THE BEST SCORES OF 2023
(Click on the titles to view the soundtracks)
Hans Zimmer
(Hans Zimmer / Hollywood Records)
From a child’s dark dreamland in “Paperhouse” to the intoxicatingly spice-strange, Oscar winning tribal planet called “Dune,” Hans Zimmer’s innovative talents have made him particularly adept at musical world-building. Though impressively decked out in A.I. near-future dressing for “The Creator,” the trick of Gareth Edwards’ massively unsung film is that this is essentially a Vietnam picture in robot’s clothing. Here the main setting of Southeast Asia also lets Zimmer mesh the orientalism of “Beyond Rangoon” and “The Last Samurai” with the mechanical man empathy of “Chappie.” His new ‘bot with a heart is imbued with lush, ethnic religious overtones and chorus that’s about the oppressed believing in a destined savior, here a cyborg child as opposed to young Paul Atreides. But what distinguishes the film even beyond the eerily melodic atmosphere of a prophecy come to fruition is the feeling for the social justice awakening of a traitorous soldier who has a fateful change of heart and learns to be an unlikely father in the process. It’s emotional music that’s more important to Zimmer than playing the action beats (though he certainly does a hell of a pulse-pounding organ and holy hosannah voice job of counting down a sky platform missile launch) for what’s at its core an antiwar film that knows how to play sci-fi’s metaphoric power like no one’s business. One can’t think of better music to sway us to the A.I. cause than this.
Naoki Satō (Photo by The Yomiuri Shimbun)
(Naoki Satō / Milan Records)
With over a hundred scores in Japan that includes no small amount of anime and genre films (with a majestic score for the live action “Space Battleship Yamato” among them), it was only a matter of time that Naoki Satō hit his country’s most iconic star for what’s arguably the greatest film ever made in 70 years of Tokyo wrecking, one that takes Godzilla right back to his titanically fearful, walking atomic bomb start. With so many composers doing a yeoman job of playing Godzilla on his home soil, what makes this score exceptionally distinguished is that it takes a purely emotional, and immensely moving, yet subtle approach while leaving the iconic themes of O.G. composer Akira Ifukube to do the heavy destruction lifting in pure joygasm moments of city smashing. Coming out of Godzilla’s Edo Island stomping grounds with extended tones that sound like a foghorn in the atmospheric, ambient mist, followed by brass growls and ghostly howls, the score then embodies an air raid siren. It’s a mix of melody and musical sound effects that are transfixing in their dread, instilling an overwhelming feeling of failure that drives a failed Kamikaze pilot in the best human story the series has ever gotten. From this impactful approach, filled with long sustains, Sato builds a war requiem for the direct result of Oppenheimer’s invention. It’s music that’s devastating as the thunderstruck victims can only look in horrified amazement, with almost heavenly voices signaling their soon to be obliteration. As the hero realizes his sense of sacrificial purpose, Satō rhythmically builds his music with a sense of determination given the pointless martyrdom he ran from, now given moving purpose. Classical and emotional in a way that brings to mind the experimentalism of Ryuichi Sakamoto and the tonal, slow builds of Arvo Part, this recalls the soundtrack of the American plane crash survivor classic “Fearless” as opposed to any Japanese Godzilla score before it, marking “Minus One” a whole new filmmaking and musical evolution for the thunder lizard’s 70th anniversary that signals a unexpected, and very welcome adult chapter that returns Godzilla to his musically devastating roots, along with the deeply empathetic feeling for his victims.
Michael Abels
(Michael Abels / Lakeshore Records)
Michael Abels has successfully defended the earth from body switching racists, psychotic hands across America clones and a man-eating carpet creature from outer space. But it’s finally the capitalist coffee table-like aliens of “Landscape with Invisible Hand” who beat the earth for more effectively than the bug-eyed yuppies of “They Live,” Abels’ novel approach to this sad, sharply whimsical movie makes it one of his most innovative composing victories in the genre. Coming across in its way like Michael Small’s resigned chamber score for “The Conversation” meeting Bernard Herrmann’s organ and ooo-wee-ooo Theremin weirdness in “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” Abels’ powerfully communicates the resignation of humans suddenly relegated to a hopeless gig economy while collaborators live in sky castles. Seen through the eyes a black teenage artist (hence the film’s title) whose ideas of love and economic success get put through the wringer, Abels creates an unusually poignant and forelornly lyrical chamber score that ends up being more devastating that a symphonic death ray, with no shortage of lush, poetic sci-fi-style irony for yuckily advantageous aliens who speak deceiving dollar signs in percussion.
