Best Movie Soundtracks

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

Hello. Last night I watched the Royal Tenenbaums on TV and really enjoyed it. I was struck by what a great soundtrack it had, I had to immediately go and download Needle in the Hay by Elliot Smith after it was used (very well I might add) in the suicide scene. That's a bloody excellent song. Anyway, The Clash, the Ramones, Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, it had a great soundtrack. What are your favourite film soundtracks?

[Nuts 'n Gum]

yeah that's got a good soundtrack, when i first saw it though i got annoyed that all these songs i liked were being used therefore all the stupid faux-cool people will jump on these artists bandwagon and play these songs constantly.

elitist, moi?

oh and as for film soundtracks...erm, there are song ones and Scores.

Song-wise, I would say High Fidelity, great songs on that.

and Score-wise, hmm...i dunno actually, there's a lot thast 'd be missing out!

[trotsky assortment]

For soundtracks mostly made up of other people's tunes, I still really like 'The Craft'.

For soundtracks in the proper film score sense, though, you can't go far wrong with anything by Thomas Newman.

[A Passing Turk Slipper]

oh and as for film soundtracks...erm, there are song ones and Scores.

Yeah, I knew I should have specified. We had a thread on scores a while back so I kind of meant soundtracks of other people's music.

[wasp_f15ting]

187 has a gorgeous sumptuous soundtrack

For films.. its a tough one Hanz Zimmer is pretty good, so is Newman, its hard to say which one is better. Though the Thin Red Line OST was awesome. The worst OST of all time is to be heard in The Third Man

[The Boston Crab]

I really really love all of the soundtracks to Wong Kar-Wai's movies. I spent months tracking down all of the bossa stuff from Days Of Being Wild (because it's not commercially available as an OST). In The Mood For Love and 2046 are also wonderufl. Lots of Latin stuff, bossa, exotica even, and some great 50s Shanghai popstrels...just a sweltering atmosphere of unrequited love and sex.

Says I.

[smoker]

score-wise i always liked damon albarn and michael nyman's work on ravenous, and also the music that accompanied the final run up the mountain in last of the mohicans <michael mann version>

the original taxi movie from luc besson had a top sound track

[El Unicornio, mang]

Scorcese always has great songs in his films, and was the first to really utilise having actual songs of the time playing rather than someone just composing a score. He also knows exactly where to put the songs to get the full effect Goodfellas: (the piano bit in "Layla" over all the deaths, "Sunshine of your Love" when De Niro is at the bar, smoking and considering his next move (whacking Maurie) Mean Streets: "Jumpin' Jack Flash" kicking in when De Niro enters the bar)

I also thought Badly Drawn Boy did a nice collection of songs for About a Boy

[lazyhour]

I agree that the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack is excellent, and would also strongly recommend the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's previous film Rushmore.  In fact, they are probably my two favourite pop-music-using film soundtracks of all time, and for me are like two halves of the same CD-coin.

Also in the running for best OSTs ever, Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective soundtrack releases.  By thunder, these are good.

# You couldn't be cuter...

Oh, and the soundtrack to Crumb!  And Ghost World!  Two essential discs for people interested in "old-timey" music, especially the Ghost World CD.  "Devil Got My Woman", my goodness.

Considering that in general I have scorn for OST releases and people who buy them (and I'm stubborn, so I won't change my position), I now realise that I can actually think of several that I love.  Interesting.  People whose favourite 'album' is "The Titanic soundtrack CD" are still fools, though.

[Pepotamo1985]

This is cheating, but Zappa's soundtrack to Uncle Meat never fails to excite me.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Grosse Point Blank has a great selection of tunes on its soundtrack, including songs by The Clash, The Specials and Motorhead. Plus Joe Strummer wrote the score.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Star Wars deserves a mention.

[Derek Trucks]

A Hard Day's Night - Best pre-Rubber Soul Fab 4 album by a mile.

Head - The soundtrack album (edited by Jack Nicholson) was one of the first (perhaps the first) to feature dialogue from the movie.

The Harder They Come - just a great set of songs.

There's more but as usual I can't remeber them.

[Paaaaul]

Natural Born Killers OST- it's better than the film

[butnut]

This is cheating as I only know the songs and not the film, but the Elliott Smith songs used on 'Good Will Hunting' are brilliant, as are almost all of his songs. I really must get round to starting a thread about him.

[kidsick5000]

Live and Let Die

Rushmore

Black Hawk Down

The Shining

[VegaLA]

Dawn of the Dead - Goblin.

The first record I ever brought, Virgin megastore sometime in the mid 80's. The record itself is rare and last time I checked was worth 150 quid !

Ah yesh, the music... Brilliant.. fit the mood of the film perfectly.

