Warm-up: the blockbusters everyone saw
Start here. These thirteen films were inescapable at the time and most of them still play on television every few months. If you are hosting, read the question and count to five before taking an answer, because with this round the first person to shout usually has it right.
A good host trick for the warm-up: after each reveal, ask the table where they saw it. The 1990s is the last decade where the answer is a cinema, a rented VHS tape, or a friend's basement, and the stories take longer than the questions do.
Q1.In which 1993 blockbuster does Jeff Goldblum play mathematician and chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jurassic Park
Steven Spielberg's studio bought the film rights before Michael Crichton's novel was even published, and Crichton wrote the first draft of the screenplay himself. The dinosaurs are a mix of Stan Winston's animatronics and computer animation, which is why they still hold up better than most CGI from the decade.
Q2.James Cameron's Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards in 1998. How many did it win?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eleven
That tied the record set by Ben-Hur in 1959, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King matched it in 2004. Kate Winslet's Best Actress nomination was one of the three that lost - Helen Hunt won that night for As Good as It Gets.
Q3.Which 1998 war film opens with roughly 25 minutes of the Omaha Beach landings on D-Day?Tap to reveal
Answer: Saving Private Ryan
Spielberg won Best Director for it but the film lost Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love, still one of the most argued-about results in Oscar history. Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, and Vin Diesel and Matt Damon were near-unknowns when it was shot.
Q4.Which 1997 sci-fi comedy paired a veteran agent called K with a former NYPD officer called J?Tap to reveal
Answer: Men in Black
Barry Sonnenfeld directed it and Spielberg was an executive producer, which is why people often misremember it as a Spielberg film. It came from Lowell Cunningham's comic book and won the Oscar for Best Makeup.
Q5.Which 1999 adventure hit cast Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell, a soldier of fortune whose expedition wakes an ancient high priest?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mummy
Stephen Sommers' film was shot in Morocco rather than Egypt: Marrakech plays 1925 Cairo, and the lost city of Hamunaptra was built at Gara Medouar, a horseshoe-shaped rock formation in the desert outside Erfoud. Rachel Weisz plays the librarian Evelyn, and the film was successful enough to launch a sequel and a spin-off series.
Q6.In which 1998 disaster movie does Liv Tyler play Grace Stamper, daughter of the man sent to drill into an asteroid?Tap to reveal
Answer: Armageddon
Tyler is the daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, and Aerosmith supplied the film's ballad "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" - the band's only number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Michael Bay directed; Bruce Willis plays her father Harry.
Q7.Which 1990 Paul Verhoeven film sends Arnold Schwarzenegger's construction worker to Mars after he buys an implanted memory of a vacation there?Tap to reveal
Answer: Total Recall
It is based on a Philip K. Dick short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," and it won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects. Sharon Stone plays the fake wife, and Verhoeven cast her in Basic Instinct two years later.
Q8.In which 1991 hit did a director named Kevin direct a different Kevin in the lead role?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Kevin Reynolds directed and Kevin Costner starred. It was the second-biggest film of the year at the US box office behind Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham won him a BAFTA for stealing the whole picture.
Q9.Which 1991 Disney film became the first full-length animated feature nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Beauty and the Beast
It lost to The Silence of the Lambs but won Best Original Score and Best Original Song. There was no Best Animated Feature category at the time - the Academy did not create one until 2001 - so the nomination was the only route in.
Q10.Which 1999 supernatural thriller was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Sixth Sense
It collected six Oscar nominations and won nothing, which included a Best Supporting Actor nomination for eleven-year-old Haley Joel Osment. Bruce Willis took a reduced fee in exchange for a share of the profits and it became the biggest payday of his career.
Q11.Which 1997 James Bond film was Pierce Brosnan's second outing as 007?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tomorrow Never Dies
Sheryl Crow sang the title song, Jonathan Pryce plays a media baron who wants to start a war for the ratings, and Michelle Yeoh's Wai Lin does at least as much of the fighting as Bond does. Brosnan had debuted in GoldenEye in 1995.
