Everyone loves a good road trip movie, right? Whether the road is a metaphor for a troubled generational gap or you’re in for some good, hilarious family shenanigans, road trip movies have the ability to make us laugh, think, cry, and embrace nostalgia.

Recently, I was beset with a family road trip that went predictably bad and I thought to myself, what do you watch when YOUR family togetherness time spins out of control? I came up with five of my favorites:

1) Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006, dir. Goran Dukić)

We have a couple of trips through Hell to get through – literally. After his girlfriend Desiree dumps him, young Zia (played by baby Patrick Fugit) commits himself and finds himself in an Ever After that looks much the same as regular life, if somehow more boring. He meets some weird and wonderful friends then sets off to find his ex-girlfriend after finding out she too has committed suicide.

Wristcutters is definitely a hate it or love it indie favorite. Is it a profound, surreal contemplation on the nature of love and death in a teenage mind? Or is it a film too focused on its own navel and made in aggressively bad taste to boot? However you fall on that, you have to admit it’s thought provoking to some degree. Wristcutters is always a cathartic film for me, something I can watch after a completely disastrous week, day, or even year and I usually find myself right back in the same place as Zia in the end. No, not that end. The good end!

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