30. “Frank” (2014)
Eccentric is only a bad thing if you subscribe to the word normal in everyday life. Tis only fitting that the track which introduces audiences (and Domhall Gleeson’s desperate wannabe) to the papier-mache helmet-bearing Frank (Michael Fassbender), lead singer of The Soronprfbs, would be titled “Ginger Crouton.” Fuzzy and unsubtle, batshit chaotic balderdash, their sound is like a post-punk group evolved into ever-seemingly senseless synth pop-rock. The Soronprfbs feels like the impassioned mess of a real band come to life— broken, damaged, manic/sad outsider art if Daniel Johnston had moog, a Theremin and a kooky, talented backing band. The track “Creaky Doors” built off a lo-fi whirlpool of droning sounds, beeps and bass notes that collect until the inspirited structure crescendos, almost as if Can, Sun-Ra, and Wolf Parade had an off-beat love child. An impassioned desperation to be seen as accepted drives the group’s instrumentation. The irony is a very normal looking man resides underneath the mask. When Frank has finally exposed himself, shedding all emotions into the confessional “I Love You All,” and the powerful end credits roll, his art suddenly makes sense. The tellingly named track “Just like ‘Paris, Texas’” also shreds, and not just because the film snob reference/reverence is pitch perfect, but for its zealous thematic resonance. – AB
29. “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” (2019)
Never has one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies felt more like an excuse to arrange a sprawling, overtly fetishistic mixtape than his languid and divisive Tinseltown fairytale “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” And trust us, we mean this in the most complimentary way possible. “Once Upon a Time” is arguably Tarantino’s most personal and intimate film since “Jackie Brown,” and in that regard, the soundtrack feels like a playlist that the director has spent years tinkering with. It’s full of 60’s folk, vintage bubblegum pop, dad rock, and bands you either haven’t heard of or haven’t thought about in decades (Mitch Ryder! Paul Revere & The Raiders! NEIL DIAMOND!) Tarantino has always been one of our most gifted cinematic pastiche artists, so it only makes sense that he would lift Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” to a more darkly suggestive end, or score the movie’s most horrifically violent scene to the swaggering, guitar-fueled sounds of Vanilla Fudge’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” This is a director who is as famous for his use of music as he is for his instantly quotable dialogue – who can forget the immortal Delfonics needle drops from “Jackie Brown,” or the perfectly-timed use of “Jungle Boogie” in “Pulp Fiction” – so to say that this collection of songs ranks up there with Q.T.’s best work is saying a lot. It’s an pristine slice of pop ephemera that makes a perfect complement to a film whose view of the past is alternately starry-eyed and mournful. – NL
28. “Prince Avalanche” (2013)
David Gordon Green doesn’t get enough credit for how well he uses music: think about Phillip Glass’ attempts at a Southern Gothic sound in the Green-directed “Undertow,” the revamped John Carpenter compositions of Green’s “Halloween” remake, or even the eclectic mix of tunes in his stoner action-comedy “Pineapple Express” (Moondog, Peter Tosh, SHAQUILLE O’ NEAL). Green has been working with David Wingo since the days of “George Washington” and “All The Real Girls,” and the musician’s doleful, whimsical vibe is a perfect match for Green’s slightly off-kilter worldview. Wingo has toured and played with Texas post-rock outfit Explosions in the Sky, and for “Prince Avalanche” – a laconic minimalist buddy film about a pair of odd dudes who spend their summer painting traffic lines on a seemingly endless stretch of country road – Green opted to unite Wingo with his frequent musical collaborators. The resulting score is lovely, simple, and sad, much like the film itself. In “Prince Avalanche,” our blue-collar heroes (played by Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) are working from within the nexus of a wilderness that has been ravaged by a fire, lending their otherwise quotidian routine a hint of peril. That hazardous edge extends to the songs that Wingo/Explosions composed for “Prince Avalanche”: however fanciful this music sounds, it also suggests that lurking tragedy is never too far away. Wingo’s music frequently invokes the sensation of sprawling expanse and wide-open spaces, making his work here a perfect fit for the world Green creates: this is a massive-feeling score for an unexpectedly massive-feeling film, even if it’s just about two ordinary working guys who eventually learn to accept each other. – NL
27. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010)
