Best of 2014: Tuneful Tunes

 

Next up: a pair of music categories. I promise I've seen more movies than Under the Skin. If you're beginning to tire of its constant presence in these write-ups (which is crazy since the movie is amazing), then you can take refuge in the fact that it doesn't show up in my newly-implemented Song Score category. Surprising, you may say, considering all the snappy, Pitch Perfect-esque musical numbers on the soundtrack. Anyway, the nominees for Best Original Score are.....

• Gone Girl (Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross), for giving seediness to ambient surfaces, playfulness to unreliable narration, sharp, mischievous undercurrents to film's satirical tone.

• The Grand Budapest Hotel (Alexandre Desplat), for arrangements that serve and layer Anderson's deliberate meticulousness, once again proving Desplat's adeptness w/ varying tones and styles.

• Interstellar (Hans Zimmer), because Zimmer invokes unabashed ecstasy in the face of Nolan's Big Ideas, large scope, intergalactic mystery, cosmic breadth of emotion.

• Only Lovers Left Alive (Jozef van Wissem & Sqürl), for rhythmically injecting the film with mournful and tranquilizing compositions, both appropriate to and perceptive of character and location.

• Under the Skin (Mica Levi), because it's a simultaneously unnerving and trance-inducing work that tests curious, bizarre sounds against Johansson's own growing inquisitiveness.

Honorable Mentions: I never feel confident in my choices for score, as I always feel like I'm overlooking films in that regard. However, the laudable intricacy of Christopher Spelman's work on The Immigrant has only grown on repeat viewings, working around the two vital uses of "Funeral Canticle" so beautifully. I also thought Desplat scored two additional times in 2014 with Godzilla and Venus in Fur. Even if he phoned it in with The Imitation Game and was only serviceable to the faux charms of The Monuments Men, I still find myself hard-pressed to find a better working composer than him.

Other scores on the radar include: Cold in July, Edge of Tomorrow, Enemy, The Homesman, Land Ho!, Listen Up Philip.

Now moving on to Best Song Score...

Note: These don't have to be *original* song scores, of which there are too few in a given year to devote an entire category (although, four of the nominees do contain original songs), but merely soundtracks that use songs, original or pre-existing, throughout.

• Begin Again (Matt Sullivan, Andrea von Foerster, et al.), because, like Once, the film manages to find the right talents, timbres, and tempos to pull these songs off, with both tender and joyous emoting.

• Beyond the Lights (Julia Michels, Happy Walter, et al.), because it richly cultivates a coating of sadness in Pop w/out condescending to the genre, and for finding redemption in "Blackbird" and "Grateful".

• Boyhood (Meghan Currier, Randall Poster, et al.), because the songs allow for smooth transitions/leaps in time without calling attention to itself, and suggest a culture that changes along with Mason.

• Finding Fela (Elise Luguern, John McCullough, et al.), because the performance pieces from both Fela and Fela! capture the artist's tireless presentation and politics better than Gibney.

• We Are the Best! (Rasmus Ford, et al.), because all the era-specific Swedish punk, as used in the film, is as much of a delight to listen to as it is to see the girls' obsession with it.

Honorable Mentions: Guardians of the Galaxy's soundtrack really is just one big Awesome Mix, and while I wasn't as crazy about the movie as others were, I couldn't stop humming "Come and Get Your Love" for weeks. I had an even tougher time finding out what critics found (ahem) "likeable" about Frank, but I was most able to admire the defiant deadpan from all involved during the song-creation sequences, which played with the notion of abstract, cooler-than-thou art in interesting ways. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, The Fault in Our Stars, Muppets Most Wanted, and Obvious Child were also considered.

Missed: Rudderless.

P.S. When it comes to the movie musical you'll always see me pulling for the genre, but Annie and Into the Woods were no winners in my book.