Films of the 1990s #3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Fargo

'Fargo' features one Marge Gunderson (an Oscar-winning performance by Frances McDormand), the impressively calm, seven-months-pregnant chief of police in Brainerd, Minnesota. She follows a trail of increasingly terrible decisions and even worse driving skills that leads her to uncover a kidnapping plot thought up by a desperate car salesman (William H. Macy). Things escalate, people make awful choices and do very bad things, all of which is contrasted beautifully with the amusing (if not slightly sickening) "Minnesota nice" on display.

Answer: Forrest Gump

Tom Hanks plays the title character of 'Forrest Gump'. While never quite understanding the world around him, Gump somehow manages to play a major role in it anyway. He's not trying to make history. It just keeps kind of getting in his way. From college football to the Vietnam War to ping-pong diplomacy, we relive decades of American life through his innocent eyes.

Forrest Gump has an unshakable and unhealthy devotion to Jenny, the love of his life and perhaps the most subtly villainous character in the history of motion pictures. (Poor Forrest.)

The movie won six Oscars in all, including Best Picture and Best Actor, annoying some people who thought it was more about American nostalgia and less concerned with actual substance, at least in comparison to some of its competitors such as 'Pulp Fiction' and 'The Shawshank Redemption'. While an interesting question in retrospect, at the time, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Answer: A League of Their Own

Released in 1992, 'A League of Their Own' took a little slice of American sports history and turned it into something funny and tender with the occasional sharp edge.

The movie is about the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which hit the big time in the US when World War II drained Major League Baseball of many of its enlisted male players. The Rockford Peaches are one of the league's teams. The movie is all about their struggles on the field, off the field, and sometimes in the locker room.

The movie is also to blame for one of the most quoted lines in sports movie history. Tom Hanks, playing a gruff and thoroughly uninterested manager for most of the movie, delivers the now immortal line "There's no crying in baseball!", which you know is a lie if you have ever seen a baseball player take a line drive to the crotch. In any event, that line has since been used in situations that very much involve crying and often do not involve baseball at all. Such is life.

Answer: The Blair Witch Project

When 'The Blair Witch Project' went to theaters in 1999, it did not just scare people. It gaslit them. The filmmakers fully embraced a rather interesting marketing strategy. They made every attempt to convince you it was actual found footage, and that the movie was assembled from video left behind by missing film students.

They backed this up with a website, fake police reports, and even missing person posters that made the whole thing feel uncomfortably real. This was during the internet's early, wild west days, when most people still trusted what they read online, and the movie exploited that naiveté with something like glee. I still remember trying desperately to explain to my mother watching it on video that it wasn't real. (I also remember her disgust for the female character... 'Do women really TALK like that now?' But that's another story.)

As for the movie itself, what made it work, for me at least, was its restraint, something often missing in horror movies. No big monster reveal. No tidy explanations. Just shaky cameras, panicked arguments that still grate my nerves, and the awful sense that something ancient and cranky was lurking nearby, but just off screen. The movie cost almost nothing to make (as far as movies go) and earned a fortune, proving that imagination can be more cost-effective than bad CGI.

Answer: Thelma & Louise

'Thelma & Louise' was released in 1991 and directed by Ridley Scott. The movie begins as a weekend getaway and then takes a hard left into outlaw territory. Louise shoots a man who is attempting to sexually assault Thelma. The two women realize that explaining the situation to the authorities is not going to end well. So they do the sensible thing, at least in the movies, and hit the road in a convertible.

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis turned in spectacular performances, and the final scene launched a million "whoa's", one very expensive freeze-frame, and at least one in-law who explained to all of us as the movie was ending that a car would never behave like that under those circumstances. (I believe his exact words were, "FALLACY! They must have used a ramp because it went UP!" Fun guy.) It also introduced a little-known actor named Brad Pitt, whose main job here was looking good and showing up unexpectedly. Wonder whatever happened to him.

Answer: There's Something About Mary

'There's Something About Mary' opens with one of the most infamous romcom disasters ever committed to film, a legendary prom night disaster involving a boy named Ted, a zipper, and a painful hospital visit, a sequence of events that caused every male in the audience to uncomfortably cross their legs in unison like a synchronized swim team.

Thirteen years later, Ted is still hung up on Mary, so naturally he hires a private investigator to track her down, which is only considered stalking in MOST states. The payoff? He discovers that every man who meets her promptly loses his mind.

The movie is very committed to its own idiocy, which somehow makes it work. Although, realistically, the "hair gel" scene will live on in movie infamy long after the only recognizable object in my coffin is my pants zipper. The film was a huge hit and helped set the bar for what mainstream romcoms could get away with. But yeah, in the end, it's mostly a film about a woman helping herself to some hair gel.

Answer: Independence Day

If you watched 'Independence Day' in a packed theater in 1996, you probably remember the audience cheering on at least three separate occasions. This movie decided subtlety was WAY overrated, and spectacle was where the money was. It worked.

Aliens show up. Cities get vaporized. Bill Pullman gives a speech that somehow turns the Fourth of July into a global holiday. And somewhere in the middle of all that, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith upload a computer virus to an alien mothership, a plot point that has launched a thousand IT jokes.

And then there is Randy Quaid's Russell Casse. Crop duster, abductee, professional oddball, and ultimately, fighter pilot, Casse smells strongly of booze and bad decisions. Is it ridiculous? Oh yeah. Is it unforgettable? Pretty much, at least if you saw it at the time. How it aged is another question. But at least Randy Quaid and Will Smith could never attract any controversy.

Answer: Good Will Hunting

'Good Will Hunting' came out in 1997 and left everyone wondering who the heck Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were. Personally, I'm still not sure, but I've heard J-Lo is involved. Damon plays Will Hunting, an underachieving janitor at MIT who can casually solve fiendish math problems but can't fix himself. Enter Sean Maguire, a therapist with his own dings and dents, played by Robin Williams in one of his best performances, who teaches that there's no human problem that can't be solved by repeatedly telling someone that their problems aren't their fault. Or something. Maybe I took the wrong message away from the movie.

Answer: The Fugitive

1993's 'The Fugitive' stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon whose life gets considerably messier after he is convicted of killing his wife, a crime he insists he did not commit. The real killer? A one-armed man, of course!

Then... a spectacularly bad day involving a prison bus, a train, and the less desirable effects of gravity allows him to escape, which is quite fortunate because it wouldn't be a very exciting movie otherwise.

However, he does escape, allowing him to become The Fugitive. Instead of packing his bags for Mexico like a sensible escaped felon, Kimble decides to clear his name himself. This involves a lot of sneaking around in hospitals as well as that old Hollywood trope of following pharmaceutical paper trails. Meanwhile, he's being chased by a man on a mission: Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard. He's played remarkably well by Tommy Lee Jones, who got the Oscar for his performance.

Answer: Babe

'Babe' was that movie that made you feel guilty for eating bacon. Well, at least for a couple moments. It was released in 1995, and I would love to have been there during the pitch meeting.

So, a polite little pig, raised by sheepdogs, decides he would very much like to herd sheep instead of becoming a BLT. The odds are against him as are the general expectations of normal pig behavior. But there's just no stopping our little pig. Babe works his way toward competitive glory on sheer willpower, good looks, and charm. Somehow the movie worked, and moms everywhere had to deal with their kids being cranky about pork for a month.

If you haven't seen it - and, really, who could blame you? - the movie is live-action, not animated, making it rather unique for the time. It was done thanks to trained animals, animatronics, and some early digital effects that hold up pretty well. I'd love to tell you more, but I... well, I just saw it the one time when it came out. I REALLY like bacon. My doctor says it's a problem.