My Favorite Film Scores

I kind of knew that one of these days, I'd have to make a list of my favorite film scores. Really, the only hard part about this is deciding which ones! I have so many scores that I adore, and wanted to put tons on the list... But still, I've decided to think of my favorites that come to mind first. Buckle in for a terribly made list of my five favorite film scores.

I tried not to just pick movies that won Academy Awards, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded there.

5) Finding Nemo
Right of the bat, a film from one of my all time favorite composers, Thomas Newman. The emotion that he is able to draw from the movie is incredible, particularly in the case of the leitmotif for Nemo and Marlin. It's one of the few scores that I've heard live, and that may be what pushed it onto this list.

4) Up
Yeah, another Pixar movie... Another one of my favorite composers, Michael Giacchino wrote the music for this one. A perfect example of how you don't need a violin solo in a minor key to create sadness, the music from Up is able to make it onto this list.

3) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Finally, a John Williams movie on this list. Took a while didn't it? Either way, this score is one of my all time favorites, yet I still never want my symphony director to tell me we're playing it. The score is one of the first ones that I really noticed how much the music helped the movie along. The light yet triumphant theme of the movie is really one to remember. Can you imagine Elliott flying in his bike with E.T. WITHOUT Williams' music? Exactly, and that's while this score made it onto the list.

2) Star Wars: A New Hope
Oh dear, I don't know how I managed to find something better than this score. I may just be in a bad mood today, but this iconic score did not make it to the top of the list. However, there are still a lot of reasons for why it's this high on the list. For starters, it's music by John Williams, so it must be good. After that, it has leitmotifs... Which are great. Finally, I would argue that this score revolutionized film music. Those are some of the great reasons why this movie made it to number two.

Honorable Mention
I may not have mentioned this, but this was a really hard list to make because of all the great scores there are. For that reason, I've decided to add one very honorable mention.

Schindler's List
If you've ever watched this film, you know why I couldn't leave out this score. The pairing of John Williams composing and Itzhak Perlman as a violin soloist is a match made in heaven. I'm currently playing the famous violin solo from the movie, so it came to my mind sooner than a lot of other movies did. Either way, this score definitely deserves to be mentioned.

Such an Honorable Mention I added a picture. Courtesy of IMDb

1) Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
Now that I'm this far, I'm almost ashamed of putting this as number one. But as a total fanboy of leitmotifs, there's nothing better in my opinion than Howard Shore's score for this movie. I talked about this film score in a previous post, so I won't go into much more detail about it here. But no matter what, the leitmotifs of this movie are why it's number one on this list.

That was a rather lengthy post, but it really needed to be done. In the near future, I'll probably do a review of one of the movies on that list. But until then, keep listening to more film scores.