10. “Eighth Grade”
If you’re looking for a score to serve as the soundtrack to your misadventures next summer, look no further than Anna Meredith’s wonderfully unpredictable anthology of songs for “Eighth Grade.” Floating in an interspace located somewhere between an art-pop album and the soundtrack for a cutesy, pixelated video game, Meredith’s contributions to Bo Burnham’s endearing directorial debut is a playful clash of genres. Bouncing from majestic electronic ballads (“Being Yourself”) to restrained hazy synth tunes (“MGMS Class of 2017”), each individual track is extraordinary. Occasionally tense, constantly impressive, and undeniably expressive, these songs bleed color and radiate emotion. Honestly, you’ve truly never heard a score quite like this. – JC
9. “The Old Man And The Gun”
The second Daniel Hart showed up, and never left, in the films of David Lowery (“Saint Nick,” and everything since including most of the early shorts), he instantly became one of our favorite composers; his versatility seemingly endless. His work in Lowery’s charming “The Old Man With The Gun,” is a velvety throwback and playful as the movie itself. Like this character, an unflappable bandit and heist architect and the movies ’70s inclinations, Hart’s jazzy score is cool, confident, mischievous with nods to that decade’s sly Blaxploitation soul/70s cop shows and dazzling orchestration (the soaring strings here are terrific). If you remember the ’70s composer Dave Grusin (“The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” “The Midnight Man“), you might have a better frame of reference. However, there’s a little melancholy too; this is the end for Robert Redford (allegedly retiring) and his career-criminal character and so there are some nice touches of unoppressive dolor to round out the edges of this frayed protagonist. On top of this ace score, you’ve got a terrific selection of soundtrack cuts chosen by Lowery including a defining lonely/sad use of Jackson C. Frank‘s “Blues Runs The Game” and super use of The Kinks, Scott Walker and more. The mix of the two makes for a striking, memorable musical mix that goes down together like the finest top-shelf bourbon on ice. – RP
8. “Mid90s”
There’s a little bit of a pose to Jonah Hill’s directorial debut “Mid90s,” a personal, heartfelt and sincere semi-autobiographical skate drama that also longs to be accepted by the cooler kids and a little too memorializing in its nostalgia. But its soundtrack is undeniably aces. While Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“The Social Network”) are credited with composing the film’s score, that’s overselling it a bit: it’s four pieces that account for 12 minutes of music. That said, it’s a sweet, minimalist 12 minutes that’s post-rock-y, piano-y, simmering and core to the movie’s feelings of melancholy, inadequacy, and loneliness. Its soundtrack, of course, is the opposite story, much more celebratory encapsulation of ’90s music at the time as it meant to Hill: the world wherein his character escapes and finds solace and friendship. This means a lot of ‘90s hip-hop (Wu-Tang, Pharcyde, Tribe Called Quest), but some excellent off-the-beaten-path choices (Gravediggaz, Souls of Mischief, Jeru The Damja, GZA), some skate punk (Misfits, Bad Brains), but also more earnest and emotionally vulnerable songs like the Pixies, Morrissey (We’ll Let You Know” used in a key skating scene) and the first track from Nirvana’s Unplugged ever used in a movie. “Mid90s” might be frontin’ ever so slightly, but its soundtrack is the real deal. – RP
7. “Mandy”
Jóhann Jóhannsson was all set to become the composer of a generation. The brilliant mind behind the moody, arresting scores for “Arrival,” “Prisoners,” “Sicario” and the Oscar-winning “The Theory of Everything,” Icelandic composer’s music did what all the best scores did—made themselves inseparable from the visuals they backed, and enhanced the film to new heights. His tragic death in February snapped a soaring career short, but his mesmerizing, medieval, black metal melodies for “Mandy” make for fitting swan songs for the composing titan. If “Mandy” is a lake on fire, filled with broken love, hollow malevolence, and acidic daydreams, Jóhannsson’s soundscape-and-strings score was the oxygen tank that fueled the rage, anger, and passion behind the character’s blood-lusting revenge and loss. One can’t imagine “Mandy” without Jóhannsson’s molten-lava music; it’s seared into its DNA and poured into its heart. A cosmic horror film with biker monsters, crazed cult leaders, and chainsaw fights isn’t supposed to make you feel such empathy and longing, but a Jóhannsson brings a spiritualist ache to this nightmarish hellscape of a score. We’ll always mourn Jóhannsson’s loss, but like all the great artists, he’ll continue to live on through his work. What a testament to the composer he was that his career end with such devastatingly scorching achievement. – CW
6. “Vox Lux”
Brady Corbet’s swing-for-the-fences music drama “Vox Lux” is an ambitious, maddeningly circular drama—about the dark tragedy that defines an adolescent young girl, the escape, freedom, and catharsis she finds in pop music, and the jailhouse of fame that once again ensnares and threatens to circumscribe her liberty again. A very American tale, meditating on the hazards of dreams, celebrity, American pop icons, and national tragedies of both personal and monolithic scale, “Vox Lux” arguably bites off more than it can chew, but its choice of musicians and the gifts they bear are brilliant and inspired. The concept: in the face of a devastating school shooting and then later, 9/11 (yep, it goes there), a young girl’s moving pop anthem attempts to unite and heal the nation. You need a big fucking song for that and Corbet lands a genuine, for-the-ages epic in pop songwriter extraordinaire Sia (Rihanna, Katy Perry, etc) and her monumental “Wrapped Up” track, a kind of towering, cancerous, irresistible earworm that will decimate you once it takes hold. If the movie can’t quite convince, Sia’s pop gems, seemingly plucked out of the celestial EDM pop heavens, will make you believe in pure pop as a religion that can wash over, and deliver absolute salvation. The flipside to these contagious pop bangers (some sung by Raffey Cassidy, some by Natalie Portman) is the polar opposite; a haunting and unsettling orchestral and choral score by the great Scott Walker (a ’60s/’70s pop icon who turned avante garde artist and never looked back). “Vox Lux” its brilliance and its self-indulgent pretentions have already caused a lot of fist fights, hurt feelings, and bitterness around these parts, but at least all of us can agree, its life-lifting soundtrack and pop songs can help us all soar above the toxicity of America and its broken discourse. – RP
