Thread: Really good movie scores

Since there is no such topic either, I'm starting one. Off the top of my head I can think of these:

Last of the Mohicans
Exotica
A.I.
Jaws
Nightmare before Christmas
Batman
Dracula
Blade Runner
2001 Space Odyssey
Dances with wolves
The conversation
Signs
Catch me if you can
Requiem for a dream
The piano
Crash

Originally Posted by Tapkaara

Bram Stoker's Dracula is classic.

It's in my list.

Originally Posted by Tapkaara

I read your list and I am reiterating my affection for the score in my post.

Oh OK.

bla bla (for some reason this message has to be at least 10 characters long!!)

Lawrence of Arabia has an excellent score.

Star Wars. Great score.

Originally Posted by Rasa

Star Wars. Great score.

I was about to ask how it had yet to be mentioned!

Gottfried Huppertz's scores for Fritz Lang are tremendous works in a Straussian vein, especially the one for Metropolis; I wish the music would come out on CD.
Jerry Goldsmith's score for Robert Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a tour de force, and extremely well integrated symbolically with the underlying structure of the film.
Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky is deservedly acclaimed; the 'Battle on the Ice' alone would elevate this one to the peaks of film scoring, imo.
Anything by Bernard Herrmann is going to be at least interesting, of course, but his scores for Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still and Joseph Mankiewicz's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir are magnificent in quite different ways. Of his scores for Hitchcock, Vertigo is the stand-out, I think, though the choice is hard....
And I've always liked David Shire's score for Walter Murch's Return to Oz; I'm not otherwise a big fan of Shire's work, but this one is beautiful, haunting, and at times very moving.

Elisabeth Lutyens: The Skull.

Also, adding to my previous list, and keeping in mind your additions, I forgot all about Yann Tiersen's Amelie, as well as Elmer Bernstein's compelling score for "To kill a mocking bird" (1962)

Also Cape Fear (1962) by Bernhard Hermann, as well as the remake (1991) with an adaptation of the Hermann score by Elmer Bernstein.

Yann Tiersen should be put on a stake, hung, burned and then buried in salt.

Originally Posted by Rasa

Yann Tiersen should be put on a stake, hung, burned and then buried in salt.

I'm talking about the specific music for this specific film and not about Yann Tiersen in general. For this film, Tiersen's music was not breathtaking, but certainly more than simply adequate.