The Perfect Film Score

Taxi Driver
Lawrence of Arabia
Star Wars
And did nobody say The Godfather

Vertigo

Elevator to the Gallows
There Will Be Blood

My personal faves…

Wojciech Kilar: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Clint Mansell (Featuring Kronos Quartet): Requiem For A Dream
Trevor Jones & Randy Edelman: The Last Of The Mohicans
Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
Dario Marianelli: Atonement
Explosions In The Sky: Friday Night Lights
Lisa Gerrard & Peter Bourke: The Insider

I think ALIENS is pretty perfect, even if Horner really kind of went downhill quickly after throughout the 90s, and a major reason why the movie’s almost dated, borderline low-budget look (compared to ALIEN for sure) gets pulled off by Cameron. The perpetual menace of the score really brings out the pervasive grittiness of the image that is key to the film’s feel.

I enjoy the score for There Will Be Blood alot too, I could see why someone wouldn’t but I love how unique it is and it seems to reflect that which cannot be seen in either Eli or Daniel directly.

One of my favorite scores that I’m sure no one remembers is Andrea Morricone’s work on Capturing the Friedman’s. Absolutely stellar – this guy has real promise to take after his father.

I’ll agree with Miasma and go with Prokofiev / Nevsky (thank you for the pleasant reminder)

And Stuart Staples for L’Intrus (i’m kind of obsessed by it).

I didn’t know their was any doubt, 2001: A Space Odyessy.

Guilty Pleasure: Dragon the Bruce Lee Story. It works well with the material :)

My faves are

Michael Nyman and Wim Mertens for Greenaway
Herman for Hitchcock
Peter Gabriel for the last temptation
Jonny Greenwood for there will be blood.
Angelo Badalamenti for Lynch
Ennio Morricone for the mission

The Straight Story one of my favorite films and scores.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk8Y-XxaAog

Maurice Jarre’s “Lawrence of Arabia” is a masterpiece. John Williams’ soundtracks are always potent, including the not so often remembered collaborations with Oliver Stone in JFK and Nixon, both great movies with excellent soundtracks. I also love James Newton Howard’s music for Shyamalan’s films and I can’t recommend just one, you have to listen to them all. To end I must underline the high quality of “The Mothman Prophecies” OST by Tomandandy. An amazingly atmospheric and quite disturbing work.

The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover- Music by Michael Nyman

Badlands – That score added the right element of strangeness to an already strange film.

Popol Vuh’s scores for Herzog’s films are quite interesting. The one for NOSFERATU really increases the strangeness.

there’s a bunch of scores cited that i think is top notch but one in particular is haunting me since the first time i saw the film. it’s the score for THE FOUNTAIN by CLINT MANSELL. my favorite right now.

I have to second Mansell’s score for The Fountain.

Cliff Martinez’s score for Solaris (2002).

I forgot The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Also, the Contempt score is perfection.

Yojimbo score by Masaru Sato
Alexander Nevsky – Prokofiev
Talk To Her score by Alberto Iglesias
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – Ennio Morricone
Jules and Jim score by Georges Delerue

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, by Shigeaki Saegusa.

Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner is the only film I can think of that transformed the film into a separate world; it actually became a character in the film itself. Having watched the workprint version the film is more existential and has an interesting quality with the silence but under Vangelis’ synthesizer the hi-tech, dystopian world of the future he helped articulate the hypocrisy of society, technology and ourselves without the use of familiar violins or orchestra, which wouldn’t have worked in Blade Runner. He even adds unusual sound textures in many scenes to heighten the alienation without melodrama. If you listen to the film’s beginning, it has a distinctly Japanese severity, almost Samurai-like, yet as the film progresses it becomes more melancholy and contemplative, like a character trying to understand the world that society created. Another motif throughout the film is memories and nostalgia, relying heavily on piano for emphasis yet with synthesizer accompanying in very melancholy tones. The famous saxophone of the ‘love scene’ is the only emotional warmth of the entire film save for the ‘Tears in Rain’ soliloquy near the end of the film.

It amazes me that this soundtrack was unavailable for so many years and yet although nominated never won any awards.

I was just going to write a post nominating Blade Runner. Completely agree. Without that score, they movie would have been entirely different. Combined with the amazing visuals, it really makes that movie special. Just fantastic.

Vangelis work on the movie really does transcend musical contribution and get into the realm of pure soundscape throughout much of the film, which is amazingly textured. And the further collaging of other sound sources like the traditional Japanese track, the cut from ‘Harps of the Ancient Temples’ make it even richer.

Loved the workprint, and love David Byrne and Brian Eno’s track ’Qu’ran’ playing in Taffy Lewis’ nightclub…composed in ‘81 and still hip, still funky in 2019. Also much preferred the alternate version of the love theme which has always been for me the film’s only distracting track…the workprint version somehow acknowledged more honestly the awkwardness, desperation, and violence of Deckard and Rachel’s relationship. I seem to recall there’s also another great, unused or underused track later in the Bradbury sequence amidst all the terrible and distracting temp music that drags down the second half of the workprint badly.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Thin Red Line