Which movie(s) do you think has the best soundtrack?
I think American Psycho has a good soundtrack and I listen to it occasionaly.
Shrek 2, unironically
Also Sucker Punch and Tron Legacy
Thank you for so many suggestions! Honestly, I didn’t know most of them.
For anyone who are too bothered to read the entire comment section, here’s the list
List
- O Brother Where Art Thou?
- Forest Gump
- Legion (show)
- Westworld
- Good Will Hunting
- E.T.
- Jurassic Park
- Indiana Jones
- Birdman
- 28 Days Later
- Trainspotting
- Garden State
- Once upon a time the west
- Blade runner
- Yellow Submarine
- The Muppet Movie
- School of Rock
- The Village
- Amelie
- Pride and Prejudice
- Shutter Island
- The Piano
- Reservoir Dogs
- Blues Brothers
- From Dusk til Dawn
- Gladiator
- Dump and Dumber
- Romeo and Juliet
- Pulp Fiction
- Buena Vista Social Club
- Help!
- Purple Rain
- La Boum
- Fame and The Kids from Fame
- The wackness
- Vertigo
- North by Northwest
- Psycho
- Ultraman Rising
- The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
- Desparado
- Conan the Barbarian
- The Fountain
- Grosse Point Blank
- Donnie Darko
- Reservoir Dogs
- Kill Bill
- Stand By Me
- Dirty Dancing
- The Lost Boys
- Hackers
- Summer Wars
- Kikujiros Summer
- Dunkirk
- Inception
- Desert Rose
- American Beauty
- Easy rider
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- The Matrix
- Interstellar
- Requiem for a dream
- Tenet
- Independence Day
- Garden State
- The Crow
- Pacific Rim
- The Decline of Western Civilization
- Schindler’s List
- Rogue One
- Dunkirk
- Judgement Night
- Full Metal Jacket
- Varsity Blues
- Oppenheimer
- Atomic Blonde
- Dazed and Confused
- Spawn
- Ransom
- Lord of the Rings
- Empire Records
- Get Shorty
- The Big Lebowski
- Buried
- A Knight’s Tale
- Pretty in Pink
- Stranger Than Fiction
- The Third Man
- The Mission
- Dred
- Redline
- Tombstone
- Almost Famous
Let me know if I’m missing something
The Blues Brothers - it’s stringing together performances from famous musicians, and the soundtrack was successful as an album in its own right.
Birdman. Just drums. Really fucking good drums. Also they appear in the middle of one scene in an excellent way.
Also: not a movie, but Cowboy Bebop. Lots and lots of great tracks.
A few not listed:
- The Crow
- Empire Records
- Leaving Las Vegas
- Get Shorty
- Grosse Pointe Blank
Pulp Fiction(listed elsewhere)
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Monsoon Wedding
Lord of the Rings
Into The Wild
- Yellow Submarine (I think a lot of people either forget this movie exists, or write it off as a kids movie. You’re missing out on a movie that could be considered as revolutionary to animation as the Beatles were to music.)
- Back to the Future
- The Muppet Movie
- School of Rock
- Bladerunner
- The Matrix
There’s probably other’s, but that’s what immediately comes to mind.
Tron Legacy, but that’s cheating as it’s essentially a Daft Punk music video.
The grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? Motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then. One day. I got in…
The Game has changed, Son of Flynn!
and then it BEAMS
One of my favorite
But to be honest: Its a good music video
Sadly not a good movie, though.
The Matrix
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Forest Gump+1 for The Matrix. I once watched the film at a theater where the music was played live by an orchestra. One of my favorite movie experiences of all time. The soundtrack is incredible.
O Brother is great for some classic folk.
- Pirates of the Caribbean (personally, At World’s End has the best, Hans Zimmer)
- The Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore)
- Gravity (Steven Price)
- Tron Legacy (Daft Punk)
- Moonlight (Nicholas Britell)
- Harry Potter (can only speak to the ones by John Williams)
- Braveheart (James Horner)
- The Matrix (Don Davis)
- Interstellar
- Jaws
- Smokey and the Bandit
- The Way
More general answer than you expected, but…
I really like when the sound design in movies makes sense - it “plays” in radio, gramophone…
For example “Black hole sun” cover in first episode of Westworld is just brilliant and caught me off guard (I didn’t know what it is about).
The adjective for this type of music is “diegetic”. That’s sound which is occurring and audible in-universe, not just to the audience.
My favourite example of this is in Grosse Point Blank, when the GNR cover of Live and Let Die is playing non-diagetically, right until the moment Martin walks into the store, and suddenly a cheesy muzak version of it is playing over the shop radio. It’s beautifully done :-)
TIL, thanks.
Haven’t watched it yet, but I love Black Hole Sun. I’ll definately check it out
If you don’t know anything about Westworld - don’t read reviews…
The mindfuck from the first season is worth it when you go blind in to it. The soundtrack is making the vibe of it even more disturbing/disorienting.
Once upon a time the west. (Ennio Morricone)
Blade runner (Vangelis)
The Lord of the Rings
This is Howard Shore’s Magnum opus. It’s what distinguishes this movie as more than just a great adaptation. His use of themes to represent not only races and kingdoms but characters, objects (like the One Ring, of course), and even concepts is a level above most movie soundtracks. There are even elements of storytelling through the music!
For example, the first time we hear the theme for Gondor is when Boromir is in Rivendell. Since he’s more or less alone, the theme is played by a single French Horn in a somber (almost tragic) style. In Return of the King, we see Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, in all its glory, and so the full orchestra plays the theme.
One more: As the Fellowship begins to break down, so too does the theme. We go from heroic phrases to shorter, interrupted instances. There’s a book about the soundtrack written by Doug Adams. I highly recommend it if you’re interested!