[kidsick5000]

Shaun of the Dead used The Gonk for the DVD extras.
Took me ages to link it to Dawn of The Dead. Sounded like the theme from Ground Force.

[wooly]

If you're into early 90s pre nu-metal rap/metal crossover (well someone might be), the soundtrack for Judgement Night is excellent.

Never seen the movie, which is apparently a stinker, but the soundtrack features loads of interesting collaborations between rap and rock acts: Slayer with Ice-T, Helmet & House Of Pain, Faith No More & Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., Sonic Youth & Cypress Hill...

class!

[phantom_power]

jon brion has done some fantastic scores, the best of which are i heart huckabees, punch drunk love and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (the last one especially)

the dust brothers' did a good job with fight club too, though the music doesn't stand up as well on its own as it does in the film.

[Labian Quest]

I like the score for Paris, Texas (I'm pretty sure Ry Cooder won an Oscar for it) and also the one for Rumblefish, which was written by Stewart Copeland:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/sim-explorer/explore-items/-/B000002GGP/0/101/1/none/session/ref%3Dpd%5Fsxp%5Fr0/102-8503508-9164125

Oh yeah, 'Assault on Precinct 13' has also got a very cool score.

[splattermac]

Funny you should mention that but I just watched I heart Huckabees yesterday and I enjoyed the score music and at the end up popped Jon Brion's name.

I like most of the music used in Coen brother's films. I think they use a chap called Carter Burwell.

Then there's Jim Jarmusch films and some nice scores in Werner Herzog films.

Indy slacker films are beginning to piss me off their soundtracks. I can understand the importance of bringing a composer onboard to enhance a film but when a director or his mate raid their record collections for a different track to be played at three minute intervals through out their ninety minute film then it pops me out of the film because all I can hear are songs I occasionally know or the sound of cash registers cha-chinging!$!

www.tinyurl.com is useful for miniaturising long urls (you can also create a button on firefox browser for it so whatever page you are on can be quickly shortened with the press of a button)

[Serafina Pekkala]

i recently got the Excalibur soundtrack and very good it is too.

[Ghost of Troubled Joe]

Surprised that no-one's mentioned Nightmare Before Christmas yet- an absolutely joyous piece of work, Danny Elfman's finest.

Almost Famous? Spinal Tap? Bram Stoker's Dracula? Lord of the Rings? Requiem for a Dream? Just some of my faves and all worthwhile additions to any CD collection.

[Sam]

Nightmare is definitely one of Elfman's best, but I think Edward Scissorhands, Black Beauty and probably Batman are better.

Elfman's probably my favourite film composer. I don't really like the main big guys like Williams, Zimmer, Horner etc, although they've all done stuff that I like (Zimmer's The Thin Red Line score is lovely). I tend to go for the classic guys like Herrmann, Rota and Morricone.

As for "song" soundtracks, I was very impressed with Garden State's soundtrack (though any soundtrack featuring Nick Drake gets a big thumbs up from me). I agree with people who mentioned the excellent soundtracks in Wes Anderson's films. I particularly liked the use of Sigur Ros at the end of The Life Aquatic With Steve Zizzou. PT Anderson's soundtracks are good too; I loved Aimee Mann in Magnolia

[Ghost of Troubled Joe]

PT Anderson, like Scorsese, always has good soundtracks- agree with Magnolia, fantastic set of songs from Mann, and Jon Brion's score for Punch Drunk Love is superb. Cameron Crowe is another director who does decent song-based soundtracks; I mentioned Almost Famous but Vanilla Sky has got an excellent soundtrack (Sigur Ros at the end of that one too).

I've never been all that convinced by Elfman, he's never one to diversify, is he? A lot of his scores just all sound the same to me, but Nightmare really does stand out.

A heads-up also to the soundtrack to Kubrick's Barry Lyndon- a fine collection of some my favourite pieces of classical music.

[Cardinal Tit Storm]

...

[Mister Cairo]

Hannibal has a great soundtrack, in particular Vide Core Meum, the last track

Donnie Brasco has some cracking songs on it, for example ELO`s "Don`t Bring Me Down

[mikeyg27]

Oh yeah, 'Assault on Precinct 13' has also got a very cool score.

Whilst I'm not going to deny this, the OST is a bit stupid. Whilst it has 27 tracks, in reality there are about three different versions of nine songs.

However, I'm quite a big fan of Carpenter's scores. I'm not entirely sure why he didn't just do the score for The Thing himself, considering it is just Ennio Moriccone does John Carpenter.

[Clinton Morgan]

Listened to Nino Rota's 'La Dolce Vita' soundtrack on vinyl today. Ahhhhhh! Mmmmmm!