Top Movie Scores

[StewieG]

What music scores from movies do you really get into? Which ones set the mood perfectly? Which ones can you hear the music to and immediately think of the movie?

For me, pretty much anything John Williams does is fantastic. Jurassic Park, ET, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Superman, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan...his list is incredible. It's all such great music, and it's incredibly memorable. I'll be sitting at work and suddenly find myself humming the Superman theme, or tapping my pencil to the beat of Indiana Jones. The man's body of work is stunning.

I left this out of the previous list (as I'm sure some of you noticed), because I think it deserves it's own special mention. But most of the Star Wars music fits the theme perfectly. Especially Leia's and Luke's themes, and the Imperial March. I have no doubt Star Wars would be anywhere near as popular today without a score so broad, but good.

As for non-Williams music...the Batman theme is always fun to listen to (the original movie one, with Tim Burton and Michael Keaton).

And I doubt many will agree with me on this, but I always liked the soundtrack to the first two American Pie movies, mostly because that's the type of music I enjoy. I thought they fit the theme of the movies pretty well.

Anyways, I'm curious as to what some of your favorite scores are.

[swerb]

Star Wars and Lord of the Rings have classic scores.

I thought the music from The Departed was great. Pulp Fiction too.

Ray and The Doors ... for obvious reasons.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

I really like the score to Patton and must admit that I have an affinity for Jerry Goldsmith scores. He also did one of my childhood favorites, The Secret of Nimh. Still love his score for Star Trek II as well.

It'd be hard not to love the bulk of John Williams' stuff. I like his Superman score the best and feel his score for Jurassic Park is under-appreciated. I like his original scoring for the first Harry Potter film quite a bit too. The score to Indy is exhilarating.

Randy Newman's score for The Natural is another one of my favorites. I get chills every time I hear the "hit it out of the park" bits from that score.

Miklos Rozsa's score for Ben-Hur is also fantastic. It greatly helps make Ben-Hur my favorite film.

Alan Menken did some wonderful scores for Disney's renaissance of the 1990s. He also wrote the music for the songs in those films. I probably like his score for The Hunchback of Notre Dame the best.

Also like Danny Elfman's score for Burton's Batman. I'm not a fan of Elfman normally, but the music fit the picture very well. That's usually not the case for him.

Of course, Shore's score for Lord of the Rings is amazing. It's about as epic as a score can be.

[jfiling]

John Williams is an icon.

Lesser known, but no less iconic (in my opinion) is Jerry Goldsmith.

First Blood, L.A. Confidential, Hoosiers, and the immortal score to the first Star Trek movie, which was reprised for the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He also won his only Academy Award for his score to The Omen.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

John Williams is an icon.

Lesser known, but no less iconic (in my opinion) is Jerry Goldsmith.

First Blood, L.A. Confidential, Hoosiers, and the immortal score to the first Star Trek movie, which was reprised for the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He also won his only Academy Award for his score to The Omen.

Couldn't agree more. Williams deserves all the attention that he gets, but having a star as bright as John Williams detracted from the attention paid towards Goldsmith. I think they're the two best film scorers of the past 30-35 years. Unbelievable stuff between those two.

I do think Shore can become the next, big musical score guy - maybe. He likely will never surpass his LOTR score, but I think that might be the best film score ever done. The epic quality of the film helps it - but the epic quality of the score helps as well. The music just charges you up - especially during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in ROTK. Amazing scenes with amazing music. I want to watch the whole trilogy again just thinking about it. Now I just have to find the nearly 12 hours to go through all the extended editions.

[BruceK]

Lalo Schifrin for Dirty Harry

Ennio Morricone for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

dada, dada, dah......dah DAH dah

[FUDU]

Hans Zimmer is a good one, and John Carpenter for his movie theme that is possibly the most recognizable movie theme in history, second maybe only to Rocky.