Best Movie Soundtrack Cues

[Caliburn24]

I love movie scores, especially the instrumental pieces. But I have been largely unable to keep up with recent movie scores due to the fact that I spent the last 15 months in Iraq.

So to all you folks out there that love movie music, what notable scores have I missed in the past 15 months or so? In particular what individual cues do you just keep playing and replaying?

So far the best single cue I've found from the past 15 months is Danny Elfman's "Success Montage" from Wanted. But I'm hopefully ya'll will point me to something even better!

Oh, and by all means don't limit yourself to the past 15 months. What are your favorite movie score cues of all time? I'm always looking for new listening material.

 

[Harvey]

Bryan Tyler's "Inama Nushif" is a great cue, from the Children of Dune miniseries.

"The Joker's Theme" from The Dark Knight is pretty interesting, if hard to listen to.

"Passacaglia" from Battlestar Galactica's first season is one of my favorites, as are many from that series' soundtrack.

EDIT: I totally missed the "fifteen months" thing, but The Dark Knight score is still worth listening to. The soundtrack to "Atonement" is fairly inventive, especially with its use of the typewriter as percussion.

 

[Twilight]

In LOTR: Fellowhip of the Ring

Starting at 1:30 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJZ3TE6uEfI


In ALIEN:

After they're back on board with the facehugger:

the Nostromo slides past the screen, and Goldsmith's famous "DO DO DO DO DO DO" cue first plays in all its glory.

(at 3:02 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JPCILRGYS8 )

What's beautiful about ALIEN is that the crew is in NO danger whatsoever for the first 30 minutes of the film - and yet there's still something so immensely tense and weighty about it that you think they're about to die at any second. But when that flute first plays, marking the point at which they really are in danger ... you know they're fucked. It's an iconic cue for a film score.

 

[Neroon]

I love movie scores, especially the instrumental pieces. But I have been largely unable to keep up with recent movie scores due to the fact that I spent the last 15 months in Iraq.

First off.... thank you for going, and welcome back home!

Secondly, I am assuming that by "musical cue" you mean any piece from an overall soundtrack? If that's true, the very first which came to mind are all from Lord of the Rings:
"Fellowship of the Ring":
- Arwen's finding Strider and the Hobbits, then the subsequent chase with the Nazgul
- The Bridge of Khaza'dum

"The Two Towers"
- Aragorn's dream of Arwen

"Return of the King"
- The Lighting of the Beacons
- Battle of the Pelennor
- "How do you pick up the threads of an old life?"

 

[Twilight]

While we're on LOTR (god, what a brilliant score - I used to listen to it endlessly - think I need to start up again)...

The cue at the end of TTT, starting with Sam (paraphrasing): "It's like in the old stories ... when sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world .... "

 

[Amaris]

"Eve" Wall*E
"The Axiom" Wall*E

Ah hell, the whole soundtrack is great.

J.

 

[JediKnightButler]

Well, as anybody who knows me well would say, my absolute favorite score is the rock/synthesizer one composed by little-known artist named Vince DiCola for Transformers The Movie (1986). Unfortunately, only some of it has ever been made commercially available to date. The music he wrote and scored for Rocky IV was also great although only parts of that score are available as well.

All of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies had great cues composed by John Williams.

Hans Zimmer wrote some great music for the Pirates movies and the new Batman movies.

Howard Shore did an EXCELLENT job with the LOTR movies, particularly the score for Fellowship.

Kevin Kiner's score for the new Star Wars: Clone Wars series has been quite good so far. I look forward to his paraphrased and more "martial" sounding Star Wars main title theme each and every week. I also liked how in "Ambush" he briefly incorporated Yoda's theme into the score during his discussion with his Clone troopers.

 

[Brikar99]

I felt Craig Armstrong's score for "The Incredible Hulk" was rather strong last year. I got the double CD set from Amazon and it works really well as an album.

 

[Caliburn24]

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

And I agree about Star Wars, Pirates, LoTR et al all having fantastic scores.

The Dark Knight was a great movie and the music worked well within it, but I really think it is somewhat overrated musically, and don't really like to listen to the score on its own.

Alien is kind of in the same boat. It is just too slow and moody for me to generally enjoy listening too, especially when Goldsmith has much better scores to listen to.