Laura Karpman, with wife Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, at Abbey Road with the orchestra’s flute section
(Laura Karpman / Marvel Music)
A longtime composer before she’d get sci-fi street cred with the Spielberg-produced alien miniseries “Taken,” Laura Karpman has fast been making inroads to the genre with the likes of “Lovecraft County” and her Marvel universe gateway score for the imagined multiverses of “What If?” But it was her scoring of the Pakistani teen Kamala Khan that put her in the glorious driver’s set to pair the effusive costumed Ms. Marvel with her Captain Marvel crush Carol Danvers and frequently facepalming Monica Rambeaux to truly take off into the big leagues with “The Marvels.” It’s a film, and score that deserves to be sung about loud and proud no matter the Kree naysayers, as Karpman nails the distinctive characters and the pure, unisex nature of what makes for a great superhero theme – namely a sense of nobility and exuberance where any single bound leap is possible. Coming up with a wonderfully soaring melody that pays tribute to Captain Marvel and Monica’s previous scoring by Pinar Toprak and Christophe Beck, Karpman makes this adventure her own with its boisterously thrilling energy. She definitely knows the laser-blasting fisticuff energy and the alien supertech, but also puts some interesting dissonant touches into the action, along with kittie-friendly cuteness and best of all a sense of musical fun missing from a frequently why-so-serious genre – not that the big orchestral stakes aren’t excitingly front and center. Karpman melodically harnesses the musical power cosmic here with all the choral bells and whistles a Marvel budget brings, with three heroines who combine to show off a longtime composer’s distinctively fresh and enthusiastic voice in an arena of enjoyably big music.
Lorne Balfe (photo by Marcus Maschwitz)
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
(Lorne Balfe / La La Land Records)
Recruited into Hans Zimmer’s IMF as one of the team behind the likes of “Batman Begins,” “The Holiday” and “Sherlock Holmes” while performing daredevil instrumental solos and additional composing for the agents in his Remote Control organization, Lorne Balfe has absorbed the tricks of the action trade to become one of the genre’s most continually in-demand and rhythmically successful composers – making it only a matter of time before he wouldn’t refuse filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie’s mission of “Fallout.” Maybe the only series that just keeps getting better with each Roman numeral, Balfe and McQuarrie jaw-droppingly outdo themselves here at setting up exhilarating, long-lead action, setpieces that amazingly never lose sight of the characters or emotions. That’s no more so the case than with the first part of “Dead Reckoning.” Amping up the stakes for an A.I. villain who seems unbeatable, Balfe brings in a dire sense of the geopolitical stakes when faced with an ersatz HAL who can be everywhere, eerily using sampled voice and dark strings to bring the first sci-fi villain and angle (we can only hope) to the series’ scores. Particularly impressive is how well Balfe keeps track of Ethan Hunt during the exhaustingly exhilarating actions sequences and their meticulous set ups, keeping firm, suspensefully emotional focus on the characters, no more so than in hapless attempt to rescue the last leading lady, the dynamic wind up to the big bike jump or the climactic train climb. But of course, the real A.I. here is the spirit of TV’s MI composer Lalo Schifrin, whose iconic theme Balfe joyfully bursts into at all the right moments, and whose perilous, match-burning save-the-world spirit powers this dynamic score to its cliffhanger, one whose second musical part can’t come soon enough. There’s certainly enough material to also warrant a corresponding suites and themes CD from La La Land Records HERE, making for three breathlessly suspenseful discs that display Balfe’s understandably prolific talents that make him his own impossible missions force.
Łukasz Rostkowski (Photo by Karol Kacperski)
(L.U.C. & Rebel Babel Film Orchestra / Milan Records)
An equal sense of Eastern European old world dread and magic hangs over the painterly beauty and malice of this live action derived film from “Loving Vincent” creators Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchamn, who’ve adapted a 1,000 page Noble Prize-winning Polish tome into a transfixing work of bad behavior that’s the same in any culture smothered by their interpretations of intolerance and judgement. Alt. musician Lukasz Rostkowski takes the ancient instruments and rhythms of his country to weave a vibrant, ethnic spell that recalls Serbian composer Goran Bregović (“Time of the Gypsies”) in his ability to conjure a vibrantly mesmerizing old-world time and place. As much of a score as it is the music of these cloistered, intolerantly rural characters, Rostkowski’s music with its big band brass, ghostly voices and sensual dances splash as much of a darkly rustic picture that flows through colors and moods as it captures lives of simple, raging emotions where love and hate are often the same. At times, it’s like a folk horror score waiting to happen as the film builds to an inevitable, yet unexpected conclusion. Few scores of this earthy, folkloric kind are as one of earth like “The Peasants” in painting beauty and dread from the elemental passion that’s given birth to a region’s music, where it becomes to raging, rhythmic lifeblood of fateful characters being ground into the earth with seemingly inescapable destinies.
Jerskin Fendrix (Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos)
(Jerskin Fendrix / Milan Records)
In a Hollywood always asking for a score that sounds like nothing else ever created before, Jerskin Fendrix’s music for “Poor Things” is the genuine first-on-earth laboratory experiment come to wonderfully bizarre life. Stepping forth from a brain transplant alchemy of warped tinkertoy sounds, sweetly unhinged melody and beyond high-pitched voices, movie debuting English composer Jerskin Fendrix embodies the mad science child-to-woman pilgrim’s progress of the irresistible Bella Baxter as his own alt. Henry Higgins. Except these musical lessons in sexual and philosophical morays are taught with a sound akin to a one-man band where everything deliberately gets played wrong. It’s a perfect match for the confrontational style of Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, a master of the confrontational feel bad in such films as “Dogtooth,” “The Killing of the Sacred Deer.” Leave it to Lanthimos to discover Fendrix, an alt. musician best known for his work surrounding Brixton’s music scene and his album “Winterreise.” He comes to task with all the rule-breaking enthusiasm of someone who’s never done this thing before. And like Bella, Fendrix engages in the act with slyly enthusiastic passion. Fendrix’s mainly stripped down, ironic sound conjures Scottish bagpipes, horror movie theremins angelic cooing and the grand organs of England. And better yet it’s eccentrically melodic as it conjures the Europe-hopping adventures of magical Candide-meets-Frankenstein, as well as the darkness of a male-dominated world that just can’t handle a truth-telling libertine.
