Movies on the Timeline
The films that defined pop culture. Here’s a taste of the Movies pack — 215 verified moments and counting.
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That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store- 1895🎥 The Lumière brothers hold the first paid public film screening in the basement salon of a Paris café, astonishing patrons with moving pictures of factory workers and an arriving train.
- 1929🏆 The first Academy Awards ceremony is held as a private dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
- 1937🍎 Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre, the first feature-length animated film.
- 1940🎼 Disney's concert-film experiment Fantasia premieres in New York, with Mickey as a sorcerer's apprentice and pioneering multi-speaker 'Fantasound' filling the theater.
- 1946🔔 Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life premieres at New York's Globe Theatre, letting George Bailey see what Bedford Falls would have become without him.
- 1950👠 Disney's Cinderella premieres in Boston, and its glass slipper rescues the debt-ridden studio with its biggest hit since Snow White.
- 1954🪟 James Stewart's housebound photographer spies on his neighbors and suspects a murder in Hitchcock's voyeuristic thriller, premiering in New York.
- 1958🌀 Hitchcock's Vertigo premieres in San Francisco, spinning an acrophobic detective into a dizzying obsession with a mysterious woman.
- 1960🎞 Jean-Luc Godard's jump-cut crime romance Breathless opens in Paris theaters, its handheld cool announcing the French New Wave to the world.
- 1962🐪 David Lean's sweeping desert epic with Peter O'Toole as T. E. Lawrence premieres at London's Odeon Leicester Square.
- 1964☢️ Peter Sellers plays three roles in Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire about an accidental nuclear apocalypse.
- 1968🪐 Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic space epic has its world premiere at Washington's Uptown Theater in Cinerama.
- 1971🚗 William Friedkin's gritty NYC narcotics thriller with its white-knuckle car chase premieres, soon the first R-rated Best Picture winner.
- 1973🪶 Marlon Brando boycotts the Oscars, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to decline his Best Actor win for The Godfather.
- 1976🚕 Scorsese's Taxi Driver premieres with De Niro's Travis Bickle asking 'You talkin' to me?' in a feverish urban nightmare.
- 1978🕺 Grease opens in theaters, sending Danny and Sandy from summer nights to Rydell High and toward record heights for a movie musical.
- 1980🌌 The darker Star Wars sequel arrives, revealing a galaxy-shaking truth and proving blockbusters could deepen with each chapter.
- 1984👻 Three eccentric scientists start a paranormal extermination business and battle a giant marshmallow man in Ghostbusters.
- 1986✈️ Top Gun roars into theaters, with Tom Cruise's hotshot pilot Maverick chasing glory at an elite Navy flight school.
- 1988🏢 Bruce Willis's John McClane battles thieves in a skyscraper, redefining the modern action hero and the genre itself.
- 1989🍎 The Oscars open with an infamous Rob Lowe and Snow White song-and-dance number that becomes a punchline.
- 1990🎥 Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas opens in American theaters, following Henry Hill through mob life.
- 1991🌹 A bookish young woman falls for a cursed prince trapped in monstrous form in Beauty and the Beast.
- 1993🧹 Robin Williams disguises himself as an elderly Scottish nanny to spend time with his kids in Mrs. Doubtfire.
- 1994🍫 Tom Hanks stars as a slow-witted Alabama man who stumbles through decades of American history in Forrest Gump.
- 1996📞 Scream opens, its movie-trivia-quizzing Ghostface killer slyly reviving the slasher genre it loves to mock.
- 1998🏆 Titanic wins Best Picture and ties the record with eleven Academy Awards in a single night.
- 1999🕶️ The Matrix opens in theaters, as Neo discovers reality is a simulation and bends bullets in slow-motion combat.
- 2000🧬 Bryan Singer's X-Men brings Marvel's mutants to the screen, kicking off the modern superhero-movie boom.
- 2001🚗 Alfonso Cuarón's frank Mexican road-trip drama opens, launching Gael García Bernal and a new wave of Mexican cinema.
- 2003👑 Frodo finishes his quest to destroy the ring as Middle-earth's war ends in The Return of the King.
- 2004💍 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King sweeps all eleven nominations, the first fantasy Best Picture.
- 2006🧚 Guillermo del Toro's dark fairy tale premieres at Cannes to a legendary standing ovation, blending fascism and fantasy.
- 2008🤖 Iron Man opens in theaters, launching Marvel's Cinematic Universe with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark.
- 2008💰 Danny Boyle's Mumbai rags-to-riches story opens in U.S. theaters, sweeping its way to eight Academy Awards.
- 2010🐲 DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon opens, a Viking boy befriending a sleek dragon named Toothless.
- 2012🛡 Marvel's The Avengers opens, uniting Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk in the first film ever to top two hundred million dollars in a single weekend.
- 2015⚔️ The Force returns to theaters with a new generation of heroes, reigniting the Star Wars saga to record crowds.
- 2017🫖 A young man visits his girlfriend's family and uncovers a sinister secret in Jordan Peele's Get Out.
- 2019🛡️ Avengers: Endgame opens in theaters and goes on to become the highest-grossing film of all time.
Think you can put these in order?
That’s Whensly — a new daily puzzle of real moments on the timeline.
Play today’s puzzle — free on the App Store