{"id":523231,"date":"2026-07-13T03:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T03:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/523231\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T03:59:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T03:59:19","slug":"8-movies-with-great-scores-and-soundtracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/523231\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Movies With Great Scores and Soundtracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usually, a movie having a good score<\/a> is enough music-wise, or if a movie wants to have a soundtrack of pre-existing songs, that tends to suffice. You know, you\u2019ve got The Good, the Bad and the Ugly<\/a> or Star Wars<\/a>, which have scores that are written for the movies themselves, and then you\u2019ve also got films like Pulp Fiction<\/a> and Trainspotting, with the music there being pre-existing songs that add something to the scenes they accompany.<\/p>\n

Movies that do a bit of both are less common, but not entirely unheard of. To try and highlight this, what follows is a collection of films that have both memorable scores and soundtracks. Basically, if there\u2019s instrumental music written for a film, or original songs composed for a movie, that counts as a score. And if there are already-existing songs taken and used in the movie (and such selections worked well), you\u2019ve got yourself a soundtrack. The following movies, to some extent, all do both at the same time.<\/p>\n

8 <\/p>\n

‘An American Werewolf in London’ (1981)<\/p>\n

\"An
\n Image via\u00a0Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

The score of An American Werewolf in London<\/a> tends to get overlooked by the soundtrack, which is somewhat understandable, because the soundtrack is very memorable, and also undeniably novel. The songs all have titles that reference the moon, which might sound gimmicky, but it works. You get a few different versions of \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d \u201cMoondance\u201d by Van Morrison, and \u201cBad Moon Rising\u201d by Creedence Clearwater Revival; that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

The music goes a long way toward making this arguably the very best werewolf movie of all time (and it had some serious competition in 1981 alone).<\/p>\n

On the score side of things, though, An American Werewolf in London\u2019s was done by Elmer Bernstein, and when his music is featured in the film, it\u2019s great, and adds almost as much as all the song selections. The music goes a long way toward making this arguably the very best werewolf movie of all time<\/a> (and it had some serious competition in 1981 alone<\/a>), and then it\u2019s also an absolute all-timer as far as comedy-horror films go.<\/p>\n

7 <\/p>\n

‘Call Me by Your Name’ (2017)<\/p>\n

\"Elio
\n Elio (Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet) hangs out by the garden pool in Call Me by Your Name (2017).Image via Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

Call Me by Your Name<\/a> is set in the 1980s, and some of the music here is willing to remind you of that. That\u2019s okay, though, because the selections from the decade are all sound, and also honestly not too cheesy. \u201cLove My Way\u201d by The Psychedelic Furs is about as pop as it gets, yet still always welcome, and then there\u2019s some stuff by Ryuichi Sakamoto and also Giorgio Moroder (the latter\u2019s name will come up again, a couple more times, later on) thrown in for good measure.<\/p>\n

As for the original music done for Call Me by Your Name, that comes from Sufjan Stevens<\/a>, which is going to be counted as a score here, since it was made for the movie. One song of his, \u201cMystery of Love,\u201d even got an Oscar nomination, and then part of the reason Call Me by Your Name\u2019s ending<\/a> is so effective is because it utilizes another original song by Sufjan Stevens, \u201cVisions of Gideon,\u201d quite perfectly. Then, there\u2019s a remix of a song Stevens had already recorded, back in 2010 (\u201cFutile Devices\u201d), which you could argue fits into either the soundtrack or the score side of things.<\/p>\n

6 <\/p>\n

‘Aftersun’ (2022)<\/p>\n

\"Aftersun
\n Image via A24<\/p>\n

Music is about as important as it can be, in Aftersun, for a film that\u2019s not directly about music or a musician necessarily, nor a musical itself. Aftersun is a drama about a young father and his daughter going on a holiday trip together, with the father clearly struggling with personal demons the daughter couldn\u2019t really see or understand at the time, though as an adult, she\u2019s looking back on the experience and coming to terms with it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very emotionally intense in a slow-burn sort of way. It takes a while for Aftersun to really hit you, but the patience is admirable, and it is eventually devastating. The score, by Oliver Coates, is appropriately moody and understated, adding to the sense of nostalgia and emotional unease throughout, while the soundtrack also perfectly utilizes some iconic songs<\/a> that, post-Aftersun, are hard to associate with anything but Aftersun (see, especially, \u201cTender\u201d by Blur, \u201cLosing My Religion\u201d by R.E.M., and especially \u201cUnder Pressure\u201d by Queen and David Bowie<\/a>).<\/p>\n

5 <\/p>\n

‘Electric Dreams’ (1984)<\/p>\n

\"Electric
\n Image via\u00a020th Century Fox<\/p>\n

As promised, here\u2019s Giorgio Moroder again, whose contributions to Electric Dreams make the whole movie worth watching. The film itself is very underrated<\/a>, and also wonderfully\/aggressively \u201880s in just about every way, the music included. Some of it fits within the confines of a score, because Moroder did compose some instrumental tracks for the film, like \u201cThe Duel\u201d (which reworks \u201cMinuet in G major\u201d by Christian Petzold), and \u201cMadeline’s Theme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The songs here are more in-your-face, though, and plenty of them were written for the movie, sure, but they’re getting counted as part of the soundtrack here. If there is any opportunity to shout out Electric Dreams in some way, it must be seized. The highlight of the whole soundtrack \u2013 and the whole movie, really \u2013 is \u201cTogether in Electric Dreams<\/a>,\u201d which is a collaboration between Moroder and Philip Oakey (of The Human League), which is one of those songs made for a movie that ended up more or less surpassing the movie, in terms of popularity.<\/p>\n

