Memorable Music Movies.

[wwaldmanfan]

The Professional--I love that movie! What a captivating performance by 12-year-old Natalie Portman in her feature film debut.

Of course, the fantastic Gary Oldman also starred as Ludwig van Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, and as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy.

[AnotherSpin]

No intention to hijack the tread... but, I am recalling more and more wonderful movies about music...)

 

'Meeting Venus' from great Hungarian director Istvan Szabo, one of the best films about what it makes to stage opera, this time it was nothing less than Tannhäuser; Szabo also has movie about Furtwängler' post war troubles.

 

'The Late Quartet' with Christopher Walken and late Philip Seymour Hoffman - what a great story about String Quartet and what it is;

 

'Tous les Matins du Monde' - everybody enchanted by Jordi Savall wouldn't miss this one;

 

'Aria' - a movie combined from short episodes from such directors as Robert Altman, Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jarman, Ken Russell, etc.

 

Ken Russel's movies are not everyone's cup of tea, but he had his own unique way of telling about music and composers without doubt;

 

Everybody knows about 'Whiplash', I do not need to mention this one, I guess.

 

TV Series 'Flesh and Bone' main hero is ballet dancer, still it is a great story about not only listening but dancing music.

[mansr]

O Brother, Where Art Thou? has some nice musical elements. Did someone already mention it?

[mansr]

This Is Spinal Tap goes to 11.

[sphinxsix]

@ mansr

Sure, I did. I'm a big fan of the Coen brothers. Not the only one I believe.

 

@ AnotherSpin

No hijacking IMO. Gotta see 'Meeting Venus', I don't know this one by Szabo. BTW the sound quality of 'Whiplash' soundtrack is really fantastic!

As for 'Born to Be Blue' - I watched it last night and in fact it inspired me to start this thread

[mansr]

Angelo Badalamenti has done some good scores for David Lynch and others.

[sphinxsix]

Angelo Badalamenti has done some good scores for David Lynch and others.

A big fan of Lynch too and I agree (again..! ) Badalamenti's soundtracks for his movies are simply great. Well, Lynch was also the one to discover Rammstein, they quite probably owe him their international popularity.

[TubeLover]

Stanley Kubrick used music beautifully in his movies. Barry Lyndon's soundtrack goes deepest to my heart. Not exactly "music movie" but I couldn't separate music from the picture there. From more recent movies I'd like to mention Le Tout Nouveau Testament and Pure with Alicia Vikander, for classical music in both.

 

Couldn't agree more about the Barry Lyndon soundtrack. Just superbly done and, indeed, inseparable from the movie. I often listen to it while reading great books, for which it provides an unforgettable background.

 

JC

[TubeLover]

This Is Spinal Tap goes to 11.

 

Classic satire that even fooled people!

 

JC

[AnotherSpin]

A big fan of Lynch too and I agree (again..! ) Badalamenti's soundtracks for his movies are simply great. Well, Lynch was also the one to discover Rammstein, they quite probably owe him their international popularity.

Lynch re-discovered Jimmy Scott among others.

[Boy Howdy]

"Muscle Shoals" - a documentary on Netflix.

Mike

[whoozwah]

I'll throw in one of my all time favorites, "Almost Famous". Great performances all round, superbly written and one of the most accurate documents of that time.

 

I'll give a +1 to Almost Famous. Great flick.

[bluesman]

"Standing in the Shadows of Motown"

 

"Paris Blues"

 

"A Man and a Woman"

(the great samba from the soundtrack)

...and check out this great cover of the samba:

 

I love the entire soundtrack from AM&AW. The score in the driving scenes (both road and race) is great, with every genre from romantic ballad to hysterical allegro a la Road Runner!

[Jud]

Agree with the folks who mentioned O Brother, Where Art Thou, and a huge thumbs up for Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World). The latter is, for me, wonderful late evening contemplative music.

 

I love the soundtrack to Blade Runner, probably because I love everything about the movie.

 

But here is one that has not been mentioned, and if you haven't seen it yet, you must: Diva, by Jean-Jacques Beineix. The 2008 remastering has some technical problems in both sound and video, so get this 2001 version: https://www.amazon.com/Diva-Wilhelmenia-Fernandez/dp/B000059PPB/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1475159764&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=diva+anchor+bay+2001

 

The music will make you love opera (Catalani's La Wally), and some of the cinematography is reminiscent of a Magritte painting.

[davide256]

Lawrence of Arabia is pretty good if you ignore how the title lead sound track was messed up. The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie sound track is pretty enjoyable if you have your system digital demons tamed. Apollo 13 is a sentimental favorite of mine and I use it to test with... listen to track 1 and see if you can hear clearly the uninvited guest to the recording ;<)

[church_mouse]

I love "Once", with original music by the two leads - Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed "Love and Mercy" - the Brian Wilson Biopic.

 

A film where the love of music is wonderfully depicted is "Good Vibrations" about Terri Hooley and his part in the Irish punk scene.

 

The Nyman score for "The Piano" is great, but I dislike intensely the actual film.

 

+1 from me for Vangelis's score for Bladerunner and Morricone's for The Mission (with honourable mentions to "For A Few Dollars More" and "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly").