Anthony Willis
(Anthony Willis / Milan Records)
Having last teamed with Emerald Fennell for the button-pushing “Promising Young Woman,” composer Anthony Willis takes perhaps an even more musically seditious classical approach to the manor not-born in “Saltburn.” It says something that the regally symphonic opening segues to Handel’s coronation anthem for King George II’s “Zadok the Priest,” laying open a neo-classical path to make us feel empathy for an oh-so-lonely out of place young man to insinuate himself into an ersatz royal family of layabouts. Not that Willis doesn’t get in some cool techno-esque meets old school grooves for the luscious young aristocratic party things our antihero seduces, their ennui given gorgeously languorous music for strings and piano. With organ and a resplendent orchestra, its music meant to impress, which is exactly the point for a snake in the grass as the score gradually reveals its true nature with an elegantly slithering quality, using a pulsing electronic motif under trembling strings as the machinations come into motion. Yet even with Willis’ increasingly twisted scoring, there’s a sense of lyrical, elegiac regret to the murderous doings that keeps you unbalanced, with even an angelic female voice singing a fare thee well. It’s an aching beauty that makes Willis’ score even more impactful when Fennell finally pulls out the revelatory rug, making “Saltburn’s” neo-classical beauty into a one gorgeously sick musical joke that’s all about class (ical) consciousness.
Michael Giacchino
(Michael Giacchino / Netflix Music)
The story of an Uruguayan soccer team stranded in the Andes and driven by an absolute hunger to live has gone from “Survive’s” grisly indie exploitation to the commendable Disney-produced “Alive.” But in terms of pure, unflinching power, “Society of Snow” makes those look like, well, Disney movies with an intensity that at times proves unbearable. That makes it even more important for the score to have a soulfulness to connect us to the world for people marooned on what could be gorgeous alien hellscape, which is where the immense talent of Oscar winner Michael Giacchino comes into play. While certainly famous for rousingly crowd-pleasing scores to any number of Disney and Marvel films among the major studio franchises he’s trekked in over 160 scores, no subject that Giacchino has tackled before is as adult or searingly intimate as “Society of Snow” (though his breakthrough work on the marooned series “Lost” certainly put him in training for this). It’s a score brought together by a tender theme for a brotherhood forged in unimaginable circumstances, with a spare, glistening piano gradually becoming the rhythmic, driving need to escape inevitable doom. Given a new, Spanish-made and spoken realism to the tale by filmmaker J.A. Bayona (who’d helmed the tsunami survival tale “The Impossible” before teaming with Giacchino for “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”), the composer uses guitar to capture the true Latin American nature of the film, while other percussion that sounds like we could be in Tibet captures the idea of foreboding mountain regions themselves. At other times terrifying voices coalesce with avalanches recall “2001’s” use of György Ligeti, while other spare, expressionistic passages could fit into Jerry Goldsmith’s forbidden zone in “Planet of the Apes” (a realm that Giacchino has also visited). But most important is the lyrical, spare poignance that becomes the diminishing survivors’ Christian faith, music that turns some of them into martyrs dispensing the sacrament of their flesh to those understandably wracked with guilt at the act. It’s scoring of solemn death and the transfiguration into a means of survival. Finally, Giacchino impressively picks up his step through an unimaginable hike through the Andes, taking on a soaring feeling of adventure that concludes with hymnal tenderness as wounds body and soul are nursed. Expertly conveying both a punishingly beautiful environment and the emotional limits of human experience in coming out alive, Giacchino’s score captivates with every snow-trudging step to its beyond impactful deliverance. Also available on physical CD from Quartet Records HERE.
John Powell (Photo by by Rebecca Morellato)
(John Powell / Lakeshore Records)
There’s always been a fun jitteriness to English-born John Powell’s scoring, a brash, self-confidant hipness that’s made him one of scoring’s most consistently interesting and fun composers. They’re qualities that make him ironically perfect to play the Parkinson’s challenges thrown into the path of America’s always boyish, go-get-‘em sweetheart Michael J. Fox who takes an unblinking look at a horrific condition that always makes his body in motion. It makes “Still’s” surreally rhythmic approach particularly innovative for this excellent, bare-all documentary. As Fox battles against degeneration with humorous attitude to spare within a clever flash back and forward style, Powell wittily dances about the pop percussion style that made him stand out from the rhythmic crowd. He uses Hammond organ, shuffling big band, bell and keyboard pokiness and guitar in a way that might not be out of place for a hip rom-com or animated talking animal flick. It’s a bouncy, any instrument goes set up for a breathless career that just kept getting bigger and bigger with the expected hubris. But sure enough, the music will slow down and get way more serious with events that Powell handles in a melodically unpreachy, yet increasingly solemn and dark way that matches Fox’s witty observations of the unimaginable. New, thematic string instruments in a way that conveys dancing about the depressive abyss that Fox could understandably fall into. As clever as it is constantly interesting, Powell’s gift for rhythm has never been as powerful or movingly offbeat as in “Still.”
