My Favorite Film Scores (Not by John Williams)

Hello! I haven't made any sort of blog post on any platform in quite some time, but with all of this extra time quarantine/isolation/pause/shelter in place has afforded us, I figured why not flex my intellectual muscles a bit and do some writing and listing!

This first new entry here is a simple exercise, spurned on by the Finely Taylored (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3FBPvbnS24LUSWS9mkyejA) bracket show from last week on film scores. The prompt was simple: favorite film scores not by John Williams.

Here's the deal: this is hardly definitive. I am positive that I am missing scores that I love, that I listen to, that I rock out with. Yet these are the ones that came to my mind as I tried to put something together. I think this list represents a solid breadth of the history of film scoring and the types of scores that are possible, from orchestral and adventurous to fantastical and  horror to synth tand animation and everything in between. Some are more experimental than others, some are more poetic, some are harder to listen to on their own but make such an impact in the film itself that to ignore them would be unwise, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, as one final note, I tried not to go too frequent in repeating composers. I allowed a few repeats but I didn't want this list to be made up of just a handful of composers, which in another approach it definitely could have been. Spreading the love is fun!

So check it out, maybe share some of your favorites in the comments, and hopefully I'll have some more written content as time goes on.

Stay safe out there!

1. Vertigo (Bernard Herrmann)
2. Back to the Future (Alan Silvestri)
3. The Magnificent Seven (Elmer Bernstein) 
4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis)
5. Halloween (John Carpenter)
6. The Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore)
7. Brokeback Mountain (Gustavo Santaolalla)
8. Psycho (Bernard Hermann)
9. Titanic (James Horner)
10. Koyaanisqatsi (Philip Glass)
11. Chinatown (Jerry Goldsmith)
12. The Last of the Mohicans (Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman)
13. The Fountain (Clint Mansell)
14. The Taking of Pelham 123 (David Shire)
15. Gladiator (Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard)
16. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Henry Mancini) 
17. Up (Michael Giacchino)
18. Edward Scissorhands (Danny Elfman)
19. The Mission (Ennio Morricone) 
20. Punch Drunk Love (Jon Brion)
21. The Shawshank Redemption (Thomas Newman)
22. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Ennio Morricone)
23. Beasts of the Southern Wild (Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin) 
24. Pinnochio (Leigh Harline)
25. Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil) 
26. Brick (Nathan Johnson)
27. Amelie (Yann Tiersen)
28. Lawrence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre)
29. Spirited Away (Joe Hisaishi) 
30. Out of Sight (David Holmes)
31. Hero (Tan Dun)
32. If Beale Street Could Talk (Nicholas Britell)
33. The Ghost Writer (Alexandre Desplat)
34. The Seven Samurai (Fumio Hayasaka)
35. Finding Nemo (Thomas Newman)
36. Never Let Me Go (Rachel Portman)
37. Phantom Thread (Jonny Greenwood)
38. Near Dark (Tangerine Dream)
39. Toy Story (Randy Newman)
40. Tron: Legacy (Daft Punk)
41. Inception (Hans Zimmer)
42. Batman (Danny Elfman)
43. Blade Runner (Vangelis)
44. Carol (Carter Burwell)
45. Signs (James Newton Howard)
46. The Social Network (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)
47. The Terminator (Brad Fiedel)
48. How to Train Your Dragon (John Powell)
49. A Single Man (Abel Korzeniowski)
50. Drive (Cliff Martinez)