Which is the first Martin Scorsese film in which Robert De Niro appeared
LEVEL 2 — 🎬 FILM ENTHUSIAST
For those who have moved past casual movie nights and into the realm of serious discussion, this next level is tailor-made for you. If you are the kind of viewer who loves sitting down at your favorite spot after the credits roll to deeply analyze a director's vision, artistic choices, and hidden details, let's test your cinematic expertise across these twelve unique films!
We kick things off with a legendary cinematic partnership, noting that The Irishman (2019) was the ninth movie Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese made together, followed later by their tenth collaboration in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), alongside a short 16-minute film titled The Audition (2015) where De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio competed for a role while Brad Pitt made a cameo.
A group of youngsters kidnaps a Mafia boss in the 1997 crime comedy Suicide Kings, based on Don Stanford's short story "The Hostage," with Peter O'Fallon directing an ensemble cast including Denis Leary, Sean Patrick Flanery, Henry Thomas, and Jay Mohr.
Journeying into a quirky romance, a 1993 film directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik features a lead character who frequently emulates Buster Keaton, alongside a famous sequence where rolls dance that was inspired by Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's silent film The Rough House (1917), with a musical score by Rachel Portman and supporting turns from Dan Hedaya and William H. Macy.
Clint Eastwood portrayed Dirty Harry in the 1971 action film Dirty Harry and also directed some scenes, while Don Siegel served as the main director and producer. The serial killer Scorpio was loosely based on the real-life Zodiac killer, and Eastwood's character was inspired by investigator David Toschi, with Harry Guardino, John Vernon, and John Mitchum rounding out the cast.
The fantasy drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) was written by Eric Roth based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story about a man aging backwards, a project whose rights bounced from Ray Stark—who originally wanted Jack Nicholson to star—to Steven Spielberg and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall before finally being directed by David Fincher, with music by Alexandre Desplat and cinematography by Claudio Miranda.
Stephen Hopkins' 1996 adventure film The Ghost and the Darkness follows lion-hunting historical events based on a story screenwriter William Goldman first heard in Africa in 1984 and pitched to Paramount as a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Jaws, featuring cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond and executive production by Michael Douglas.
Michael Keaton plays the superhero Birdman in the 2014 movie Birdman directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, alongside Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, and Naomi Watts. The film famously utilizes a technical illusion making the entire feature appear as a single, continuous unbroken shot from start to finish, with cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and supporting roles by Lindsay Duncan, Amy Ryan, and Zach Galifianakis.
Franco Castellano and co-director Giuseppe Moccia brought Adriano Celentano's 1980 comedy Il Bisbetico Domato (The Taming of the Scoundrel) to life, a box office smash loosely inspired by William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew that became the top-grossing film on the Italian market for the 1980/1981 season.
Arthur Hiller's 1972 film adaptation Man of La Mancha features Peter O'Toole as Don Quixote and James Coco as Sancho Panza, drawing from Dale Wasserman's Broadway musical and his 1959 television play I, Don Quixote (which combined a semi-fictional episode from Miguel de Cervantes' life with scenes from his novel), where the name "Dulcinea" translates to 'sweetheart' from the Spanish word dulce.
Taylor Hackford's romantic adventure Against All Odds features a star-studded cast and serves as a remake of Jacques Tourneur's 1947 film Out of the Past (which starred Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer, and Rhonda Fleming), while the film's title song became a massive global chart success as Phil Collins' very first number-one single in the United States.
Seeking Justice (2011) is an action thriller directed by Roger Donaldson and produced by Tobey Maguire among others, centering on a high-stakes narrative where a desperate husband seeks retribution.
The action-packed Mission: Impossible franchise welcomed a standout recurring actress starting in 2015 with Rogue Nation—directed by Christopher McQuarrie after he completed uncredited rewrites on Ghost Protocol—paving the way for her multi-film run alongside other franchise alumni like Léa Seydoux, Michelle Monaghan, and Vanessa Kirby.
That wraps up this round of trivia setups! Whether you breezed through these cinematic hints or found yourself scratching your head, these twelve films represent some of the most memorable stories, genres, and character studies in movie history. Take your time, trust your film instincts, and let's see how your score turns out!