If you can’t recite all of the lyrics to “Black Sheep” or “Slick (Patel’s Song),” then square up for a fight with me and my demon hipster chicks because the “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” soundtrack and score are both so iconic it’s impossible to pick a favorite between the two. Given that “Scott Pilgrim” is a film based on a Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series centering on musical melees and battles of bands, some great music was bound to accompany Edgar Wright’s on-screen adaptation. But the world was not prepared for just how great that music would be. Every iconic scene is punctuated with an incredible song, like a THWACK! on a comic book panel. The film opens on the rollicking rock bop “We Are Sex Bob-Omb,” then closes on an original Beck number modeled after an in-film song, “Ramona.” In between are perfect morsels of action-hero-meets-sci-fi-combat score by Nigel Godrich. The overall combination is almost better than a B+B+X+Y+DOWN+UP mach punch. Or garlic bread (note: give it up for the excellent Brit Pop soundtrack of “The World’s End” too). –LW
26. “Uncut Gems” (2019)
The score for Josh and Benny Safdie’s “Good Time” sounded like being trapped inside a rave in the seventh circle of hell, often summoning the sensation of trying to navigate a kind of acid-fueled video game as the walls close in all around you. It was a series of frenetic, frenzied, avant-garde electronic freakouts composed by pioneering noise musician Oneohtrix Point Never, and his sensibility was so clearly well-suited to the Safdies’ hectic worldview, that it’s no surprise they brought him back to score this year’s justly acclaimed “Uncut Gems.” The music in “Uncut Gems” occasionally reaches the feverish peaks of the “Good Time” score, but on a whole, it’s stranger, mellower, more esoteric, and if anything, even less classifiable. Oneohtrix Point Never – who here composes under his birth name, Daniel Lopatin – builds upon his agitated, synapse-frying electro work from “Good Time,” mixing in cacophonous choral howls, psychedelic interludes, and what occasionally sounds like new-age jazz. It’s a flawlessly orchestrated symphony of disarray: one that sounds entropic when you first hear it, but is ultimately put together in a very deliberate way. “Uncut Gems” punctuates the story of a diamond hustler’s increasingly dangerous and high-stakes daily routine with subtle allusions to Jewish mysticism, and when the Safdies’ camera disappears into the colorful insides of a million-dollar Ethiopian opal, Lopatin’s music achieves Mt. Olympus-level heights of transcendence. “Uncut Gems” sees our foremost neo-realist storytellers building upon an existing relationship with one of our most exciting new composers, producing their most doggedly unconventional and sonically transportive work to date. – NL
25. “20th Century Women” (2016)
Honestly, it would be kind of strange if Mike Mills wasn’t capable of cobbling together a decent soundtrack. Mills’ movies are cinematic collage works: fond, affectionate collections of places, people, and memories. “20th Century Women,” Mills’ tender love letter to his mother, is more of a time capsule than any of his previous works. The film seeks to transport viewers (and listeners, since this is a soundtrack list), to late 1970s Santa Barbara: an era where the sexual revolution had cooled off, and punk and new wave were both on the rise. Mills gets some great mileage out of the period here, and the soundtrack to “20th Century Women” features shrewd, knowing needle drops from the era in which the film unfolds. Surely many of us remember the smart use of “The Big Country” by Talking Heads from the film’s trailers, and some of us are partial to the upbeat, otherworldly original sound-doodles by the film’s composer, Roger Neill. And yet, Mills also makes room for the kind of swinging jazz that colored his previous film, “Beginners” (Louis Armstrong), a rollicking punk cut or two (including “Why Can’t I Touch It,” one of the very best Buzzcocks songs), and what is arguably the most swooningly memorable use of proto-punk gods Suicide ever committed to celluloid. Mills is a director who possesses an enviable knack for transporting us to a purer past before asking us to reckon with the pain of our buried memories, and the music “20th Century Women” will undoubtedly evoke nostalgia in its listeners – even if they didn’t happen to grow up in Santa Barbara in 1979 (P.S., the “Beginners” soundtrack is excellent too). – NL
24. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014)