I'm going to look up Wall*e and The Incredible Hulk's scores though. I've seen both movies, and Wall*e's score did jump out at me. I have to admit though that the Hulk's score did not immediately jump out at me, but I'll give it a listen.

One score that I recently started listening to is John's Powell's Hancock score. The movie was all over the place, but the score is really good, and John Powell is rapidly becoming one of my favorite movie composers.

 

[Lonemagpie]

If you like John Powell, The Bourne Ultimatum score is easily the best of the three, though its version of Extreme Ways is inferior to the Supremacy one.

Also, not a movie score, but I'd highly recommend Murray Gold's Doctor Who soundtracks, especially seasons 3 and 4

 

[Neroon]

Hans Zimmer wrote some great music for the Pirates movies and the new Batman movies.

While Zimmer is quite awesome and did produce the "Pirates" score, I think it was actually Klaus Badelt who wrote the musical score for it. Of course it sounds quite a bit like Zimmer's score for "Gladiator".

 

[DeafPoet]

The Dark Knight was a great movie and the music worked well within it, but I really think it is somewhat overrated musically, and don't really like to listen to the score on its own.

I agree. The score is sort of brilliant in the way it makes the movie work. But it's not particularly interesting on its own I find.

 

[Timby]

Hans Zimmer wrote some great music for the Pirates movies and the new Batman movies.

While Zimmer is quite awesome and did produce the "Pirates" score, I think it was actually Klaus Badelt who wrote the musical score for it. Of course it sounds quite a bit like Zimmer's score for "Gladiator".

While Klaus Badelt was the sole credited composer, he and Zimmer wrote most of the first Pirates score. Quite a few other Zimmer robots (Nick Glennie-Smith, Steve Jablonsky, Ramin Djawadi and Blake Neely come to mind, although there may have been others) also wrote music for it. On the two sequels, Zimmer was the sole credited composer, although a few other guys (Glennie-Smith and Geoff Zanelli) contributed a lot, too.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Solaris (2002) has a great soundtrack. My favorite track is this one. It's especially good when it plays over the closing scene of the movie.

 

[Caliburn24]

I downloaded Brian Tyler's Inama Nushif, and it is a beautiful piece. Is the rest of the soundtrack for that miniseries anywhere near as good?

I also grabbed a couple of songs from the Dr. Who soundtracks. HOLY CRAP who is Murray Gold? He's writing what has to be the best music on TV right now. His cue "This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home" is maybe the finest piece of TV music I've heard in recent years.

 

[sportzkid]

I downloaded Brian Tyler's Inama Nushif, and it is a beautiful piece. Is the rest of the soundtrack for that miniseries anywhere near as good?

I also grabbed a couple of songs from the Dr. Who soundtracks. HOLY CRAP who is Murray Gold? He's writing what has to be the best music on TV right now. His cue "This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home" is maybe the finest piece of TV music I've heard in recent years.

I believe Inama Nushif is possibly the best piece on there, but the whole soundtrack is amazing, it is one of my favorite scores of my whole collection.

 

[Canadave]

EDIT: In reply to Caliburn24

^ You obviously haven't been listening to Bear McCreary's work on BSG, then.

I mean, I love Murray Gold's work, but he has nothing that really can match tracks like "Passacaglia", "Prelude to War", "Something Dark is Coming" and "Roslin and Adama". I'm pretty sure all of those are on YouTube if you care to look them up.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Sticking with TV, I love Michael Giacchino's work, especially on "Lost". His musical cues at the ends of the penultimate episodes of season 1 and season 4 (combined with the on-screen action in those episodes) are both uplifting and sinister at the same time.

 

[sportzkid]

Forgot to mention it, but the soundtrack to HBO mini series John Adams is pretty amazing. I absolutely love the theme song to it.

 

[Barbados Slim]

Solaris (2002) has a great soundtrack. My favorite track is this one. It's especially good when it plays over the closing scene of the movie.

I was going to mention Cliff Martinez's Solaris soundtrack. The best queue is Kelvin falling asleep and "First Sleep" plays as we flashback to how he and his wife met at a party and instantly fell for each other. It then flashes between his sleeping and them kissing in his house, then them kissing on the station as it becomes apparent that she's materialized in the present. The song makes the entire scene just...beautiful.