THE RUNNERS-UP
Mark Ronson (Photo by Collier Schorr)
Andrew Wyatt (Courtesy of Subject)
(Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt / WaterTower Music)
Starting out with one of the more inspired segues in a while as the orchestra segues from the monolithic strains of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to the candy-colored dance rhythms of living doll land, “Barbie” composers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt announce their wonderfully peppy, sugary lush score with equal boldness. It’s an instantly catchy and pleasurable sound that’s no surprise given Ronson’s song work for the likes of Lily Allen ad Lady Gaga (as well as his fun retro score to “Mordecai”), or Wyatt’s compositions for Liam Gallagher and Miley Cyrus. Both artists whose collaborations include the soundtrack for the revamped “A Star is Born” clearly have their pulse on pop sugar rush grrll power, a super fun sound that “Barbie” positively glistens with for a pop icon come to life. They aren’t the first composers to have their way after this start with “Sprach,” but “Barbie” is certainly one of the most deliriously enjoyable takes on it as they give the real doll a vibe of wide-eyed optimist wonder, all the better to coat the biting #metoo subversion under the surface. While there’s a bit of comedy stylings at hand along with a proud Barbie march, the score for “Barbie” melodically gorgeous for the satire at hand. It’s the definition of how to bring an effervescent teen idol sound into the score world with a cooing retro goodness to boot. Yet when it comes to giving a fantasy gal sick of her station in life a real heart, Ronson and Wyatt are the sparkling blue fairies who bestow the twittering orchestral magic, right down to heraldic brass. With no end of retro sparkles as well, “Barbie” is like the lost, insanely well produced 80’s flashback score (complete with a Beach Boys-esque doo wop) that a time-warped warped land of lost toys and its first lady have always deserved.
Paul Leonard-Morgan
(Paul Leonard Morgan / 20th Century Studios)
Movie and television’s fascination with true-like serial killers continue to reach a horrifying fever pitch. Yet sometimes lost in the race to confront the worst of humanity, we lose a feeling for the victims, as well as the damage done to those pursuing pure evil. Though the case might be unsolved as filmmaker Matt Ruskin’s “Boston Strangler” shockingly convinces us of, what comes through in his empathetic approach and composer Paul Leonard-Morgan’s transfixing score is a sense of empowering emotion and tragic loss as crusading real-life reporters try to bring the criminal to justice. It’s a beyond tense and heartbreaking trip down a maniacal rabbit hole – a conviction embodied in the melancholy, rhythmic and unsettling musical approach. “Boston Strangler” stands out in shadow for its impressive mixture of dread, emotion and most unexpected of all in its particular genre, melody. It’s a feeling of rhythmic perseverance against darkness that conveys savagery for a film that thankfully shies away from the worst of it, while tenderly getting to the bond of sisterhood that compels its heroines to risk their own careers, and perhaps lives to give voice and justice to a city of women risking all to open their doors. Rarely does a serial killer score, and movie, get to the heart of humanity in all its twisted and soulful dimensions as this literally gripping “Strangler” does.
Daniel Ciurlizza
(Daniel Ciurlizza / Lakeshore Records)
My impressions of Tubi as a bottom of the barrel free-to-watch repository of not good for regular streaming were knocked on my ass after watching this Tarantino salute to young crooks in love knocking over the wrong people that in the end out-guns any Tarantino movie like it. It’s the 11thcollaboration between filmmaker Bryian Keith Montgomery Jr. and college friend Daniel Ciurlizza, and the first to really hit it off on the festival circuit before ending up at Tubi, when in fact it deserved way more of a theatrical stop. But as I’ve discovered, Tubi is a great place to see new talent, and “Cinnamon” is a particularly excellent example. Given two richly deluded kids whose plans end up costing a whole bunch of people their lives, Ciurlizza takes a romantic alt. fairy tale like approach, with ethereal percussion given a dark string underbelly. With the trenchcoated villains who are essentially evil gunslingers (led by Pam Grier’s black patch), Ciurlizza comes up with horse-clopping percussion, guitar and Spaghetti Western whistling in a way that’s as scary as it is humorous. And as the calamitous events give the shenanigans of “Fargo” a run for their ill-gotten money, Ciurlizza twists his clever rhythmic knife with distorted jazz brass as the plot strands converge, ending up in a cacophonic bitch’s brew of violence, as driven by a hero’s theme for the two dumb kids you end up rooting for when melodically compared to what’s far worse. Add some catchily hip songs from the composer to the mix, and there’s definitely new kids in town for these kinds of ironically calamitous crime movies, with “Cinnamon” showing off a cleverly inventive musical irony that’s quite tasty indeed among its many attributes.
