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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?

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. What’s on Jack Bauer’s iPod A Little More Than We Could Dare To Try Looking for a Band Name? Try Spam. Bill’s Going to Show You a Thing or Two (without)soundtrack The Kriegsmann Files On a Mission from God Go Junior, Go Senior Pineapple Guitars and Volcanic Bong Hits Brothers in Arms Yellow-legged Moonwalker… Meow

  2. The first soundtrack off the top of my head that sounded really cool and certainly helped make the movie what it was: Raising Arizona

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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