Q12.Which actress played the orange-haired Leeloo in Luc Besson's 1997 film The Fifth Element?Tap to reveal
Answer: Milla Jovovich
Jean-Paul Gaultier designed the costumes, including the famous bandage suit. Bruce Willis plays cab driver Korben Dallas, Gary Oldman is the villain Zorg, and Chris Tucker's radio host Ruby Rhod is either the best or worst thing in the film depending on who you ask.
Q13.In which 1995 film does Kevin Costner play a gilled drifter called the Mariner, sailing a flooded world in search of dry land?Tap to reveal
Answer: Waterworld
It was the most expensive film ever made at the time, and its troubled shoot on open water made it a byword for Hollywood excess. It is remembered as a flop, but it took over $250 million worldwide and most of that came from outside the United States.
Comedies and family favorites
The 1990s comedy engine ran on two things: Jim Carrey's face and a Disney release schedule. This round mixes the big studio comedies with the films that flopped politely and then found a second life on cable every single holiday.
If your table is mostly people who grew up in the decade, this is usually the round with the highest score. Two of these questions ask for an actor rather than a title, which is where the confident answers start to wobble.
Q1.In which 1995 comedy does Jim Carrey's pet detective travel to Africa to recover a sacred white bat?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Steve Oedekerk directed the sequel; Tom Shadyac had made the 1994 original, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The bat belongs to the fictional Wachati tribe, and its disappearance is the thing standing between two tribes and a wedding.
Q2.What is the profession of Fletcher Reede, Jim Carrey's character in the 1997 comedy Liar Liar?Tap to reveal
Answer: A lawyer
The premise only works because he is a divorce lawyer in the middle of a trial: his son's birthday wish stops him lying for 24 hours, which is professionally catastrophic. Tom Shadyac directed this one too, and Justin Cooper plays the son.
Q3.Which 1993 Disney film stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as three resurrected witches?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hocus Pocus
The Sanderson sisters were a modest performer on release - Disney opened it in the middle of July, months before Halloween - and it became a seasonal fixture only through television repeats. Midler's version of "I Put a Spell on You" is the reason most people remember it.
Q4.Who played Sue Ellen Crandell, the teenager left in charge of the house in the 1991 comedy Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead?Tap to reveal
Answer: Christina Applegate
Applegate was filming it between seasons of Married... with Children, where she was playing Kelly Bundy. The film's whole plot rests on her faking a resume well enough to run a clothing company's office.
Q5.In which 1993 sequel does Whoopi Goldberg's lounge singer pose as a nun again, this time to rescue a school choir?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
In the 1992 original she is hiding in a convent under witness protection; in the sequel the nuns ask her back to teach music. A teenage Lauryn Hill plays the reluctant star pupil, five years before The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
Q6.Which 1992 film about a women's professional baseball league starred Geena Davis, Madonna and Tom Hanks?Tap to reveal
Answer: A League of Their Own
Penny Marshall directed it, and it is based on the real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which played from 1943 to 1954. Hanks plays the drunken manager Jimmy Dugan and delivers the line everyone quotes: "There's no crying in baseball."
Q7.Which Burt Bacharach song does Cameron Diaz murder at a karaoke bar in the 1997 comedy My Best Friend's Wedding?Tap to reveal
Answer: "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself"
The scene works because the crowd cheers her on anyway, which is the whole point of her character. The film leans on Bacharach throughout - the restaurant singalong to "I Say a Little Prayer" is the other number people remember.
Q8.Which actor won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing therapist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting?Tap to reveal
Answer: Robin Williams
It was his only Oscar win after three previous nominations for lead roles. The same film won Matt Damon and Ben Affleck the award for Best Original Screenplay, which they had written partly to give themselves parts worth acting.
Q9.Which 1997 comedy-drama won Best Actor for Jack Nicholson and Best Actress for Helen Hunt?Tap to reveal
Answer: As Good as It Gets
Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, an obsessive-compulsive novelist who insults nearly everybody he meets, and Hunt plays the waitress who tolerates him. It was the last film of the decade to take both lead acting Oscars, a double The Silence of the Lambs had managed in 1991.