Marcelo Zarvos
(Marcelo Zarvos / Madison Gate Records)
When getting offered the seeming franchise finale of Denzel Washington getting to clockwatch the Mob mother land, it was an offer that Brazilian Jack-of-all-genres Marcelo Zarvos certainly wasn’t going to refuse. But it turns out the third time really is the righteous killer charm as Zarvos takes to the franchise like a fish to mobster-annihilating water. What’s particularly great are the richly melodic “Godfather” vibes he gives this sequel in its romantic strings, slow strumming guitar and fateful themes that immediately signal Capo territory, as well as the piano-topped regret our hero has in his Jason-worthy body count. What makes the movie particularly great is the patience that third time director Antoine Fuqua has in building the characters to their inevitable equalizing, allowing Zarvos to inject just a bit of redemptive happiness into the score’s brooding power, emotion that’s all the better when it comes time for the big payback we’re watching this movie for in the first place. Zarvos’ increasing use of brass and percussion turns the screws to the time the musical watch stops, jamming into his own take on the more rhythmic signatures of Harry Gregson-Williams past “Equalizer” scores. Yet “The Equalizer 3”’s power comes from signaling its music as both acknowledging the character’s cinematic past and a way bigger scoring heritage beyond it with a deserved, simmering sense of brooding importance – until screaming metal guitar licks strike for McCall’s distinctive musical bloodletting.
Mark Orton
(Mark Orton / Back Lot Music)
There’s a great theme that runs through filmmaker Alexander Payne’s work that finds curmudgeons bonding on the road, a voyage that takes at first-unlikeable male characters on trip that would give Odysseus pause, dropping them off at the end of California vineyards, rural America and now Boston preppie-college central, leaving the characters just a bit wiser and more likeable than when we first found them. For Mark Orton, it was the acoustically folksy music of the acclaimed indie-alt. group Tin Hat that caught Payne’s sight as he drove a bickering son and father from Montana to “Nebraska.” Lucky for us Orton is back in Payne’s company again for both career bests with “The Holdovers,” a film and score that fits their eccentric-enabling talents to a tee. Definitely not in Nebraska anymore, Orton shows his period-centric chops in any number of styles, with soulful blues guitar and brass echoing Cat Stevens, intimate jazz bringing to mind a Charlie Brown Christmas and sardonic sleigh bells for Giamatti’s patented bug outs. While strumming chords and accordion bring to mind Orton’s Tin Hat, a boy’s chorus echoes a college-bound institution haunted by war-fallen graduates, while lyrical piano melody becomes the regret of a life hidden from in academia. As ironic as it is poignant, Orton’s “Holdovers” evokes sad sack smart people we’ll come to empathize with in an understated, emotionally impactful way. It’s a triumph of understated, literate dramedy in all respects with a fine sense of time, place and an ultimately quite moving heart, especially in Orton’s musical roads uniquely travelled, once again in particularly excellent company.
Gavin Brivik
(Gavin Brivik / Milan Records)
One man’s eco-terrorist is another man’s eco freedom fighter, and it’s up to the viewer to make the determination in director Daniel Goldhaber’s riveting, suspensefully painstaking procedural as a group of aggrieved young people take down the titular target. Pulse and atmosphere are the relentless things here, and composer Gavin Bivrick does a spot-on job of striking a deep pocket of Tangerine Dream-esque black gold in his combination of electronics with rock guitar. Yet he’s fashioned the rhythmic sound into his own driving wellspring. Dream certainly had a thing for southwestern pulsations with their scores for “Near Dark” and “Flashpoint,” and Bivrick evokes that high-tech electro-rhythm into an industrial sound of sorts that not only stands for the big corporation the ragtag group is after, but their own use of technology to take them down. Yet not everything is pulsating here, as Bivrick comes up with mournful, growling pieces that dig into the characters’ respective broken souls that have brought them to a life-changing damaging juncture. Other beeping tonal pieces recall nothing less than “Blade Runner” in their cool synth futurism, which might be the point as what they think they’re stopping is the ecological collapse that results in rain-soaked dystopia. Exceptionally well-modulated and sampled in his approach, Bivrick’s pulse-pounding score is a well-aimed, rapid-fire missile of synth flashback and state of the art alt. industrial music that hits it target with moral ambiguity to spare, while succeeding just as well for Tangerine Dream fans in need of their particularly rhythmic love bomb.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
(John Williams / Lucasfilm Ltd.)
The hat is back (or Fedora if you will) along with the composer who fits into it like a glove, and neither Harrison Ford nor John Williams seem any older for the mileage. But certainly, you might not buy 80 year old Indy’s escapades if not for 90 year old Williams, who’s just as vibrantly Nazi busting here as when he first unleashed the Ark in 1981. Of course the familiar “Raiders” themes return here (no more movingly than with Marion’s), along with of course dastardly brass for the Ratzis. And given a new particularly troublesome non-love sidekick interest, Williams creates a tender, nostalgic theme that pretty much doesn’t go there while serving as melodic glue for the score. With pretty much the big fan service piece an ingenious montage treatment of his Raider’s action themes for the prologue train chase, Williams dexterously balances his Korngoldian heroics between more playful and dire pursuits, creating a symphonic whirling dervish chase that replaces Arabian baskets for Moroccan tuk-tuks or a perilous fight at Archimedes tomb, with of course a biblical sense of revelation as to this chapter’s supernatural McGuffin, complete with organ. That it turns out to a more cosmically sky-grounded sci-fi one here elevates the score to the next level as Helena’s theme really takes on Indy’s role for a pulse-pounding plane chase and a neat, off-kilter exotic overview of the ultimate Greek era steampunk sea battle. But in the end, it’s a sense of history and regret with the character that delivers “Dial’s” biggest emotional wallop. Beyond the stunt of a seemingly eternal composer who changed the face of film scoring with his love for its past writing at a level that many musicians decades younger can only strive for, “Dial” works wonderfully as a damn fine, romantically exuberant action score on its own scout’s merit badge for a film that I would surprisingly and happily put second in line for the saga.
