Which movie(s) do you think has the best soundtrack?
I think American Psycho has a good soundtrack and I listen to it occasionaly.
Tron Legacy, but that’s cheating as it’s essentially a Daft Punk music video.
The grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? Motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then. One day. I got in…
and then it BEAMS
The Game has changed, Son of Flynn!
One of my favorite
The Matrix
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Forest Gump- Pirates of the Caribbean (personally, At World’s End has the best, Hans Zimmer)
- The Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore)
- Gravity (Steven Price)
- Tron Legacy (Daft Punk)
- Moonlight (Nicholas Britell)
- Harry Potter (can only speak to the ones by John Williams)
- Braveheart (James Horner)
- The Matrix (Don Davis)
- Interstellar
- Jaws
- Smokey and the Bandit
- The Way
Birdman. Just drums. Really fucking good drums. Also they appear in the middle of one scene in an excellent way.
Also: not a movie, but Cowboy Bebop. Lots and lots of great tracks.
The Blues Brothers - it’s stringing together performances from famous musicians, and the soundtrack was successful as an album in its own right.
I know you said movies, but a soundtrack for a show I’m hooked on currently is Legion (FX/Marvel, on Hulu). The whole entire show has an amazing cast to begin with, but Jeff Russo (Fargo, Star Trek Discovery, more) and Noah Hawley put together one hell of a score. I highly recommend it and the show.
- Spawn
- Baby Driver
- Garden State
- the Lord of the Rings trilogy
+1 for Spawn. Such a great soundtrack for a such bad movie.
Yes, spawn. Amazing.
Can’t believe no-one mentioned The Crow…
For me the criteria is: would the movie be very different with another soundtrack. The below offerings truly elevate their movies imo.
Tron Legacy
Blade Runner
Black Panther
The Lord of the Rings
This is Howard Shore’s Magnum opus. It’s what distinguishes this movie as more than just a great adaptation. His use of themes to represent not only races and kingdoms but characters, objects (like the One Ring, of course), and even concepts is a level above most movie soundtracks. There are even elements of storytelling through the music!
For example, the first time we hear the theme for Gondor is when Boromir is in Rivendell. Since he’s more or less alone, the theme is played by a single French Horn in a somber (almost tragic) style. In Return of the King, we see Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, in all its glory, and so the full orchestra plays the theme.
One more: As the Fellowship begins to break down, so too does the theme. We go from heroic phrases to shorter, interrupted instances. There’s a book about the soundtrack written by Doug Adams. I highly recommend it if you’re interested!
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The Village
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O Brother Where Art Thou
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Amélie
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Pride and Prejudice
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Shutter Island
to name a few.
Amélie is a great call. That music is timeless.
The Piano too?
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A few not listed:
- The Crow
- Empire Records
- Leaving Las Vegas
- Get Shorty
- Grosse Pointe Blank
Pulp Fiction(listed elsewhere)
Akira(1988)
The soundtrack compliments the action so well.
real. Geinoh Yamashirogumi elevated that movie beyond “weird mindfuck anime” to an immersive experience.
On the same note, Ghost in the Shell’s soundtrack is also a masterwork, though it doesn’t have a single stand out track like Kaneda’s Theme
Too much of ambience songs.
Personally I prefer more structured pieces like Battle against Clown or the OST of Tron:LegacyI just gave it a listen through, and yes I am remembering it for Kaneda’s Theme.
Seeing that scene on the big screen in '88 has not been topped as the most electric cinematic experience, for me.
The theme reminds me a bit about the Mario Kart DS/N64 race track Banshee Boardwalk.
The theme is definitely more structured but a bit too repetetive to just listen to. As a theme it’s perfectly suited to support a narrative.
Reservoir Dogs, O Brother Where Art Though, Blues Brothers, From Dusk til Dawn,
I’m going to reframe this as who I think the best composers are:
Bernard Hermann, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, etc.
John Williams, E.T., Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc.
Akira Ifukube, most of the Shōwa era Godzilla movies
Shiro Shigasu, Evangelion, Shin Godzilla
As far as new work, I’m partial to Scott Stafford on Ultraman Rising. It came out on Netflix this past June and I was really surprised how good that movie and soundtrack were.
