Year in Review: Best Music and Soundscapes
Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at 3:50PM by Nathaniel R
Are all cinephiles "visual" people or are some more sonically attuned? I ask this because in order to draw up my own lists of "bests" in the aural categories, I have to really focus to note the soundscapes. In some cases, as with the sinuous alien creepiness of Nope and the haunted bold swings of TAR, the genius is hard to miss even for those of us who are more visually oriented. If any of you have theories as to how Oscar's sound branch didn't include either in even their finalist lists, I'm all ears... no pun intended.
For the most part it's the images I remember which may explain why I am so allergic to end credit songs over a dark screen being hailed the "Best" of any given season in Original Song. Marry the images and sound and it's far more memorable and valuable to the overall film experience...
This is why "Naatu Naatu" from RRR should handily win the Oscar for Best Original Song though it's the only one of Oscar's nominees that makes my own list. The other Film Bitch Award nominees, like "Naatu Naatu" are highlights of their films. They're crucial to the overall vibe or narrative. And if songs aren't doing that why are they in the film?
In other words the Film Bitch Awards for the films of 2022 have begun starting with the music categories.
For good measure, we have an extra "Adapted or Combo Score" category since so many movies relies heavily on pre-existing music. In some cases as with movies about Elvis or Bowie, the movies shouldn't be faulted but celebrated for doing right by the source. In other cases, as with Camille's moody score with Corsage (that song "She Was" is fire) it's a matter of brilliantly repurposing older music. And I'm currently obsessed with the original synthpop of "Anybody" from Return to Seoul but the whole soundtrack, a mix of original score and pop songs is stellar.
What scores and songs were your favourites this year?
Reader Comments (8)
The soundtrack to Moonage Daydream is incredible while I also cite the work that NIN did for Bones & All and Empire of Light though I haven't seen the latter but I liked the score. The soundtrack for Pinocchio by Alexandre Desplat is great as he needs to be in the conversation more as far as great film score composers are concerned.
Great picks! EO (damn, what a score), Nope and TÁR deserve top honors.
Yay - film bitch has started!!! Happy with the EO and Bros nominations. I actually preferred Everything is new to me from Pinocchio vs Ciao Papa. And I couldn’t get the Turning Red song out of head for days. Perfect piece of 90s-00s boy band pop.
Really intrigued at seeing what shows up in the rest of the film bitch categories.
Shout out to Matthew Herbert's weird, wonderful score for The Wonder, but I also hugely enjoyed Michael Giacchino's above-and-beyond, bombastic score for The Batman.
I love the still-life minimalism of Kevin Morby's score for the little-seen Montana Story by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. It reminds me of the stark beauty of William Tyler's score for Kelly Reichardt's First Cow. But Montana Story is dreamier like the big open skies that witness the tense sibling relations of Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson. Owen Teague's performance is like the film's score itself: effective, expressive, devoid of showboating, heartbreaking.
For movie lovers, everyone will have a different taste but I am sure that everyone will love the high quality sound quality to enjoy. Even a game like flappy bird must take care of this to keep players.
My best music is in Smash Karts. The sound of battles, fights, and competition attracts me and it become my favorite music immediately.
I agree that music can make a huge change to any scene, and with proper music accompaniment, any movie can get way better. I can say that I usually download my favorite tracks from movies for free with Tubidy, and for me, it's pretty convenient to understand how good the movie was by the number of songs I added. But to be honest, it's pretty hard to find actually good movies among the latest releases.