Q10.Which 1999 comedy follows four teenagers scheming their way into a KISS concert?Tap to reveal
Answer: Detroit Rock City
It is set in 1978 and the boys are from Cleveland - the whole plot is the drive to the KISS show at Detroit's Cobo Hall - but it was shot around Toronto, and the members of KISS appear as themselves. Lin Shaye plays the mother convinced the band's name stands for "Knights In Satan's Service," which was a real rumor at the time.
Tearjerkers and dramas
The 1990s studio drama had a house style: a difficult illness, a courtroom or a war, and a score that told you exactly when to cry. These ten questions cover the films people remember crying at, from the two that defined Tom Hanks's decade to a Steinbeck adaptation almost nobody remembers is from the 90s at all.
This round is harder than it looks, because several of these films are known by a performance rather than a title. If a player gives you the star instead of the film, that is usually a sign they have seen it and cannot place the name - your call whether to give half a point.
Q1.Which 1993 Steven Spielberg film tells the story of Oskar, a German businessman who employed Jewish workers in order to save them?Tap to reveal
Answer: Schindler's List
Liam Neeson plays Schindler, Ben Kingsley his accountant and Ralph Fiennes the camp commandant. It was shot almost entirely in black and white in and around Krakow, won seven of its twelve nominations including Spielberg's first Best Director Oscar, and he refused a salary, directing the profits into a foundation that recorded survivors' testimony.
Q2.In which 1993 courtroom drama does Tom Hanks play a lawyer fired by his firm after his employers learn he has AIDS?Tap to reveal
Answer: Philadelphia
Hanks won his first Best Actor Oscar for it and Denzel Washington plays the ambulance-chaser who reluctantly takes the case. Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" won Best Original Song, and Jonathan Demme directed, two years after The Silence of the Lambs.
Q3.In which 1995 drama does Nicolas Cage play a screenwriter who moves to Las Vegas intending to drink himself to death?Tap to reveal
Answer: Leaving Las Vegas
Cage won Best Actor and Elisabeth Shue was nominated for Best Actress as Sera. Mike Figgis shot it on 16mm on real Las Vegas streets, largely without permits, which is why it looks nothing like a studio picture of the same year.
Q4.Who played the psychic Oda Mae Brown in the 1990 romantic thriller Ghost?Tap to reveal
Answer: Whoopi Goldberg
Goldberg won Best Supporting Actress for it. Demi Moore plays Molly and Patrick Swayze the murdered Sam, and the film was the year's biggest worldwide box-office hit, which almost nobody predicted from a script about pottery and the afterlife.
Q5.Which 1993 romance cast Christian Slater as a shy busboy with a heart condition who falls for a waitress played by Marisa Tomei?Tap to reveal
Answer: Untamed Heart
Tony Bill directed, and Rosie Perez plays Tomei's co-worker. Tomei won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for My Cousin Vinny just weeks after this film opened, which did its box office no harm at all.
Q6.In which 1994 drama does Andy Garcia play a man whose wife, played by Meg Ryan, is an alcoholic?Tap to reveal
Answer: When a Man Loves a Woman
The title comes from Percy Sledge's 1966 soul single. What makes the film unusual for its era is that recovery does not fix the marriage: Garcia's character has to work out that he has been enabling her, and the ending refuses to be tidy.
Q7.In which 1998 drama does a terminally ill mother, played by Susan Sarandon, have to accept her ex-husband's new partner, played by Julia Roberts?Tap to reveal
Answer: Stepmom
Chris Columbus directed, and Ed Harris plays the man between them. The film sold on the novelty of two actresses of that stature sharing a lead rather than competing for one, and both had won or were about to win Oscars for other roles.
Q8.Which 1998 romance cast Nicolas Cage as an angel who falls for a heart surgeon played by Meg Ryan?Tap to reveal
Answer: City of Angels
It is a loose Hollywood remake of Wim Wenders' German film Wings of Desire. Its soundtrack outlived it: the Goo Goo Dolls wrote "Iris" for this film, and the song became one of the defining radio hits of the late 90s.