Tom Howe, director Nida Manzoor and Shez Manzoor
(Tom Howe / Shez Manzoor)
In this deliriously sassy genre bender to end them all this year, a girl from England’s Indian community does everything within her power to stop her older sister’s upcoming marriage to a highly suspect upper caste family. That her powers include Crouching Tiger-level Kung Fu gives you an idea of the wonderfully crazy quilt areas that “Ted Lasso” composer Tom Howe and the director’s bro Shez Manzoor can dive into here, among them furiously rocking spaghetti western Kill Bill grooves, an Ocean’s 11 jazz heist Hammond organ, sax swinging grooves and Shaft soul funk. It’s a tremendously fun, beyond energetic score that out-hipsters the many hipster scores of this kind for this eager-to-please flick. And while the Italian-Indian ska, snooty classicism and weird breeding science music is most certainly tongue in cheek, the co-composing chops here are as top notch as a Masala Wrecking Crew, all having a blast at high kicking the cross-genre jams of this ersatz Scot Pilgrim in a Sari flick that one’s of the year’s most purely fun scores with its neo-Bollywood blast of exotic Mortal Kombat grrll power attitude.
Marco Beltrami
(Marco Beltrami / Back Lot Music)
Having gotten his big stabbing break with a ghost faced comedy-horror slasher, Marco Beltrami seriously knows his way around this peculiar genre where the music has to be caught halfway between a scream and a smile. From the big goofy teen werewolves of “Cursed” to “Little Evil’s” Damien wannabe and the nice guy brain eating zombie of “Warm Bodies,” Beltrami’s imaginative way with a rampaging orchestra and off kilter rock-pop grooves is tasty indeed, no more so than when “Bodies” hot zombie Nicholas Hoult becomes the sad-sack, bug-powered familiar “Renfield” to Nicolas Cage’s to-the-rafters Count – a character Beltrami gave biblical credence to in “Dracula 2000.” Here it’s a New Orleans-set castle full of organs (both real and a Hammond one for a sad sack theme), to full blast choral terror, shrieking brass and lilting violins along with rock and roll death dealing, all these approaches skewed to uproarious effect that still lets you know you’re still hearing exactly the kind of full-blooded symphonic panache you’d get for the real, scary deal. Yet what’s nice amid the bombastically exhilarating insanity that at times is like “Love at First Bite” on steroids is a nice sympathy for the devil’s enabler. It gives this wonderfully twisted film an emotional heart amid the music that conveys the exasperation of being fated to clean up one big ghastly mess after the other, fitting quite nicely into Beltrami’s distinctive, brassily raging horror sound that goes for the jovial jugular with wonderfully ferocious eccentricity here.
(Bear McCreary / Netflix Music)
Like Marco Beltrami, Bear McCreary is a composer adept at combining old school orchestra with hip rhythm for youth-skewing horror comedies like two time-travelling “Happy Deathday 2U” pictures along with “Freaky.” But while there are certainly a share of hilarious spookbusting boo! moments here, this is way more a wonderfully nostalgic salute to 80’s-style horror-fantasy a la “Ghostbusters” and “The Monster Squad,” let alone “Harry and the Hendersons” as the new kids in the house discover a big, seemingly scary lug in the sheriff from Stranger Things. It’s a mix of sentimentality, emotional jeopardy and scares that are catnip for a composer who’s most definitely inspired by those golden Amblin years and makes this score into a valentine to the likes of Bruce Broughton, John Williams and Alan Silvestri, all with his own spirit intact. McCreary’s “Ghost” has a great sense of rambunctious goose-bumping energy, poking about the attic with spectral symphonic magic and the kind of child-like creepiness that tells you the big scary monster is nothing of the sort. As the specter becomes the kind of mystical being pursued by nasty scientists in so many of these pictures, McCreary’s orchestra puts an emotionally driven sense of heroic heart into the young kids who of course are the real heroes, whether they’re trying to outrun the adult baddies in bikes or commandeered cars. It’s the kind of big, exciting music that’s not out to really hurt anyone but having a lot of fun with the moderately threatening thrills and spills, with all roads in these films of course leading to a handkerchief-worthy reunion with family and passage to the other side. That McCreary’s music radiates that tenderness and transfiguration is a mark of just how well he rapturously gets the kind of scores, and whether it’s a swept away Frankenstein in “The Monster Squad,” a group bigfoot appearance in “Harry and the Hendersons” or a ghost given his well-deserved reward here. It’s a lovely valentine to the films and scores that no doubt inspired a generation of monster kids like him to morph into composers.
