Movie(s) with best soundtrack?

Birdman. Just drums. Really fucking good drums. Also they appear in the middle of one scene in an excellent way.

Also: not a movie, but Cowboy Bebop. Lots and lots of great tracks.

Once upon a time the west. (Ennio Morricone)

Blade runner (Vangelis)

The Lord of the Rings

This is Howard Shore's Magnum opus. It's what distinguishes this movie as more than just a great adaptation. His use of themes to represent not only races and kingdoms but characters, objects (like the One Ring, of course), and even concepts is a level above most movie soundtracks. There are even elements of storytelling through the music!

For example, the first time we hear the theme for Gondor is when Boromir is in Rivendell. Since he's more or less alone, the theme is played by a single French Horn in a somber (almost tragic) style. In Return of the King, we see Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, in all its glory, and so the full orchestra plays the theme.

One more: As the Fellowship begins to break down, so too does the theme. We go from heroic phrases to shorter, interrupted instances. There's a book about the soundtrack written by Doug Adams. I highly recommend it if you're interested!

The Blues Brothers - it's stringing together performances from famous musicians, and the soundtrack was successful as an album in its own right.

• Ray Charles
• James Brown
• Aretha Franklin
• Cab Galloway
• etc.

A few not listed:

• The Crow
• Empire Records
• Leaving Las Vegas
• Get Shorty
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• Pulp Fiction (listed elsewhere)

Dazed and Confused

Reservoir Dogs, O Brother Where Art Though, Blues Brothers, From Dusk til Dawn,

For me the criteria is: would the movie be very different with another soundtrack. The below offerings truly elevate their movies imo.

Tron Legacy

Blade Runner

Black Panther

I'm going to reframe this as who I think the best composers are:

Bernard Hermann, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, etc.

John Williams, E.T., Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc.

Akira Ifukube, most of the Shōwa era Godzilla movies

Shiro Shigasu, Evangelion, Shin Godzilla

As far as new work, I'm partial to Scott Stafford on Ultraman Rising. It came out on Netflix this past June and I was really surprised how good that movie and soundtrack were.

The Matrix soundtrack is amazing

The Big Lebowski deserves a mention.

Watched Blade Runner 2049 2 days ago. Had a very good soundtrack but I wouldnt just listen to it just.

Personal favorites:
Tron: Legacy
Pacific Rim

28 Days Later

Trainspotting

Garden State....could not tell you a single thing about the film but when it was released, the soundtrack was full of my favorite artists at the time

Honorable mention: Most Wes Anderson films have pretty thoughtful soundtracks but I've never been blown away or introduced to a new band

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

Eraserhead, Side B

The album has been seen as presaging the dark ambient music genre, and its presentation of background noise and non-musical cues has been described by Pitchfork's Mark Richardson as "a sound track (two words) in the literal sense". -wikipedia

The mood and tone of Eraserhead and its soundtrack were influenced by Philadelphia's post-industrial history. Lynch lived in the city while studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and was fascinated by its feeling of constant danger; describing it both as a "sick, twisted, violent, fear ridden, decaying place" and "beautiful, if you see it the right way."[8][9][1] Lynch and Splet used avant-garde approaches to recording on the soundtrack; including crafting almost every sound in the soundtrack from scratch using bizarre methods. The ambiance of the love scene in the movie, for example, was produced by recording air blown through a microphone as it sat inside a bottle floating in a bathtub.[10] Lynch and Splet worked "9 hours a day for 63 days" to produce the soundtrack and all of the sound effects in the film. Splet recalls the sound effects Lynch called on him to produce for Eraserhead as "snapping, humming, buzzing, banging, like lightning, shrieking, squealing” over the five years it took to produce the film and its soundtrack. -wikipedia

Forrest Gump, hands down.

American Beauty.

It's the most autumn sounding OST I know, super moody.

A Knight's Tale

Stranger Than Fiction, soundtrack by Spoon

The Fountain, Requiem for a Dream, or anything by Clint Mansell

• Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction / Kill Bill
• Stand By Me
• Dirty Dancing
• The Lost Boys

Rogue One. First time I saw it I was sure no one could hold a candle to John Williams. Then I watched it again and the way Michael Giacchino uses a half-step to underline the theme of hope gives me chills just remembering it.

Tombstone and Almost Famous for me

Conan the Barbarian

Resident evil

Dred 2012

Redline

Into The Wild

The Third Man has that fantastic zither theme.

• Yellow Submarine (I think a lot of people either forget this movie exists, or write it off as a kids movie. You're missing out on a movie that could be considered as revolutionary to animation as the Beatles were to music.)
• Back to the Future
• The Muppet Movie
• School of Rock
• Bladerunner
• The Matrix

There's probably other's, but that's what immediately comes to mind.

Desparado https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0112851/

Amazing soundtrack!

I don't know that I could pick one, but Joe Hisashi's Studio Ghibli sound tracks are done of my favourites

Lots of good ones here, I'll add some that haven't been mentioned: Sahara, Rango, both Sherlock Holmes movies, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, the JJ Abrams Star Trek's, The Incredibles, Godzilla 2014, The Road to El Dorado

Godzilla 1998

Varsity Blues

I was just watching Tenet last night and the music kind of took me out of it sometimes because I was like, “Fuck, that music sounds awesome”, though not sure how well it will stand on its own, I’ve not tried that yet.

The blade runner soundtrack is my go to relax soundtrack. Have listened to it thousands of times by now.

Atomic Blonde

Shrek 2, unironically

Also Sucker Punch and Tron Legacy

Pretty in Pink - Pure 80s.

Oh just my thing.

• Summer Wars
• Kikojiros Summer
• Dunkirk
• Inception
• Desert Rose

I have a lot of these on my shortlist. More series and even way more videogames

Bohemian Rhapsody

interstellar, interstella5555, gladiator