Q9.Which 1992 adaptation of a John Steinbeck novella was directed by Gary Sinise, who also played George?Tap to reveal
Answer: Of Mice and Men
John Malkovich plays Lennie, a role he had performed on stage with Sinise at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. Steinbeck published the novella in 1937 and wrote it deliberately so it could be staged almost word for word.
Q10.Which 1999 Frank Darabont film, set on a 1930s Louisiana death row, was adapted from a Stephen King serial novel?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Green Mile
King published it in 1996 in six monthly instalments, a deliberate throwback to Victorian serials. Tom Hanks plays the head guard and Michael Clarke Duncan was Oscar-nominated as John Coffey. Darabont had already adapted King once, for The Shawshank Redemption.
Oscar night: Best Picture, 1990-1999
Eight of the decade's ten Best Picture winners are below. The two missing ones have already come up: Schindler's List took the award for 1993 and Titanic for 1997, so if a player tries either of those names here, they are a year out.
This is the round where the decade's taste becomes visible. Two westerns won in three years, a period romance beat a war epic, and the decade closed on a suburban satire - a run that would be hard to predict from the box-office charts of the same ten years.
Q1.Which 1990 film, in which Kevin Costner's Lieutenant John Dunbar is taken in by a Lakota band, won Best Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dances with Wolves
It was Costner's first film as director and it won seven Oscars including Best Director. It was also the first western to win Best Picture since Cimarron almost sixty years earlier - and Unforgiven did it again only two years later.
Q2.Which 1991 thriller became only the third film to win Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay at the same ceremony?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Silence of the Lambs
It joined It Happened One Night from 1934 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from 1975. Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for one of the shortest performances ever to take the prize, and the film had opened in February, a slot studios normally treat as a dumping ground.
Q3.Which 1992 western, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as the retired killer William Munny, won Best Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Unforgiven
It won four Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman as the sheriff Little Bill. Eastwood dedicated the film to the two directors who made him, Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, and he had sat on the script for years waiting until he was old enough to play Munny.
Q4.Which 1994 film beat Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption to Best Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Forrest Gump
Robert Zemeckis's film won six Oscars including Best Actor for Tom Hanks, his second in a row after Philadelphia. Its effects team invented much of the technique used to insert Hanks into archive footage, which is what won it Best Visual Effects.
Q5.Which 1995 Best Picture winner was directed by and starred Mel Gibson as the Scottish rebel William Wallace?Tap to reveal
Answer: Braveheart
It won five Oscars including Best Director. Most of the battle scenes were filmed in Ireland using members of the Irish Army Reserve as extras, which is why the armies look bigger than the budget should have allowed.
Q6.Which 1996 desert romance, adapted from a Michael Ondaatje novel, won nine Academy Awards?Tap to reveal
Answer: The English Patient
Anthony Minghella directed, and Juliette Binoche won Best Supporting Actress in an upset over Lauren Bacall. Ondaatje's novel had won the Booker Prize in 1992, and the film's nine wins came from twelve nominations.
Q7.Which 1998 romantic comedy beat Saving Private Ryan to Best Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Shakespeare in Love
It won seven Oscars, including Best Actress for Gwyneth Paltrow and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench, whose entire performance as Elizabeth I lasts a matter of minutes. The campaign behind it is still cited as the moment Oscar lobbying became an industry of its own.
Q8.Which 1999 suburban drama, Sam Mendes's first film, won Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay?Tap to reveal
Answer: American Beauty
Mendes came from the theater and had never directed a feature. Conrad Hall's cinematography won the fifth of its five Oscars, and Alan Ball's script had been written as a spec screenplay with no expectation anyone would film it.
90s horror and thrillers
Horror spent the first half of the decade in the video shop and came roaring back to cinemas in 1996 when Scream made the genre self-aware. This round starts with the films everyone has seen and finishes with three that will separate the fans from the guessers.
Note how many of these are adaptations. Stephen King, Clive Barker and Lois Duncan between them account for a large slice of 90s horror, which is worth knowing if you are stuck: when in doubt on a 90s horror question, guessing a novelist is a better strategy than guessing a director.
