Soundtracking: "Drive"

It's Chris Feil's weekly column on music in the movies! This week is the techno mythmaking of Drive:

So there’s a new musically-infused motorist crime tale on the block? While Baby Driver tries to take space on your headphones, it may still have to take a backseat to something even more moodily effective (if less uplifting): Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

Refn is no stranger to using music (mostly in original scores from frequent collaborator Cliff Martinez) to help build his films’ elusive auras, but he has never been so successful as using this tool as he is here. This film’s musical identity is inextricably linked to the protagonist in ways that inform the audience of his psychosis as much as the subtlety of Ryan Gosling’s performance. Just as Gosling pulls us into the mind of a lovable psychopath, the song choices help make this grim pulp landscape something beautiful.

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Soundtracking: "Big Little Lies"

It's Chris Feil's weekly series on music in the movies, this time on one of this year's television favorites...

Did you know that Emmy added a music supervision category this year? While this may seem a bit nebulous (Emmy sure does have a heck of a lot of categories!), at least we might get some great soundtracks and song choices recognized. Consider my soundtrack column this week an FYC (among others we've written) for what must be the inaugural front-runner Big Little Lies. Emmy: did you ever want it? Did you want it bad?

The musical landscape of Monterey is packed with soul tunes both new and old, weighted with a kind of timeless, cross-generational longing that ties together the various women of its ensemble. They way these songs ache deepen our understanding of each woman’s unique pain: the angry defiance of Jane running to “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”, Madeline’s romantic respite in “River”, and a lyrically literal reflection of Celeste’s sexual confusion with “Victim of Love”. For the audience, music helps us draw the connections between their shared pain, what ultimately unites them all. Big Little Lies’s musical identity is as distinct as the series itself.

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Soundtracking: "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"

It's Pride month, so this week's installment of Chris Feil's column on music in the movies celebrates a gay classic...

I’m guessing that there’s a good amount of crossover between your Pride playlist and the soundtrack for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. If not, get out. The song choices are veritable staples of the gay experience, a disco-inflected factory of delight.

Priscilla is one of the quintessential disco soundtracks. While younger generations may draw from more recent pop icons, disco has been an expression of queer pleasure that has lingered for decades as an integral part of gay pop culture...

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Soundtracking: "Sister Act"

It's the 25th anniversary of Sister Act! Here's Chris Feil with the second installment of Soundtracking, our newest series at The Film Experience, focusing on music in the movies...

Nuns having fun while singing runs! Alma, check your battery, because it’s time to take it to church!

Sister Act is about as much of an easy comfort as 90s movies get, from Whoopi Goldberg’s peak comic powers to that vibrant choral soundtrack. The film is kind of a prototype jukebox musical, recontextualizing 60s girl group soul to a vaguely christian context. “Guy” becomes “God”, traditional hymns transition into contemporary gospel, music and lyrics twisted twenty years before Pitch Perfect and Glee popularized the mash-up.

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Soundtracking: "American Honey"

NEW SERIES ALERT: Chris Feil will be talking soundtracks and music in movies every Wednesday! The first installment is on last year's Cannes winner American Honey:

Last year at Cannes, Andrea Arnold won her third Jury Prize for American Honey. The film follows Star (breakthrough star Sasha Lane), an Oklahoma teenager who leaves her rural life to sell magazines with a van full of forgotten youths. It’s a compassionate and condemning road movie, Arnold using music to provide a distorted reflection of the limits of the American Dream. You wouldn’t immediately think of Honey as defined by its soundtrack, but it is in so many rich ways.

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