Even though the movie sucked, Cliff Martinez's soundtrack for Solaris was pretty good.

On that note,

Traffic
Inland Empire
2001
Thief
Most Morricone western soundtracks.
Syriana

-Jeremy

That Rza soundtrack for Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai was pretty cool.

hip priest wrote:David Shire's score for The Conversation is fantastic. I was very chuffed to learn it had recently been reissued by a small San Francisco label Intrada:

Agreed. I bought that from them a few years ago. Here is a better link.

jimmy spako wrote:jarmusch films've turned out some of my favorites: neil young's solo st for "dead man"; the rza's st for "ghost dog".

most recently: "the life aquatic"...i love mothersbaugh's electroacoustic stuff, the portugese bowie covers & the choice of old tunes, especially "way i feel inside" from the zombies.

Agree wholeheartedly with these. I listen to the Life Aquatic and Ghost Dog soundtracks quite often.

Don't know why the Ghost Dog RZA tracks were only available as a Japanese import - liked them so much I paid up for the real soundtrack instead of whatever tracks they had on the U.S. (bogus) soundtrack.

Les Baxter - The Sacred Idol. Amazing score. Like Ravel's 'Daphnis et Chloe', but set in Aztec Mexico with the Conquistadors instead of pirates. His scores for Goliath and the Barbarians and Master of the World are cool too.

Le Double Vie de Veronique, along with other Zbigniew Preisner scores for Kieślowski's films.

Most Bernard Hermann - Psycho, NBNW, Vertigo, Mysterious Island, The Three Worlds of Gulliver.

Most Kubrick soundtracks are pretty good, if just for using great music not scored for the film.

Goldsmith for Planet of the Apes. Probably the best thing he ever did.

The Morricone spaghetti western scores are great too, but the score he did for Diabolik is total crap.

Franz Waxman's score for Sunset Boulevard is really excellent.

Blue Collar - especially 'Hard Working Man' which plays during the opening credits with Captain Beefheart and Ry Cooder, an absolute piledriver of a song.


John Carpenter did some great atmospheric stuff on everything from Assault on Precinct 13 up until The Thing.

Popol Vuh's soundtrack to Aguirre, the Wrath of God is perfect for the film.

Looking quickly through my "film soundtrack section":
2001
Forbidden Planet
Dead Man
Underground Although I think the songs on this stand up pretty well on their own. My girlfriend reckons it's the only 'party' album I have, as in when we have company over it won't annoy half the room.

Sort of on the same track, but has anyone seen a film in the vein of The Conversation, except it's a thief planning a robbery while being bugged by The Man? I remember the soundtrack being just a whole series of analog synth burbles, really odd stuff. Film was from the seventies, can't remember who was in it... not much to go on, eh? Oh well.

"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" soundtrack is very entertaining.

Halloween III
Cremaster 2
Aguirre/Fitzcarraldo/Nosferatu
Belly of an Architect
Story of O
Who Saw Her Die?
Electra Glide in Blue