 

Finally, Queen's contribution to the soundtrack of "Flash Gordon" was definitely the best thing about that film, + the line "Flash, you know I love you but we only have 14 hours to save the Earth"

[petaluma]

Any Tarantino film has a great soundtrack. Every time I hear "Stuck in the middle with you" by Stealers Wheel from Reservoir Dogs I flash to Michael Madsen dancing around the warehouse right before he does something really bad to hostage officer.....yikes.

 

+100 on Almost Famous, one of my favorite films. Maybe the best sing along scene on the bus to Tiny Dancer, great stuff.

 

The documentary about The Eagles was also pretty good. I knew they had problems but man how did they make it for the 7 or 8 years they were a band????

[christopher3393]

Any Tarantino film has a great soundtrack. Every time I hear "Stuck in the middle with you" by Stealers Wheel from Reservoir Dogs I flash to Michael Madsen dancing around the warehouse right before he does something really bad to hostage officer.....yikes!

 

Yes, some great Tarantino soundtracks, including Morricone's score for "The Hateful Eight", and yes, thinking about that Madsen scene still gives me the creeps!

[petaluma]

Yes, some great Tarantino soundtracks, including Morricone's score for "The Hateful Eight", and yes, thinking about that Madsen scene still gives me the creeps!

 

I saw an interview with Tarantino about 15 years ago and they asked him about that scene and why he did not show Madsen actually disfiguring the officer. As you remember the camera pulls off to the doorway. He said that our imaginations could do much worse than anything he could put on film. :-)

[bluesman]

Yes, some great Tarantino soundtracks, including Morricone's score for "The Hateful Eight", and yes, thinking about that Madsen scene still gives me the creeps!

Clint Eastwood's soundtracks are not too shabby. Ennio Morricone did the early ones, and CE wrote many later ones himself.

 

Goodbye Colonel (from For a Few Dollars More)

 

The Trio (from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)

 

Sudden Impact theme (written by Eastwood)

[AnotherSpin]

But here is one that has not been mentioned, and if you haven't seen it yet, you must: Diva, by Jean-Jacques Beineix.

In fact I was going to mention this film as well, but for a moment forgot the title....) Thank you for remind it.

[gmgraves]

For me music comes first but I'm also a movie fan. And a music movie is a territory where the two in one way or another come together. I quite often search IMDB and RottenTomatoes for the stuff I haven't seen yet. Hope this thread can be some inspiration for CA members who are interested in the genre.

 

There are so many great music movies and it's really difficult to choose one or two as the absolutely best so I'll start with titles that simply first come to mind:

 

 

Milos Forman's 'Amadeus' surely needs no introduction:

 

Not a music movie per se but a classic Godfrey Reggio's documentary in which Philip Glass'music compliments the picture in such an organic way that it's difficult not to mention it:

 

Spike Lee's 'Mo' Better Blues', starring Denzel Washington, soundtrack - Branford Marsalis Quartet ft. Terence Blanchard.

 

 

One of my favorite genres of music is the film score - the so-called "incidental music" that has accompanied motion pictures ever since it's earliest days. The best scores. in my humble opinion, are the ones that are so good, that they can stand alone as great music, totally separate from the film it was written to accompany. Over the years, there have been dozens of great composers writing thrilling music for movies that can be listened to and enjoyed just like a symphony or a tone poem or ballet music. The great composers of the 20th century film score were names like Miklos Rozsa: Ben-Hur (the real one from 1959, not this piece of crap that was playing in theaters recently), Spellbound, Eye of the Needle, Quo Vadis, El Cid, King of Kings, and more than a hundred more. There's Dmitri Tiomkin: Red River, The Fall of The Roman Empire, High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Alamo, and scores more. Alfred Newman: Captain From Castile (often considered the greatest single film score ever written), How the west Was Won, Airport, The Robe, Leave her to heaven, etc. Elmer Bernstein: The Ten Commandments, Walk on the Wild Side, The Magnificent 7 (AKA the Marlboro Man theme), Hawaii, etc. Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Kings Row, etc. Max Steiner: King Kong (1933), Gone With The Wind and many more. Bernard Herrmann: Psycho, The Man who Knew Too Much, Taxi Driver, North By Northwest, Vertigo, To Catch a Theif, The Egyptian (shared credit with Alfred Newman), Jason and the Argonauts, etc. Jerry Goldsmith: The Blue Max, etc, Ron Goodwin: The Battle of Britain, 633 Squadron, Those Magnificent men in their flying machines, Etc. John Barry: Most of the "good" James Bond scores, Raise the Titanic, Zulu etc. And then there are John Williams: Star Wars, ET, Superman, Jaws, etc. John Williams has written some great scores, but he plagiarizes others too much for my taste - but at least he plagiarizes from the best: William Walton, Korngold (most of the Star Wars theme is directly lifted from the Kings Row score). The Modern group of film composers like Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The 2005 King Kong) don't impress me as being musically interesting enough to listen to when disassociated with the film for which they were written.

[Northern_Canuck]

Pink Floyd's the Wall

Pirate Radio

Sound City

[TubeLover]

And the recent Amazon series "Mozart in the jungle" on a symphony orchestra's struggles in the 21st century is entertaining.

 

+1. Excellent cast and well written. I'm looking forward to Season 3.

 

JC

[TubeLover]

"Once Upon a Time in the West" music by Ennio Morricone

 

 

Ennio Morricone is a true genius of film scores. The impact of his music on almost countless movies is in a class by itself.

 

JC