canon of road movies but also the canon of gross-out teen comedies.

5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Upon hearing his client’s proclamation that he must go to Las Vegas to cover a story, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s legal counsel wisely advises, “As your attorney I advise you to rent a very fast car with no top.” And so begins this savage journey to the heart of the American dream as chronicled by Thompson, a gonzo journalist commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine to cover a motorcycle race in Vegas. Sounds simple enough but when you toss in all the mind alterting substances and an unexpected convention of police officers from all over the country, things are bound to get a little harry in Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Thompson’s classic 1972 novel.

By K. Fitty Ditty

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