I’ll be honest, music isn’t really my strong suit, even though I have played a synthesizer and some percussion instruments in the past – poorly, I might add. In my youth, instead of listening to pop music on the radio, I spent my time listening to movie scores. I owned quite a few CD’s at one point in time, all scores to movies like Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Hannibal, and Sideways. They were scores that could elicit certain emotions in me by recalling to my memory specific scenes of a movie. So, when it comes to judging a movie based on their music there’s only really two criteria that I can judge it on – since I don’t know the technical ins and outs of this art – does it sound pleasant to me and does it work in the movie.
5. The Fabelmans – John Williams
I hate having to rank John Williams in last place here, since he’s been responsible for some of the most iconic cinematic sounds of the last 50 or so years. And maybe that’s the problem, his music of bemusement and wonder are a bit out dated – dinosaur-esque, passé. His style of music has been done, time and time, before and replicated to the point of becoming redundant. This is obviously not his best work, and I’m sad to say that his peak was at least 20 years ago, and he’s still stuck there.
4. Babylon – Justin Hurwitz
Babylon had to over come a lot of ‘shit’, specifically the opening scene that depicts and elephant evacuating it’s bowels onto some poor guy. And the music does help cleanse the pallet of debauchery and muck from your taste buds as it has some nice 20s style jazz that justifies the constant barrage of chaos and mayhem on the screen… at least most of the time. Then there’s stretches of the movie where it feels like I’m listening to the score for La La Land, and that’s not really a good thing as La La Land’s sounds were more fit for the 50s/60s style musicals. And this mix of styles of music are as jarring and distracting and grotesque as the movie itself.
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once – Son Lux
For as weird as this movie is, it’s score is just as weird. The movie traverses through several parallel universes, which allows for the score to explore each of these new worlds. We get some nice Asian inspired music that give off some Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon vibes, for obvious reasons. But then that is mixed with some nice drone-y sci-fi music that’s full of sharp metal pitches and sporadic percussion. And then still we get a more traditional sound when we need it, strings and piano playing during the more emotional moments, trying to manipulate and pull at our hearts – which it does effectively. So unlike Babylon, this score is a hodgepodge of things that works incredibly well together.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front – Volker Bertelmann
There’s an epicene to the music in All Quiet on the Western Front. It feels a lot like Hans Zimmer as it mixes both that classical instrumentalism with a more experimental sound. It doesn’t have the extreme “BWONG” sounds that Zimmer’s been using for over the past decade, but it does have this tone that feels, sunken in yet overbearing- at least that’s the best way I can describe it. This desolate foreboding feeling, really enhances the atmosphere of being stuck in the trenches of WWI, on the side of the bad guys, nonetheless. We know that this movie isn’t going to have a happy ending, and the music helps us prepare for the battles and the bloodshed.
1. The Banshees of Inisherin – Carter Burwell
Speaking of foreboding,.. Banshees of Inisherin was probably my favorite film of last year. Two feuding friends on a desolate Irish Island. Carter Burwell’s score really encapsulates the haunting tone of the film. We get a heavy harp and xylophone centric score, which adds a bit of weirdness to this movie that is subtly weird – which I think we can classify self mutilation out of annoyance weird. And this type of depression, haunting, melancholic is kinda my jam. I can see myself putting this soundtrack on in the background as I write. It’s like a little music box filled with emotion and sadness.
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