17. “Midnight Special”/”Loving”
“It’s John Carpenter meets Steven Spielberg!” went the excitable advance word on Jeff Nichols‘ sci-fi film, ultimately doing the thoughtful parable about fatherly love and parental sacrifice no favors. To understand just how wide of the mark that assessment was (there are elements of both directors’ work from their 80s heyday, but they are way low in the mix) you just have to listen to David Wingo‘s excellent score, which only occasionally hints at Carpenter-ian synths and entirely eschews broad, John Williams-style adventure-and-wonder themes. Instead it’s wholly its own thing, ranging from quiet, watchful, melancholic washes to more percussive, chase-and-flight rhythms, but never really settling and seldom repeating itself. Wingo is Nichols’ regular collaborator, having scored all his films bar his debut, and also worked on Nichols’ other 2016 title, the beautiful, sublimely polished gem that is “Loving.” The music there is much more classically-inclined but no less inspired, orchestral pieces that suggest not burning-hot passion but the kind of unalterable, eyes-on-the-horizon love that will span a lifetime, equally tinged with edges of fear and sadness and tiny flares of hope. Also marked with the occasional guitar-based track that gives a bit of a folksy, small-town Virginia vibe, some pacier elements during the more dramatic moments and some with more modern instrumentation leading the classical elements, mostly it’s a mellow pleasure — music to grow old to, together.
16. “Sing Street”
Few directors have melded music and movies so successfully in recent years as Irish filmmaker John Carney — first with sleeper smash “Once,” and more recently with Keira Knightley vehicle “Begin Again,” Carney has delivered genuine crowd-pleasers driven by charming original soundtracks. And he managed the trick a third time this year with coming-of-age musical comedy “Sing Street.” Set again in Dublin, though this time in 1985, it sees young Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) attempt to woo Raphina (Lucy Boynton) by setting up a synth-pop band, and Carney cannily deploys some expert choices to capture the era, both some obvious picks — Duran Duran’s “Rio,” The Jam’s “A Town Called Malice,” The Cure’s “Inbetween Days” — and some more surprising ones, like Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” and Motörhead’s “Stay Clean.” But as with Carney’s earlier hits, “Sing Street” also has some winning original songs (not written by Bono and The Edge as was originally planned, thankfully). Penned by the director with veteran songwriter Ken Clark, and Ken and Carl Papenfus of Relish, the Sing Street songs are all winners, hitting a breadth of influences and charmingly performed by the young cast. Like the film, the soundtrack can’t help but leave you with a great big grin on your face.
15. “Lion”
Dustin O’Halloran is one of our favorite composers to emerge in recent years — from his breakthrough with Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” he’s consistently stood out, first with his collaborations with Drake Doremus on “Like Crazy” and “Breathe In,” then with his gorgeous theme and score to the great “Transparent.” But O’Halloran looks to find his widest audience yet with his team-up with German composer Hauschka for the score of Garth Davis’ awards contender “Lion.” The film, which follows how young Saroo was separated from his family in India, adopted by an Australian couple, and later used Google Earth to track down his relatives, could have been a treacly affair, but O’Halloran and Hauschka take the same approach as the film’s director and emphasize restraint, with an almost minimalist score that places its focus on Hauschka’s piano work, aided by shimmering strings and synths. It’s melodic and pretty, but doesn’t overdo the emotional elements. In fact, the quiet approach ends up making the film’s gut-punches and soaring highs feel all the more effective by giving them the space to play out (though the Weinstein-mandated Sia song is a bit much). The score earned a Golden Globe nomination today, and could well be on its way to picking up a first Oscar nomination for its two composers.
14. “Swiss Army Man”
The uncategorizably odd yet scatologically impressive “Swiss Army Man,” from debut directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (AKA Daniels) is based on such a ludicrously unappealing premise — stranded man is physically and psychologically rescued in various improbable ways by a flatulent corpse — that it’s surprising it can hang together as a film at all, let alone emerge as one of the more surprisingly touching and heartfelt of the year. But a lot of that is down to the creatively deployed compositions from Andy Hull and Robert McDowell who together form one half of indie rock band Manchester Orchestra. It’s perhaps appropriate that the debut directing team also got composers making their film score debut — the soundtrack displays a pleasing lack of reverence for the way things should be done, and also the go-for-broke, throw-it-all-out-there enthusiasm of the neophyte. Reliant on choirs and vocals and with actual instrumentation at a minimum, the songs showcase Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe‘s pleasingly reedy, hesitant voices and feature unexpected covers of everything from a hauntingly heartbroken version of “Cotton Eyed Joe” to a hummed take on the millennial favorite that is John Williams‘ famous “Jurassic Park” theme. But it’s best typified by the signature song, simply titled “Intro Theme” in which Hull and McDowell use layers of harmonising voices, some providing almost tribal-sounding oms and ululations, others on backing-vocal “ooh ooh”s, while others provide the main, wordless melody — like the film, it’s a high-concept quirk overload that shouldn’t work at all, yet builds to an unabashedly triumphant, uplifting and totally singular anthem.
13. “Hunt For The Wilderpeople”
One of the most purely enjoyable and genuinely delightful films of the year was Taika Waititi’s coming-of-age adventure comedy “Hunt For The Wilderpeople,” which sees Sam Neill’s grizzled woodsman and his bad-boy foster son (Julian Dennison) on the run in the New Zealand wilderness. And it has the perfect music to match, courtesy of a tremendous score by Moniker and some brilliantly used song choices. Moniker are better known as Lukasz Buda, Samuel Scott and Conrad Wedde, who are also key members of New Zealand indie band The Phoenix Foundation, who provided the music for Waititi’s earlier movies “Eagle Vs. Shark” and “Boy.” Their score for the director’s fourth film comes courtesy of this side-project band, a dreamier, synth-heavy proposition. The score evokes lo-fi dreampop and Casiotone (up to and including the charming “Ricky Baker Birthday Song” performed by Dennison and Rima Te Wiata in the film), while mixing in some smartly used choral vocals and a slight influence of Maori traditional music, particularly in the almost Wes Anderson-ish opening “Makutekahu.” Add in the memorable use of Leonard Cohen’s “Song Of The French Partisan” and Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman,” and you have a film as sonically pleasing as it is winning in every other respect.
12. “The Witch”
Canadian composer Mark Korven has had a relatively long career in film and TV but prior to 2016 his best-known feature was probably the inventive low-budget sci-fi/horror “The Cube.” Since then, he’s done a lot of television and documentary work, but should find his profile in the narrative feature world given a boost by his appropriately otherworldly, deeply chilling score for Robert Eggers‘ breakout horror hit “The Witch.” Feeling as authentic to the Pilgrim era as Eggers’ meticulously researched dialogue and accents, Korven’s score is full of dark portents and jangling corners, laced with occasional stabs and shrieks from a choir of female voices pitched precisely at the point at which angelic becomes demonic. Those almost giallo flourishes are few and far between though, as mostly the score is an exercise in horror restraint — just as Eggers largely refrains from showing us much more than a glimpse or a corner-of-your-eye suggestion of the titular creature, so is Korven’s score content to gently coerce you into a grim, enveloping dread, before actually revealing its true, ghoulish intent. When that comes to full voice, like on the track “Witches’ Coven,” with its female voices chanting harshly in guttural, indecipherable syllables, before turning unearthly against a percussion backing that sounds like beaten sticks, we’re already so freaked out that the explosion into all-out horror comes, if not as a relief, than certainly a release.