You could almost consider French composer Alexandre Desplat the musical revelation of the decade, if it weren’t for the fact, that by the late aughts he had already nabbed three Oscar nominations (“The Queen,” Fantastic Mr. Fox,” ‘Benjamin Button’). He would go on to earn six more Oscar nominations in the 2010s, win twice, and arguably could be on this list several times. There’s an argument to be made, his emotional score this decade is the lush one for “The Shape of Water,” which is admittedly terrific. But his most inventive—the balalaikas! the Alphorns! whistles, church organs, music boxes, male choir, bells and cimbalom!—and perhaps the overall greatest since its boosted by the use of fantastic, pre-existing Russian folk music (Öse Schuppel, Siegfried Behrend, and Vitaly Gnutov), has got to be the wiry, acrobatic score to Wes Anderson‘s “Grand Budapest Hotel.” Manic, jittery, rousing with just a touch of melancholy to denote the passing of handsome civility in favor of creeping fascism, Desplat’s ‘Budapest’ score is one for the ages (big shout outs to Desplat’s music for “Argo,” “Philomena,” “Rust And Bone,” ” The Sisters Brothers,” and many more). – RP
23. “Mandy” (2018)
The music of Jóhann Jóhannsson is both beatific and bombastic, its instrumentation conjuring a primacy that is rarely felt in modern film scores. Over the course of his too-short life, Jóhannsson worked for the likes of Denis Villeneuve, composing brooding yet beautiful scores for the likes of “Sicario” and “Arrival,” in addition to working on more audience-friendly fare like “The Theory of Everything.” For “Mandy” – the postmodern midnight movie classic that launched a thousand GIFs and proved that Nicolas Cage could still bring the ruckus in a movie that wasn’t straight-to-VOD garbage – Jóhannsson sought out to create a sonic tapestry that was badass above all else. “Mandy” is a movie that lives or dies on the one-of-a-kind mood it creates, and Jóhannsson’s musical compositions capture the feeling of being trapped inside a lava lamp for forty-one righteous minutes. If you’re going to create a musical accompaniment to a film where Nicolas Cage wields chainsaws and stares down exotic jungle cats, this is how you do it. This is Jóhannsson doing John Carpenter with a heavy doom metal influence, and the results are rarely less than awe-inspiring. “Sand” sends a wave of synths crashing upon each other, creating a dissonant and yet somehow wholly cohesive. “Forging the Beast” is every bit as gnarly as its name suggests, sounding like a Isao Tomita B-side with a baleful Satanic edge, while “Children of the New Dawn” is unexpectedly beautiful: a melange of slow-drip percussion, sound-bath atmospherics, and deliciously over-the-top, ’80s-style keyboards. “Mandy” the movie might be a potent and utterly ridiculous slice of B-movie ephemera, but the “Mandy” soundtrack is rarely anything less than gorgeous. – NL
22. “Manchester By The Sea” (2016)
When you recall “Manchester By The Sea,” you think Kenneth Lonergan‘s masterful script, Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams‘ stunning performance, the heartbreaking movie’s ability to transcend moments of profound grief and turn on a dime to hilarious comedy, and not so much the music (arguably the most overlooked and forgotten on this list). But try again, listen to the tragic, majestic, and mournful chorale score by Lesley Barber and try not to be crestfallen. Then there’s Lonergan and music supervisor Linda Cohen’s exquisite selection of sonorous, operatic classical pieces (key pieces of Händel’s ” Messiah,” Giazotto, Gerhard Kanzian), and you get to the heart of this crushing movie; about a man crushed to atoms by tragedy, the pain he cannot overcome, and the boy caught in the middle. Somewhere in the wreckage of all this grief, among all these tears, though Barber’s elegiac calls out to ocean, lays not a triumph of perseverance, but a more practical reason to keep on hanging on, day by day. – RP
21. “A Ghost Story” (2017)
David Lowery’s phantasmagorical story of a love lost wowed at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, introducing an aesthetic spectacle that would go on to be like nothing else that year. Underscoring the film’s experimental narrative (time jumps and bedsheet ghost costumes, anyone?) was a searching, shimmering score by Lowery’s career-long collaborator Daniel Hart. With a stolid, mesmerizing lead performance from Rooney Mara at center stage, it’s difficult to listen back on some of this score without welling up. “Little Notes” and “The Secret in the Wall” conjure up the phantoms of the film’s tragic opening act, while the soundtrack’s later Latin-titled songs add screechy layers of archaism and intrigue. Then, to round it off, you get “History,” an echoey, lyrical songs meant to act as work by Casey Affleck’s character. To put it bluntly: this is a bop, if you’re the kind of person who likes to walk around in the cold and listen to Sufjan Stevens. Which, if you’re retroactively listening to the “A Ghost Story” score, you definitely are. –LW