THE COMPOSERS TO WATCH
Jongnic Bontemps (Photo by Sarah Kovacs for Kraft-Engel Management)
Following up Steve Jablonsky and Dario Marinelli in the composer driver’s seat for live action presto-changeo Autobots and Decepticons is a formidable task, especially when you add Maximals to the mix. But Jongnic Bontemps impressively stamps his own way of playing with these big screen toys for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Milan Records) in a way that feels like a propulsive continuation, while bringing big new sense of heroic symphonic muscle to the franchise. It’s as exuberantly energetic as it is surprisingly melodic at combining musical sound effects with the real deal that cut through the soundtrack with the fun, gigantic might of Optimus Prime’s sword.
Adam Janota Bzowski
Conjuring an eerily textural score that’s all about rustic environment and the miasma of tortured feelings inside of a survivor’s head, composer Adam Janota Bzowski captures The Marsh King’s Daughter (Lakeshore Records) in fields of harsh strings and enveloping ambient music. It’s a striking mix between dread and being mesmerized as a twisted wannabe shaman pulls his grown daughter back into his sadistic orbit. Bzowski’s music washes over the senses, which uniquely plays the suspense of evil and twisted innocence for as powerfully surreal a backwoods Americana score as they come.
Devonté Hynes (Photo by Nick Harwood)
God’s Lonely Man filmmaker Paul Schrader has a way with finding strikingly unique composers for his psychodramas, particularly when it comes to dark rock grooves of Scott Johnson kidnapping “Patty Hearst,” Michael Been reflecting the ennui of a drug dealing “Light Sleeper” or that composer’s son Robert Levon Been hearing the tortured darkness of “The Card Counter.” Now Schrader employs another exceptional alt. music artist in Devonté Hynes to create a sense of redemption for the murderous racism of The Master Gardener (Milan Records). Also known as Blood Orange and Lightspeed Champion, Hynes’ has played racial identity before in “Queen & Slim” and “Passing,” and what’s particularly interesting here is that it’s from the viewpoint of a former white power member who’s transformed himself into a horticulturist until, of course, old ghosts and violent urges catch up with him as he falls for his aristocratic female employer / lover’s biracial daughter on the run. Given the slow, elliptical soul-searching style of Schrader, Hynes creates a lovely, meditative and at times hallucinogenic score whose slow-drawn combination of ambience and rhythm reflects a deeply damaged, barely verbal man coming out of an unimaginable shell. Hynes’ way with keyboard synths, sampling and organic instruments like the guitar at times comes across like a poetic mix of Vangelis and Angelo Badalementi, yet remains strikingly idiosyncratic, and in the end, hopeful given the redemptive, transformational kick that Schrader has found in his ever idiosyncratic, yet thankful output with a talent for finding musical voices as distinctive as his own filmmaking one.
Brian McOmber
A searing return to the kind of sexually heated, button-pushing provocation that’s being trumpeted by some as being a corporate spin on “Fatal Attraction,” Netflix’s Fair Play (Netflix Music) offers an even bigger element of the madness that big business will drive people too, no more so than an ego-wounded husband-to-be who can’t handle the fact that his partner has gotten the big promotion. It’s a searing turning of the screws give rhythmic alt. intensity by Brian McOmber. A member of the groups Marijuana Deathsquads and Dirty Projectors alongside his work for David Bryne, The Roots and St. Vincent when not studying Lyme Disease, McOmber’s prolific work on the indie scene has often served as nightmare fuel for the psychologically driven “Krisha,” “It Comes at Night” and the parasite documentary “The Pain of Others.” But it’s with “Fair Play” that McOmber achieves his most realistic sense of building dread. Employing warped metallic sounds, twisted strings, and nerve-digging intensity, all as ironically contrasted with the hip rhythm of Wall Street fashionistas, McOmber effectively captures the unstoppable trainwreck that’s as big a warning against inter-office relationships as the movies have offered.
Sean McBride (Photo by Lena Shkoda)
Full Moon’s enduring vampire franchise that filmmaker Ted Nicolau first rose from the Romanian crypt in 1991 shows how much it’s grown in terms of its scope by going back to the beginning with Subspecies V: Bloodrise, made all of the ravishing with the melodically sanguine presence of new composer Sean McBride. It’s very much old school vampire music that’s both fresh in approach and invigorated by the thematic lifeblood of the original “Subspecies,” whose composers were collectively known as The Aman Folk Orchestra. McBride hypnotically captures a hypnotic, doom-ridden mood full of ill-fated unholy romance for this prequel, music so foggy that you half expect to see Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee prowling about along with eternally young stars Anders Hove and Denice Duff. It’s a wall of imposing, gothic sound, imposing drum rolls and ghostly voices that radiate a resplendent gothic love, if not sympathy for a virtuous knight who gets turned into the devil. With vastly improved production quality, Nicolau approaches indie horror as if he was making a saga akin to “Interview with the Vampire,” and it’s McBride’s sumptuous, epic scoring that that plays an infinitely larger, cobwebbed tapestry of tombs to doubtlessly continue exploring.
