Each question is a one-line plot summary. Name the film from four choices, then read a fact about how it was made. Twenty movies, from the 1970s to the 2010s.
Guess the movie: A teenager is sent back to 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean and has to make sure his parents fall in love.
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Back to the Future
Michael J. Fox played Marty McFly in the 1985 film; the car needed 1.21 gigawatts to time-travel.
Question 2
Guess the movie: Visitors to an island theme park are stranded when its cloned dinosaurs break loose.
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Jurassic Park
Steven Spielberg's 1993 film was based on Michael Crichton's novel. The Lost World was its sequel.
Question 3
Guess the movie: A lonely boy hides a stranded alien in his house and helps him "phone home."
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. was released in 1982 and was the highest-grossing film of all time until Jurassic Park.
Question 4
Guess the movie: Five children win a tour of a candy factory and disappear one by one, until one boy is left.
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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Gene Wilder played Wonka in the 1971 film of Roald Dahl's book. Johnny Depp played him in the 2005 remake.
Question 5
Guess the movie: A cynical TV weatherman wakes up to the same February 2 in a small Pennsylvania town, again and again.
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Groundhog Day
Bill Murray starred in the 1993 comedy, set in Punxsutawney, home of the Groundhog Day tradition.
Question 6
Guess the movie: A banker wrongly convicted of murder spends nearly two decades in prison before a famous escape.
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The Shawshank Redemption
The 1994 film, based on a Stephen King novella, flopped at the box office and became a classic on video.
Question 7
Guess the movie: A hacker learns that the world he knows is a computer simulation and takes the red pill.
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The Matrix
Keanu Reeves played Neo in the 1999 film, known for its "bullet time" effects.
Question 8
Guess the movie: A nervous clownfish crosses the ocean to find his son, with help from a forgetful blue tang.
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Finding Nemo
Pixar's 2003 film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The forgetful fish, Dory, got her own sequel in 2016.
Question 9
Guess the movie: An archaeologist races Nazi agents to find the lost Ark of the Covenant.
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Raiders of the Lost Ark
Harrison Ford first played Indiana Jones in the 1981 film, directed by Spielberg and produced by George Lucas.
Question 10
Guess the movie: Five very different high school students spend a Saturday detention together in the library.
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The Breakfast Club
John Hughes wrote and directed the 1985 film. Its characters are known as the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess and the criminal.
Question 11
Guess the movie: An aging Mafia boss hands control of his crime family to his reluctant youngest son, Michael.
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The Godfather
Marlon Brando and Al Pacino starred in the 1972 film, which won Best Picture.
Question 12
Guess the movie: A queen with icy powers flees her kingdom, and her younger sister sets out to bring her home.
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Frozen
Disney's 2013 film features the song "Let It Go," which won the Oscar for Best Original Song.
Question 13
Guess the movie: A small-time Philadelphia boxer gets an unlikely shot at the heavyweight title.
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Rocky
Sylvester Stallone wrote the script and insisted on starring. The 1976 film won Best Picture.
Question 14
Guess the movie: An old widower ties thousands of balloons to his house and floats away, with a young stowaway on the porch.
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Up
Pixar's 2009 film is known for its opening montage of Carl and Ellie's life together.
Question 15
Guess the movie: An astronaut left behind on Mars survives by growing potatoes.
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The Martian
Matt Damon starred in the 2015 film, based on Andy Weir's novel.
Question 16
Guess the movie: A jazz pianist and an aspiring actress fall in love in Los Angeles while chasing their dreams.
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La La Land
The 2016 musical won six Oscars. It was famously announced, by mistake, as the Best Picture winner, which went to Moonlight.
Question 17
Guess the movie: An English teacher at an all-boys prep school urges his students to "seize the day."
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Dead Poets Society
Robin Williams played John Keating in the 1989 film. "Carpe diem" is Latin for seize the day.
Question 18
Guess the movie: A trash-compacting robot alone on an abandoned Earth falls in love with a sleek probe named EVE.
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WALL-E
Pixar's 2008 film has almost no dialogue in its first 40 minutes.
Question 19
Guess the movie: An FBI trainee seeks help from an imprisoned psychiatrist to catch a serial killer.
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The Silence of the Lambs
The 1991 film is one of only three to win the top five Oscars: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay.
Question 20
Guess the movie: A girl moves to a new town, wanders into a spirit world and must work in a bathhouse to save her parents.
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Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the first non-English-language film to do so.
Key numbers
Questions
20
Format
Multiple choice, 4 options
Explanations
Every question
Answers
Hidden until you open them
How the game works
Every question describes a film in one sentence, without naming any characters you'd recognize straight away. The four choices are films from the same genre or era, so you need to know the story, not just the decade. After each answer you get one fact about the film, such as an Oscar record or how it was received.
Why plots, not quotes or pictures
A plot line is fair to everyone: you don't need to have memorized a quote or recognize a still. It also keeps the game original. We write every summary ourselves rather than using posters, stills or scripts.
Making it harder
Read the plot without the options and give two points for a correct answer.
Add a point for naming the year or the lead actor.
Let teams write their own one-line plots for the others to guess. It's often the funniest round of the night.
What makes a plot clue fair
A good clue names the situation, not the title or a famous character: "a cynical TV weatherman relives the same day" points clearly to one film without giving it away. The wrong options share the genre or the decade, so guessing from the era alone won't work.