4 <\/p>\n

‘Mysterious Skin’ (2004)<\/p>\n

\"Michelle
\n Michelle Trachtenberg as Wendy standing in the dark next to Joseph Gordon Levitt as Neil in Mysterious SkinImage via Tartan Films<\/p>\n

This fits into the same camp as Aftersun, in terms of being a devastating film<\/a> that uses music incredibly well throughout. Mysterious Skin, furthermore, is quite patiently paced, like Aftersun, and then it has a soundtrack that stands out a bit more than the score\u2026 though the score is still worth noting, and it is important overall, being composed by Robin Guthrie (formerly of Cocteau Twins<\/a>) and Harold Budd (perhaps best known for his albums done in collaboration with Brian Eno).<\/p>\n

Speaking of Cocteau Twins, one of the band\u2019s songs, \u201cCrushed,\u201d is heard in the soundtrack. There\u2019s also quite a bit of shoegaze in the soundtrack, which very much complements the film\u2019s atmosphere and feel (Ride\u2019s \u201cDrive Blind,\u201d and then \u201cDagger\u201d by Slowdive, as well as the latter band\u2019s cover of \u201cGolden Hair,\u201d by Syd Barrett). The most striking soundtrack choice in Mysterious Skin is that of the third untitled track from the 2002 untitled album by Sigur R\u00f3s (that song is sometimes known as \u201cSamskeyti\u201d), though, which is heard in the film\u2019s closing moments.<\/p>\n

3 <\/p>\n

‘The Crow’ (1994)<\/p>\n

\"The
\n Image via\u00a0Miramax Films<\/p>\n

The score of The Crow<\/a>, composed by Graeme Revell, does feel close to a bit melodramatic at points, but it works with the emotions the movie\u2019s trying to depict, and it does click tonally, too. The Crow is highly stylized and also entirely sincere and unsubtle, being a great adaptation of a high-intensity graphic novel<\/a> that, with the movie making things a bit less abstract than the source material, but still retaining the same fantastical revenge story<\/a>. Both the graphic novel and movie are about dealing with intense grief, too.<\/p>\n

The source material references music quite a lot throughout, and so it\u2019s fitting, then, that The Crow (1994) also contains a number of songs by well-regarded artists. Many were covers of pre-existing songs done by bands for the movie, like Nine Inch Nails doing a great rendition of Joy Division\u2019s \u201cDead Souls.\u201d Some non-instrumental songs were also written specifically for the film, with the highlight in that regard being \u201cBurn\u201d by The Cure, which is one of the band\u2019s best post-Disintegration tracks.<\/p>\n

2 <\/p>\n

‘Scarface’ (1983)<\/p>\n

One more Moroder movie, Scarface<\/a> works for plenty of other reasons beyond just the music, as one of the best epic films of its decade<\/a>, and also proving pretty great as a bombastic and rather thrilling gangster movie<\/a>. The music, though, is so good throughout, with Giorgio Moroder composing an instrumental score that tends to get overshadowed by the songs used throughout the film.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not such a bad thing for Moroder, though, since he also produced and co-wrote the non-instrumental songs you hear throughout Scarface, like \u201cRush Rush\u201d (sung by Debbie Harry, of Blondie<\/a>), \u201cShe\u2019s on Fire\u201d (sung by Amy Holland), and \u201cScarface (Push It to the Limit)\u201d (sung by Paul Engemann). Electric Dreams was mentioned earlier as being very 1980s, but Scarface might well be even \u201cmore\u201d \u201880s in its feel<\/a>, and the music is an undeniably huge factor in the film feeling that way.<\/p>\n

1 <\/p>\n

‘Magnolia’ (1999)<\/p>\n

\"Magnolia
\n Image via\u00a0New Line Cinema<\/p>\n

Magnolia is a very long movie<\/a>, clocking in at over three hours, so it\u2019s a bit like Scarface in the sense that it\u2019s got a good deal of time (or room?) for a lot of music to be heard throughout. Some of it was written just for the movie, by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann<\/a>, though a few of her already existing\/written songs were added, making them more like soundtrack picks.<\/p>\n

There was some music done as a traditional score heard in Magnolia<\/a>, too, composed by Jon Brion. And then further, there were songs by other artists used at a handful of important moments, with two Supertramp tracks, \u201cGoodbye Stranger\u201d and \u201cThe Logical Song\u201d (both from the album Breakfast in America<\/a>), proving very memorable. The music\u2019s emotional, the movie\u2019s emotional, and many of the performances are big, flashy, and also \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 emotional. Magnolia is almost too maximalist for this kind of drama, or at least that\u2019s what you might expect\/fear, but Paul Thomas Anderson makes it all work seamlessly, somehow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usually, a movie having a good score is enough music-wise, or if a movie wants to have a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-523231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}