Best Use of Music in Films.

Ennio Morricone + Sergio Leone = Win.

I love the soundtracks for all the Transformers movies, by Steve Jablonsky. Very epic. The actual movies, I don't care for much. Except the first. That was okay.

Raksin's themes for Laura and The Bad and the Beautiful.

Barber's "Adagio for Strings" in "Platoon." I swear, the music made me tear up as much as the situation of the doomed character.

Maryn, big old softie

donroc said:

Raksin's themes for Laura.

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... qft.
The song really does speak of his morbid obsession.

Speaking of war flicks, Apocalypse Now has a cool one.
Jim Morrison's, The End. Lots of other good tunes in it as well.
Kinda like the soundtrack more than the movie actually.

Lock thread.

Diana Hignutt said:

After seeing Melancholia (twice) which uses Wagner supremely, I was thinking about movies that make really good use of their music. Here's a couple that stand out in my mind:

Melancholia
a Clockwork Orange
Watchmen
2001
Lord of the Rings (all three films)


What are your thoughts on this topic?

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I'm a huge Wagner fan. I loved hearing his work in Apocalypse Now and Excalibur as well.

As for music in film, well, there are two animals for me: scores and soundtracks.

For soundtracks you have movies like The Big Chill that made the soundtrack something to be noticed. Other films with great soundtracks were The Crow, Pulp Fiction, etc.

For scores, yeah, I'm a huge score nerd. I love it when music really hits it and meshes perfectly with the narrative.

The film 1492: Conquest of Paradise was a really great example of that, imho, even though the film was a bit wonky, Vangelis blew my mind with his score. It went perfectly with Ridley Scott's flowing vision, banners in the breeze, discovery, the slow-motion moment (that's overdone nowadays).

I did like Lord of the Rings as well. I was fortunate enough to attend the symphony where they played music from the Lord of the Rings. Absolutely haunting. Just gave me chills (as it did in the film).

Glory also comes to mind. The Charging of Ft. Wagner is one of the most intense and powerful moments in cinema history and the music takes it to a whole new level.

Bram Stoker's Dracula had an AWESOME score. I actually heard some of that on American Horror Story a few nights back and thought "yeah!"

I'm a sucker for Conan the Barbarian (Basil P.) Still great after all these years.

Other scores that top my list:
Gladiator
Kingdom of Heaven
Battlestar Galactica (reimagined - "Razor" is beyond amazing)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Interesting story about CTHD, one of the pieces has its main melody played, then somewhere in the middle, the melody is played backwards and added as another layer on top of the forward-running melody. Awesome!

A new score I recently found was Ned Kelly (the Heath Ledger version). Definitely worth a looksee.

Children of Dune has a great score as well.

Brutal Mustang said:

I love the soundtracks for all the Transformers movies, by Steve Jablonsky. Very epic. The actual movies, I don't care for much. Except the first. That was okay.

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<3 you!

Jablonsky is the BOMB! The movies might have been sad (though I liked the first), the music was awesome. I have all three soundtracks. Autobots is my THEME song as I walk to campus every day.

Jablonsky also did the music for "The Island," if I remember. There's a great piece from that movie, "My Name is Lincoln" that I love.

Another thing that came to mind reading this thread is the use of coffee house rock or other weepy songs on network television dramas.

I'm watching The Vampire Diaries now (yes, I know, but it's such a delightful, guilty pleasure!). Seriously, every time people start making out, they have some soft indie-rock song begin. Or they'll do some musical montage thing.

I'm starting to feel too aware of this, ya know?

KISS meets the Phantom of the Park. 1st off KISS music!! 2nd off, it also had that great Hanna Barbara cartoon music that made you think Scooby Doo was about to come around the corner looking for a Scooby Snack!!

Sergei Prokofiev's score for Alexander Nevsky - sort of like having Picasso do the poster or Michaelangelo design the sets.

Max Steiner's score for King Kong. And if you have to ask, 'Which one?', you need to turn in your movie fan license immediately.

Ikuma Dan's score for Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, which John Barry practically lifted note-for-note for Zulu, and which was recycled by Basil Poledouris for Robocop.

I still think Jerry Goldsmith is the man, even though Williams is more famous. Have been finding some cool new names though, like Jamie Christopherson and Jason Graves.

Hands down winner: Chemical Brothers' handing of the music/sound (because it's often hard to tell where one starts and the other ends), in Hanna.

I can't believe I forgot this one:


The music from Sunshine.

Amaaaaaaaazing....

Gorecki's Third Symphony ("Symphony of Sorrowful Songs") in Fearless.

ETA: And Jack Nitzsche's great electronic score for Starman.

And, since I'm here, Basil Poledouris's score for Conan the Barbarian (1982). Really makes the movie.

Okay, and Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes (1968). Kind of unsettling; he used all sorts of unusual techniques to get odd sounds.

SirOtter said:

Max Steiner's score for King Kong. And if you have to ask, 'Which one?', you need to turn in your movie fan license immediately.

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Agreed. Though it was fun how they used some of it in Peter Jackson's movie.

Manuel Royal said:

And, since I'm here, Basil Poledouris's score for Conan the Barbarian (1982). Really makes the movie.

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It did, true, but I like it better under its original title - Gustav Holst's Mars the Bringer of War. :Þ

Holst's Mars is awesome. I've heard it in a few different films.

I've also heard Carmina Burana in a few films (though that one is so overdone now). Great to see live, though.

Conan is the geek-staple for D&D mood music.

Jurassic Park. Especially the music part (Journey to the Island) when the chopper lands on the island and they see the brachiosaur. It's so vibrant and hopeful, excellent for a scene where characters see a live dinosaur for the first time ever.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Not often you get to see a movie where the specific notes of the soundtrack are a vital part of the story.

SirOtter said:

It did, true, but I like it better under its original title - Gustav Holst's Mars the Bringer of War. :Þ

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Not that similar. Poledouris wasn't John Williams.