Filmmaker Magazine has selected its 20 Essential Movie Soundtracks – seminal scores that tell a story. The list runs the gamut from Hitchcockian suspense (Vertigo) to French New Wave (Contempt) to scifi noir (Blade Runner) to visceral junkie movie (Requiem for a Dream).
I agree with many of these choices, but off the top of my head, missing from my list are Peter Gabriel’s The Passion, Ennio Morricone’s The Mission, Gyorgy Ligetti’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (with the help of Johann and Richard Strauss), and Patrick Doyle’s Henry V.
What’s missing from yours?
- Suspiria
- Paris, Texas
- Contempt
- Naked Lunch
- Mysterious Skin
- Traffic
- Once Upon a Time in the West
- Blade Runner
- Trouble Every Day
- Requiem for a Dream
- Sorcerer
- American Beauty
- Vertigo
- Fargo
- La Dolce Vita
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Spartacus
- The Draughtman’s Contract
- The Hours
- The Insider
The first soundtrack off the top of my head that sounded really cool and certainly helped make the movie what it was: Raising Arizona
The 2nd soundtrack I can think of that really helped tell the story was the one for Beverly Hills Cop.
Great choices. Carter Burwell and Harold Faltermeyer are both great movie composers. I also left out Mark Mothersbaugh’s work on Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.
I should also point out AFI’s 100 Years of Film Scores, which is a good reference, although their Top 25 is rather predictable.
I don’t know if I remember the scores for either of those two movies, but the music supervising he does has been great. The songs definitely helped define those movies.
I think a key aspect to any list of great scores/soundtracks is that you leave the movie with the music wedged in your brain. Of the list from above, the only movies that I can remember having this effect on me are Paris, Texas, American Beauty, and La Dolce Vita.
There’s actually a really minor scene in an early Simpsons episode (I think it’s the one with the murderous babysitter) in which Homer is shaving/prepping for an evening out with Marge and humming/scatting the theme from La Dolce Vita.
2 other scores that came to mind, both are descriptive of and inseparable from the movies they appear in: The Odd Couple and The Pink Panther.
Also the original Get Carter has a really cool soundtrack. I actually rented the movie just because of the soundtrack, but the movie is great, too.
Oh, and the Flash Gordon soundtrack. Maybe the best reason to watch that movie.