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Based on a true story. Those five words can strike fear in the hearts of any moviegoer. Admit it, you're trembling, right? Yes, movies that are based on a true story can either be classics or heaping piles of something truly unmentionable. Also, the general success of the movie based on a true story is based on something inexplicable. If, especially in this time, we supposedly go to the movies for escapism, how do we explain the commonality of seeing movies based on true stories?

No, the biggest successes usually aren't true-story movies, especially nowadays; the most recent major true-story movie that reaped a lot of benefits was the number-one grossing film of all time, 1997's Titanic. Don't forget, of course, that having a movie about a sinking ship can provide plenty of action for moviegoers to salivate over. Though there's a lack of true-story blockbusters these days, there was once a time when many big successes had ties in reality. Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, and many more films were big successes despite being based on true stories.

Still, as famous and popular as a true-story movie is, that doesn't always make it good. Take The Sound of Music, one of the most widely loved and reviled movies of all time. Some people love the music, some people love Julie Andrews, and some people would like to stop hearing about the lonely goatherd and edelweiss, thank you very much. Yes, even the successful true-story movie isn't always good. This week, another film, The Soloist, enters the true-story canon. Whether it'll be good or bad, a hit or a flop, isn't yet known, but it may end up as one of the best or one of the worst. Here now is the A-List's look at the best true-story movies.

Apollo 13

This suspenseful 1995 film is still Ron Howard's best film; though I haven't seen his upcoming adaptation of Angels & Demons, let's say I'm not holding out hope for that film to head to the top. Set as the space race winds down to a close and the majority of the American public no longer cares as much when a few lucky men get to go to the moon, Apollo 13 is about the real-life mission of three astronauts - Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Fred Haise (Bill Paxton), and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) - and the arduous journey they have to make around the moon and back to Earth when their module malfunctions, causing the trip to be a race against time than an exploration of space.

Thanks in part to the uniformly excellent ensemble, also including Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, and Gary Sinise, and the mounting feeling of dread that seeps through the first hour of the film, Apollo 13 is one of the more incredible recent real-life stories to come to the big screen. It's also a major credit to Howard as a director that he's able to keep the tension high considering how famous the story of Apollo 13 is to most people. Even those of us who didn't live through this incident know it just as well as Apollo 11 or Sputnik, so for the movie to sell the idea of Lovell and company not making it back home is a huge plus. Though Howard's gone to the true-story trough many times (most recently with Frost/Nixon), Apollo 13 remains his finest effort.

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