Q1.Which 1995 thriller had the tagline "Seven deadly sins. Seven ways to die."?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seven (or Se7en)
David Fincher directed, with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as the detectives. Kevin Spacey's name was deliberately kept off the posters and the opening credits so that audiences would not know the killer was in the cast.
Q2.Which 1996 Wes Craven film, written by Kevin Williamson, opened with Drew Barrymore answering a phone and gave horror the Ghostface mask?Tap to reveal
Answer: Scream
Neve Campbell plays Sidney Prescott. The Ghostface mask was an existing Halloween costume the production licensed rather than a design made for the film, which is why it looks like nothing else in the movie.
Q3.In which 1990 film does a novelist crash his car and wake up in the house of his self-declared number one fan?Tap to reveal
Answer: Misery
Rob Reiner directed, James Caan plays Paul Sheldon and Kathy Bates won Best Actress as Annie Wilkes - the first Oscar for acting in any Stephen King adaptation. Bates was largely unknown in film at the time, which is exactly why she is frightening in it.
Q4.Which 1996 Robert Rodriguez film starts as a hostage road movie and turns into a vampire siege in a Mexican bar?Tap to reveal
Answer: From Dusk till Dawn
Quentin Tarantino wrote it and plays one of the two brothers; Harvey Keitel is the preacher and George Clooney, then still on ER, is the other brother. The mid-film genre switch was in the script from the start, not a rewrite.
Q5.Which 1992 horror film, adapted from a Clive Barker short story, dared audiences to say a name five times into a mirror?Tap to reveal
Answer: Candyman
Bernard Rose moved Barker's story from Liverpool to the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, which changed what the film is about. Tony Todd plays the Candyman opposite Virginia Madsen, and Philip Glass wrote the score.
Q6.In which 1992 thriller does Bridget Fonda advertise for a roommate and get Jennifer Jason Leigh?Tap to reveal
Answer: Single White Female
Barbet Schroeder directed, and the title is lifted from the shorthand of newspaper personal ads, which is how the two women meet. It arrived in the middle of a run of "the [job] from hell" thrillers that also gave us The Hand That Rocks the Cradle the same year.
Q7.In which 1999 creature feature do a game warden and a paleontologist hunt an enormous crocodile in a Maine lake?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lake Placid
David E. Kelley, better known for television legal dramas, wrote it, which explains why so much of the film is people arguing. Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda and Oliver Platt star, and Betty White turns up as the woman who has been feeding the thing.
Q8.Which 1997 slasher, also written by Kevin Williamson, starred Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe?Tap to reveal
Answer: I Know What You Did Last Summer
It is based on a 1973 young-adult novel by Lois Duncan, which has no supernatural fisherman in it at all. Duncan later said she disliked what the film did with her book.
Q9.Which 1999 Tim Burton film sent Johnny Depp's New York constable upstate to investigate a run of beheadings in a Dutch settlement?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sleepy Hollow
It won the Oscar for Best Art Direction, and Christopher Walken plays the Horseman in life. Burton's version turns Ichabod Crane, Washington Irving's skeptical schoolmaster, into a police constable with a bag of forensic instruments, which is a bigger change than the gore is.
Q10.In which 1991 Wes Craven film does a boy nicknamed Fool break into a landlord's house and find people imprisoned inside its walls?Tap to reveal
Answer: The People Under the Stairs
Brandon Adams plays Fool and Ving Rhames his accomplice. Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, who had played a married couple on Twin Peaks, were cast as the landlords, and the film is as much about slum landlords as it is about horror.
Q11.Which 1990 film did Clive Barker direct from his own novella Cabal, about a man drawn to an underground city called Midian?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nightbreed
Craig Sheffer plays Boone and the director David Cronenberg, acting for once, plays his murderous psychiatrist. The studio cut it heavily and marketed it as a slasher; a restored version assembled decades later is closer to the monster fable Barker intended.
The Razzie round: the worst of the 90s
The Golden Raspberry Awards have handed out a Worst Picture prize every year since 1981, voted by members who pay a small fee to join. Six of the decade's winners are below, and they make an unusually good trivia round because the answers are famous films rather than obscure ones - being a spectacular failure takes money.