Owen Pallett
Having made an impression a decade ago as part of Arcade Fire’s proto-Siri, Oscar-nominated score for “Her,” alt. artist Owen Pallett has certainly been busy solo with the interesting likes of “Life,” “Spaceship Earth” and “Alice, Darling.” But perhaps his most impressively unique soundtrack is the loopily ironic chamber music for a brilliantly eccentric Nic Cage in Dream Scenario (A24 Music). It’s a profound, exceptionally wry takedown of #metoo, social media and the schlub caught in its net through no fault of his own. Pallett’s slimmed down, plucky string music for this nerd caught in a spider’s web of woken excess is a gorgeous, Kafka-esque that still paints a deeply poignant picture. It’s music that’s about how the hopelessly awoken can’t separate reality from the harmlessly nerdy waking person, all with a sense of melancholy, if plucky Klezmer-esque whimsy that ends up making this nightmare scenario all the more heartbreakingly lovely.
Michael Dean Parsons
Creating additional music for Kris Bowers (including a co-Emmy nomination for “Bridgerton’s” title theme) and producing such James Newton Howard scores as “All the Light We Cannot See” and the latest, sing-a-song Hunger Game, Michael Dean Parsons is definitely making his presence known with the charmingly feel-good solo score to “Stan Lee’s” self-professed documentary and now a very ironically catchy co-score with Howard for “Pain Hustlers” (Netflix Music). A new entry into the rising bad pharma genre (one that Howard dabbled in Viagra for with “Love and Other Drugs”), Parsons doesn’t hear a bunch of Florence Nightingales as he does hucksters selling a get rich snake oil opiate product with the typical rise and fall that a crisis of conscience always brings to some of these characters – but not before showing how much fun it is to be filthy rich. Of course, set in Florida, Howard and Parsons take a pulsing, funky down low guitar, Hammond and piano jazz-blues approach that’s all about gleeful, filthy flash. Yet there’s a melancholy underbelly that’s never far behind, a soulfulness that gives the purposefully glib rhythm its bad addiction bite, until palpable seriousness steps into the music for the destined downfall. It’s an ultimately thoughtful approach for the seamless work of these musical drug hustlers, and a young Turk who continues to impress.
Herdís Stefánsdóttir
The four horsemen of the apocalypse, courtesy of Iceland-born composer Herdís Stefánsdóttir with a “Knock at the Cabin” (Back Lot Music). She embodies four figures (whom M. Night Shyamalan envisions as victims themselves) with primal effectiveness in an increasingly perilous mix of voice and strings, along with creatively capturing the music of sword, plague and hoofbeats – a biblical sound as configured for Shyamalan’s nightmarish interpretation of prophecy. That Stefánsdóttir’s ominous approach doesn’t lose sight of the humanity on both sides of the door is testament to her voice that’s steadily risen alongside such composers as Jóhann Jóhannsson(“The Arrival”) and Dustin O’Halloran (“The Hate u Give”) to impress with her own work on “South Mountain,” “The Sun is Also a Star,” “The Essex Serpent” and the female-marooned end of days for “Y the Last Man.” Now the musical seals of doom are resoundingly opened for Stefánsdóttir with an unnervingly loud, yet ultimately soulful sound that promises a bright scoring future for her instead of the end of days she hears so well.
Jason Soudah (Photo by Michelle Shiers / @michelleshiers)
The super black contract killer comedy genre is a thing, but it hasn’t been crossed with the desperate vanity of the art world before “The Kill Room.” Imagine the swingle singers with a body count as splashed on multiple canvases and you’ll get an inkling of the cleverly creative approach by the team of Jason Soudah and Jessica Rose Weiss. There’s that funkily rocking, self-aware super cool approach to the literal bagman. Here that creepily sleek sound plays the guilt of sorts that drives a very reluctant new artist in a money laundering scheme that takes off to the criminals’ aghast intent and a gallery owner’s delight, creating an often eerily menacing score that isn’t quite going to let the audience off the hook no matter how quirky it gets. But the shade that really ups the ante here is the bouncy, deceptively breezy of use of vocalese and percussion that creates catchy, thematically ironic caper music that is a work of subversive, high indie scoring art whose music definitely deserves the light of a release.
Charli XCX (Photo by Terrence O’Connor)
The most hilariously seditious comedy of the year gets an appropriately banging synth pop soundtrack from, singer-songwriter Charli XCX. Having begun her electro popstar career at the age of 14 to see her house youthquake style of energetic tunes recently gracing the satire-filled “Bodies, Bodies, Bodies” and “Barbie,” it’s only natural that she’d make her major scoring debut (as co-scored by “Weird’s” Leo Birenberg) on the high school battle of the sexes shenanigans of “Bottoms” (Milan Records). Deftly juggling emo electro melodies with voice-like sampling, her music has a great, hip sound that works hits the antics as much as the hilarious wordplay as the female fight club vs. dumb jock energy. For a film that’s as much of a giant goof on John Hughes as well as “Heathers,” Charli’s playful synthpop style has a fun throwback sensibility for an 80’s high school movie where everyone’s obviously too old to be students. It’s a charming retro style that makes this in-your-face craziness all the more hilarious as it is groovily hip with dreamily peppy romantic themes to boot.