The 50 Best Film Scores Of The 21st Century So Far - Page 3 of 5

30. “Prisoners” (2013) – Jóhann Jóhannsson
An underrated score from a perennially underrated composer, Icelandic musician Jóhann Jóhannsson’s chilling work for Denis Villeneuve’s gloom-noir drama, “Prisoners,” creeps into your bones like an unforgiving chill. It’s one of the scariest scores on this list, and yet it acts nothing like a spiky, jump-scare-laden horror score. Instead the ghostly church organs, throbbing cello drones, and chimes that glisten like icicles in the frigid air combine into a strange sort of desperate hymnal. Contributing to ratcheting tension at some points, and wild yawning grief at others, it’s the sound of prayers falling, unanswered, on frozen ground.

29. “Irreversible” (2002) – Thomas Bangalter
Putting music together for Gasper Noe‘s nightmarish, brutally violent, backwards revenge movie is a tall order, but Bangalter (one half of robotic French phenomenon Daft Punk) delivers. Mirroring the movie’s descent into claustrophobic darkness, and tinged with throwback horror and giallo flourishes, it’s not subtle, but then subtlety is not what the film is about. Instead the sometimes grandiose, sometimes jagged, occasionally danceable score (“Spinal Scratch” is an electro gem, both the bleak and borderline psychedelic) is art-freak provocation in its own right. Also interspersed with a few classical music tracks, it’s a fascinating, disquieting vision of a dark demi-monde hurtling towards its end – which is also its beginning.

28. “The Fog Of War” (2003) – Philip Glass
Aside from music documentaries (like “Junun” or “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” etc. which we excluded) it’s rare to find a non-fiction film that fully exploits the enhancing power of a score. But Errol Morris never showed such hesitance, working with acclaimed composer Philip Glass multiple times. “The Fog Of War,” which visually is just a guy talking in a dark room intercut with archive footage, really needs the pirouetting, overlapping orchestral swirls of the score to come to life and across 34 separate pieces, most of which run a mere two minutes long, Glass manages to bring the whole world into the “Interrotron.”

27. “Like Crazy” (2011) – Dustin O’Halloran
Rising composer Dustin O’Halloran first turned heads with a few elegant, period-perfect original score pieces for Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” but it’s his work on Drake Doremus’ wistful indie romance that best typifies the fragile, melancholy piano we associate him with now. It may not even be our actual favorite work of his – his gorgeous music for Jill Soloway‘s TV show “Transparent” probably takes that crown – but there’s no doubt his introspective, tremulous, devastatingly tender compositions perfectly occupy the exact nexus between bitter and sweet, which is the precise emotional territory occupied by Doremus’ breakout, and to this date best, film.

26. “The Fountain” (2006) – Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet & Mogwai
Working with frequent collaborator Darren Aronofsky on the director’s grand mystical sci-fi folly “The Fountain,” towering 21st century composer Mansell’s talent shines through in every moment, but this is also a masterpiece of cleverly chosen collaboration. Reuniting Mansell, after “Requiem for a Dream” with contemporary classical string quartet The Kronos Quartet and further adding Scottish ambient post-rockers Mogwai to the mix, the combination has levels that have levels, and the score arcs through every register, from a dormant, burning-ember glow to a roaring conflagration to a swarm of sparks flying heavenward. In fact, the music achieves the film’s ambitions of divine transcendence better than the film does.

25. “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2014) – Jozef Van Wissem & SQÜRL
Jim Jarmusch often hands scoring duties over, like to The RZA or to Japanese avant-garde metal band Boris on “The Limits of Control” (which oh-so-nearly made this list), but he occasionally takes a more DIY approach. This collaboration is between SQÜRL, Jarmusch’s own ambient noise-rock band and minimalist composer Jozef Van Wissem, whose lute plucks out plangent melodies above SQÜRL’s swirls of forlorn, decaying, echoey feedback (check out exemplary track “The Taste Of Blood”). The resulting score, punctuated with exquisite songs, sounds like the mournful exhalation of a creature who cannot die, and for whom history, music, love, irony and ennui are all part of the same decadent neverending continuum.

24. “25th Hour” (2002) – Terrence Blanchard
Perhaps a more “traditional” score than some of the films on this list, nevertheless Terrence Blanchard’s meditative-yet-grand accompaniment to Spike Lee’s best film of the last decade, “25th Hour,” has a somber, death-rattle-like disconsolateness to it, as it counts down the final hours of its protagonist. But there’s also a resilient, patriotic tenor as well, which mirrors the post-9/11 mood in which the film takes place. Understated and nuanced, Blanchard’s scores knows just the right moments to elevate itself and aim for a dignified air of redemption.

23. “Sunshine” (2007) – John Murphy & Underworld
Turbo-charged and gloriously over-the-top, with the help of Brian-Eno-esque brainy techno rockers Underworld, John Murphy’s co-written score for “Sunshine” is also incandescent and heavenly. This maximal, high-pitched score both soothes with ambient soundscapes and thunders with molten lava gushes. Musically, it’s essentially an emo-melodrama in space, but that blinding sense of staring the mother of creation right in her face is simply radiant.

22. “Her” (2013) – Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett
Before you even see anything in “Her,” Spike Jonze‘s completely beguiling sci-fi romance, you hear some notes from a jangly guitar – appropriate for a film about a man who falls in love with an invisible entity. Canadian indie gods Arcade Fire are known for combining leading-edge technology with ancient instrumentation, and that atmosphere of timeless futurism, is perfect for this lo-fi high-tech romance. The push-pull between rudimentary garage-band riffs and space-age coolness might even be too clever, too thematically on-the-nose, except that the score is used so sparingly in the movie that you appreciate those unexpected swells all the more. They’re as fleeting, harsh, ephemeral and beautiful as impossible love.

21. “Me And You And Everyone We Know” (2005) – Michael Andrews
Sleepy-eyed and sun-kissed, Michael Andrews’ dreamy synth score to Miranda July‘s debut feature—all old-school atmospheric analog keyboards, plus the aerial voice of Inara George— is like watching slo-motion bubbles drift up to the sky. A movie about sad misfits, rather than going sad sack, Andrews dials up a minor key effervescence that’s woozy and wistful. ‘MAYAEWK’ get knocked for being too twee, but it has a soft heart and emotional genuineness that is coaxed out beautifully by these warm ambrosial sounds.