Top Greatest Movie Soundtracks

1•WalterBright•5h ago

In no particular order:

1. The Blue Max

2. Ben Hur

3. The Lord of the Rings

4. The Planet of the Apes (1968)

5. A Fistfull of Dollars / For A Few Dollars More

6. Born Free

7. The Sound of Music

8. Jesus Christ Superstar

9. South Pacific

10. The Wizard of Oz

The music often makes the movie.

I only listed original scores, not existing music.

Comments

WalterBright•5h ago

I'd have listed Victory At Sea, but it was the score for a TV documentary series, not a movie.

k310•4h ago

You can hear "Beneath the southern cross" at the archive, part of Victory at Sea. Track #7.

https://archive.org/details/VictoryAtSeaVolumeI/07_Beneath+t...

BONUS: No Other Love - Richard Rodgers (same tune)

https://www.irealb.com/forums/showthread.php?20230-No-Other-...

> The tune for No Other Love was originally part of Richard Rodgers' score for the acclaimed 1952 TV war documentary series Victory at Sea. In the orchestral suite compiled from the score the piece was titled Beneath the Southern Cross.

> In 1953, Rodgers "borrowed" his own tune and included it in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Me and Juliet as No Other Love, with lyrics by Hammerstein.

> It was a hit tune for Perry Como:

> It was even recorded by Jay and the Americans:

About "Me and Juliet"

https://www.classicalsource.com/concert/rodgers-hammersteins...

https://rodgersandhammerstein.com/me-and-juliet-synopsis/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_and_Juliet

WalterBright•3h ago

Wow, nice links! I have all three albums of it.

SvenL•5h ago

While the transformer movie might be a little bit Hollywood, Steve Jablonski did a great job - especially Arrival to earth.

Also, not a movie but a TV series, Battlestar Galactica (the new one). Bear McCreary created a space opera (the shape of things to come, Prelude to war…)

alabastervlog•5h ago

Maybe my single least favorite thing about modern cinema is that movies across the cost spectrum have stopped giving a shit about original soundtracks. That’s how we can have 30+ damn Marvel movies and nobody remembers anything about the original music except one run of like seven or eight notes. It’s why the ones with the most style and most-effective soundtracks just used existing friggin’ pop rock songs.

It has to do with modern very-flexible digital editing (don’t want to lock in a Final Cut early enough to allow for production of a quality score timed to the edit) and editors/directors extensively using placeholder music, editing to that exactly, then just asking for a clone of whatever lame tune that was, as I understand it. Basically, having a shitty soundtrack just lets them get done with post-production faster, and keeps them more flexible until closer to release

Middling 90s movies like Twister and The Ghost and the Darkness punch way above their weight thanks to the soundtrack. You almost never see that any more.

gibbitz•5h ago

This is due to the same market pressures faced by TV commercial jingles. It's cheaper to license a pop song for the number of impressions than to pay a composer to make something for your brand. The needle drop wins and even the creator of the pop song loses since often the publishing house and whomever owns the rights make the money. It's no wonder AI is the Belle of the ball these days. Anything business can do to avoid paying a person for their talent they will do. Even if audiences stopped showing up, they won't stop doing it. They aim to reduce the cost enough that they'll make money if only one person shows up. The quality will continue the trend we see here.

bdangubic•5h ago

Office Space is #1 - no contest :)

k310•3h ago

Not the greatest, but interesting. "Backdraft" the movie has sound by Hans Zimmer, used extensively in the Japanese version of "Iron Chef." which was high camp fun.

The Full (Japanese) Iron Chef theme is here:

https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_30483

WalterBright•3h ago

Sill, The Blue Max is the best. I've never heard music so evocative of the joy of flying. It makes the back of my neck tingle when I hear it.

owebmaster•3h ago

Watchmen!

"Hello darkness my old friend..."

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