Robert De Niro
Angel Heart
(1987)
William Hjortsberg (novel), Alan Parker (screenplay)
2 wins & 3 nominations.
Harry Angel has a new case, to find a man called Johnny Favourite. Except things aren't quite that simple and Johnny doesn't want to be found. Let's just say that amongst the period detail and beautiful scenery, it all gets really really nasty.
Brazil
(1985)
Terry Gilliam (screenplay), Tom Stoppard (screenplay), Charles McKeown (screenplay)
Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 8 wins & 3 nominations.
A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state.
Cape Fear
(1991)
John D. MacDonald (novel), James R. Webb (earlier screenplay), Wesley Strick (screenplay)
Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 4 wins & 14 nominations.
Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte)is a small-town corporate attorney/"Leave It to Beaver" type family-man. Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, bible-quoting, rapist. What do they have in common? Fourteen years, ago Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey, bibliophile Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
Casino
(1995)
Nicholas Pileggi (book), Nicholas Pileggi (screenplay), Martin Scorsese (screenplay)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 3 wins & 9 nominations.
This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas--it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970's and '80's are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw--Ace falls in love with a hustler, Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.
Goodfellas
(1990)
Nicholas Pileggi (book), Nicholas Pileggi (screenplay), Martin Scorsese (screenplay)
Won 1 Oscar. Another 37 wins & 31 nominations.
Henry Hill is a small time gangster, who takes part in a robbery with Jimmy Conway and Tommy De Vito, two other gangsters who have set their sights a bit higher. His two partners kill off everyone else involved in the robbery, and slowly start to climb up through the hierarchy of the Mob. Henry, however, is badly affected by his partners' success, but will he stoop low enough to bring about the downfall of Jimmy and Tommy?
Heat
(1995)
Michael Mann
9 nominations.
Hunters and their prey--Neil and his professional criminal crew hunt to score big money targets (banks, vaults, armored cars) and are, in turn, hunted by Lt. Vincent Hanna and his team of cops in the Robbery/Homicide police division. A botched job puts Hanna onto their trail while they regroup and try to put together one last big 'retirement' score. Neil and Vincent are similar in many ways, including their troubled personal lives. At a crucial moment in his life, Neil disobeys the dictum taught to him long ago by his criminal mentor--'Never have anything in your life that you can't walk out on in thirty seconds flat, if you spot the heat coming around the corner'--as he falls in love. Thus the stage is set for the suspenseful ending....
Jackie Brown
(1997)
Quentin Tarantino (written for the screen by), Elmore Leonard (novel)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 7 wins & 21 nominations.
The middle age stewardess Jackie Brown smuggles money from Mexico to Los Angeles for the arms dealer Ordell Robbie. When she gets caught by the agents Ray Nicolette and Mark Dargus with ten thousand dollars and cocaine in her purse, they propose a deal to her to help them to arrest Ordell in exchange of her freedom. Meanwhile Ordell asks the fifty-six year-old Max Cherry, who runs a bail bond business, to release Jackie Brown with the intention of eliminating her. Jackie suspects of Ordell's intention and plots a complicate confidence game with Max to steal half a million dollar from Ordell.
Joker
(2019)
Todd Phillips, Scott Silver, Bob Kane (based on characters created by), Bill Finger (based on characters created by), Jerry Robinson (based on characters created by)
Won 2 Oscars. Another 109 wins & 222 nominations.
In Gotham City, mentally troubled comedian Arthur Fleck is disregarded and mistreated by society. He then embarks on a downward spiral of revolution and bloody crime. This path brings him face-to-face with his alter-ego: the Joker.
Limitless
(2011)
Leslie Dixon (screenplay), Alan Glynn (novel)
2 wins & 7 nominations.
An action-thriller about a writer who takes an experimental drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his mind. As one man evolves into the perfect version of himself, forces more corrupt than he can imagine mark him for assassination. Out-of-work writer Eddie Morra's (Cooper) rejection by girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) confirms his belief that he has zero future. That all vanishes the day an old friend introduces Eddie to NZT, a designer pharmaceutical that makes him laser focused and more confident than any man alive. Now on an NZT-fueled odyssey, everything Eddie's read, heard or seen is instantly organized and available to him. As the former nobody rises to the top of the financial world, he draws the attention of business mogul Carl Van Loon (De Niro), who sees this enhanced version of Eddie as the tool to make billions. But brutal side effects jeopardize his meteoric ascent. With a dwindling stash and hit men who will eliminate him to get the NZT, Eddie must stay wired long enough to elude capture and fulfill his destiny. If he can't, he will become just another victim who thought he'd found invincibility in a bottle.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
(1994)
Mary Shelley (novel), Steph Lady (screenplay), Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 12 nominations.
When the brilliant but unorthodox scientist Victor Frankenstein rejects the artificial man that he has created, the Creature escapes and later swears revenge.
Mean Streets
(1973)
Martin Scorsese (screenplay), Mardik Martin (screenplay), Martin Scorsese (story)
6 wins & 5 nominations.
A small-time hood struggles to succeed on the "mean streets" of Little Italy.
Once Upon a Time in America
(1984)
Harry Grey (novel), Leonardo Benvenuti (screenplay), Piero De Bernardi (screenplay), Enrico Medioli (screenplay), Franco Arcalli (screenplay), Franco Ferrini (screenplay), Sergio Leone (screenplay), Stuart Kaminsky (additional dialogue)
Nominated for 2 Golden Globes. Another 11 wins & 7 nominations.
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
Raging Bull
(1980)
Jake LaMotta (based on the book by), Joseph Carter (with), Peter Savage (with), Paul Schrader (screenplay), Mardik Martin (screenplay)
Won 2 Oscars. Another 23 wins & 24 nominations.
An emotionally self-destructive boxer's journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring, destroys his life outside it.
Red Lights
(2012)
Rodrigo Cortés
2 nominations
The skeptical psychologist Dr. Margaret Matheson and her assistant, physicist Tom Buckley, are specialists in disclosing fraudulent paranormal phenomena. When the famous psychic Simon Silver reappears to his public after many years of absence, Tom becomes singularly obsessed in determining whether Silver is a fraud or not.
Ronin
(1998)
J.D. Zeik (story), J.D. Zeik (screenplay), David Mamet (screenplay)
1 win & 4 nominations.
A freelancing former US intelligence agent tries to track down a mysterious package that is wanted by both the Irish and the Russians.
Taxi Driver
(1976)
Paul Schrader
Nominated for 4 Oscars. Another 21 wins & 15 nominations.
Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her. After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp and lover Matthew.
The Deer Hunter
(1978)
Michael Cimino (story), Deric Washburn (story), Louis Garfinkle (story), Quinn K. Redeker (story), Deric Washburn (screenplay)
Won 5 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 26 nominations.
An in-depth examination of the ways in which the U.S. Vietnam war impacts and disrupts the lives of people in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.
The Family
(2013)
Luc Besson (screenplay), Michael Caleo (screenplay), Tonino Benacquista (based on the book by)
1 nomination.
A mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. Despite the best efforts of CIA Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni (Robert De Niro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) can't help but revert to old habits and blow their cover by handling their problems the "family" way, enabling their former mafia cronies to track them down. Chaos ensues as old scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings.
The Godfather: Part II
(1974)
Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay), Mario Puzo (screenplay), Mario Puzo (novel)
Won 6 Oscars. Another 9 wins & 20 nominations.
The continuing saga of the Corleone crime family tells the story of a young Vito Corleone growing up in Sicily and in 1910s New York; and follows Michael Corleone in the 1950s as he attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.