Worth telling the table: a Razzie is not the same as losing money. Wild Wild West took $113.8 million in the United States and $222 million worldwide and still closed the decade as Worst Picture, while The Postman managed $17.6 million against an $80 million budget. If you want a second fact for the room, Will Smith's tie-in single "Wild Wild West" went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of July 24, 1999, while the film it came from was collecting the year's worst reviews. The award tracks contempt, not receipts.
Q1.Which Andrew Dice Clay comedy shared the very first Razzie for Worst Picture of the 1990s?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
It tied with Ghosts Can't Do It for the 1990 award, and Clay also took Worst Actor. The film was a rock-and-roll detective comedy built entirely around a stand-up persona that had a very short shelf life.
Q2.Which 1991 Bruce Willis adventure, about a cat burglar recruited to steal Leonardo da Vinci artefacts, won Worst Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hudson Hawk
Michael Lehmann directed it three years after the cult success of Heathers, with the little-seen Meet the Applegates in between, and Willis co-wrote the story. It also took Worst Director and Worst Screenplay, and it is one of the films most often cited when studios argue about giving a star creative control.
Q3.Which 1995 Paul Verhoeven film about a Las Vegas dancer won seven Razzies including Worst Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Showgirls
It was nominated in thirteen categories. Verhoeven turned up in person to collect his Worst Director award, the first winner ever to do so, and the film has since acquired a serious critical defence as deliberate satire.
Q4.Which 1997 post-apocalyptic epic, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, won every Razzie it was nominated for?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Postman
All five: Worst Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay and Original Song. It came two years after Waterworld, which had already made Costner the press's favorite example of a star chasing scale, and it took $17.6 million in the United States against an $80 million budget.
Q5.Which 1998 Hollywood satire beat Armageddon, Godzilla and Spice World to the Razzie for Worst Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn
The joke ate itself. "Alan Smithee" was the pseudonym the Directors Guild allowed a director to use when disowning a film, and the real director of this one, Arthur Hiller, disowned it - so it was credited to Alan Smithee for real.
Q6.Which 1999 steampunk western starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline closed the decade by winning Worst Picture?Tap to reveal
Answer: Wild Wild West
Barry Sonnenfeld directed, reuniting with Smith after Men in Black, and it was adapted from a 1960s television series. Smith has said he turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix to make it, which is the most expensive trade in this entire quiz.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are good 90s movie trivia questions for a party?
Open with titles almost everyone can name - Jurassic Park, Titanic, Men in Black - and only then move to actors, directors and Oscar results. The warm-up round on this page is built for exactly that, and the horror and Razzie rounds are where a confident table starts losing points. Reading the questions aloud in the printed order keeps the difficulty climbing instead of jumping about.
What was the highest-grossing film of the 1990s?
Titanic, released in December 1997, which took over $1.8 billion worldwide on its original release and held the record for the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar in 2009. Jurassic Park had held the 90s crown before it.
Which 1990s film won the most Academy Awards?
Titanic, with eleven wins from fourteen nominations - a total matched only by Ben-Hur in 1959 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004, and never beaten. The English Patient won nine, and Schindler's List, Dances with Wolves and Shakespeare in Love won seven each.
How many questions should a 90s movie round have?
Ten to twelve questions per round is the size most pub hosts settle on: long enough to separate the teams, short enough to score between rounds. This page is laid out in six rounds so you can take one whole section for a single round, or pull the first ten of each for a longer 90s-themed night.
Are the answers on this page free to use for a quiz night?
Yes. There is no signup, no paywall and no download required - the answers and the explanations sit under each question so you can read them straight off the screen or print the page. If you would rather your teams play on their phones, Trivio.NET turns the same kind of questions into live multiplayer rounds.
What is the difference between a Razzie and an Oscar?
The Academy Awards are voted by roughly ten thousand film-industry members; the Golden Raspberry Awards, founded in 1981, are voted by anyone who pays to join the Razzie voting body, and they exist to name the year's worst work. A handful of films have been nominated for both in the same season, which is usually a sign of an ambitious swing that split the room.
