11. “The Land”
Another decidedly underseen movie this year, coming-of-ager “The Land,” about a group of Cleveland skateboarders who become embroiled in a dangerous drug deal. While audiences were mostly unaware of it, hip-hop fans might have paid a little more attention, given that superstar rapper Nas was an executive producer on the movie and the record of the same name, and helped to put together one of the best hip-hop soundtracks in recent memory. A number of cast members from the film pop up — Machine Gun Kelly, Erykah Badu (who is very good in the movie) and local Cleveland rapper Ezzy, the latter with a track produced by one of the movie’s stars, Rafi Gavron, and all turn in work above and beyond the B-side vibe that you sometimes get with collections like this. But Nas himself also pops up a few times, and brings along some A-list pals, particularly on French Montana’s banger “Figure It Out,” which features both the exec producer and Kanye West. There’s also three tracks from Nosaj Thing and a great one from Pusha T among others, and it ends up feeling like the rare soundtrack that stands beautifully as a separate entity to the movie, while also lending the movie so much power in context too.
10. “American Honey”
Like its sun-dripped, romantically trashy, Robert Frank aesthetic, and boldly exteriorized performance style — all faces and bodies rather than minds or thoughts — the soundtrack to Andrea Arnold‘s headrush Americana road trip is unsubtle: a mixtape of hip hop and radio pop tunes whose lyrics often bypass “evocative” and land squarely on the nose. But that’s just the way the film is — it’s a bright, bursting, heart-on-its-sleeve experience, that is sincere in its appreciation and respect for the vibrancy of youth culture, no matter how airheaded it can sometimes seem. And so, yes, the meet cute between Shia La Beouf‘s rattailed magazine subscription seller and Sasha Lane‘s dreadlocked dumpster scavenger does happen in a K-mart to the strains of Rihanna’s “We Found Love (In A Hopeless Place),” and if you’re looking for an explanation of the film’s philosophy, look no further than the way mainstream rap tracks from Big Sean or ILoveMakonnen‘s “I Like Tuh” rub shoulders with country tunes from Steve Earle and Lee Brice. Often the inarticulacy of youth means the music speaks for the characters, in an unsophisticated but heartfelt way — just the way sometimes a disposable pop track becomes enshrined as a transcendent memory cue just by coming on the radio at the right moment on a car journey. The album comprises all manner of light and shade, but if the standout choice has to be Raury‘s “God’s Whisper” — as anthemic a millennial song, with its ragged, shouty but joyously tribal backing vocals, as can be imagined.
9. “The Neon Demon”
Cliff Martinez has produced some of the most insta-cool scores and soundtracks of the last few years, with Nicolas Winding Refn especially allowing him to give full vent to his facility for ’80s-influenced synths, and kind of hot-pink pop sensibility that he didn’t necessarily get to exploit on previous films (incongruously enough it’s probably his brilliantly anachronistic soundtrack for regular collaborator Steven Soderbergh‘s early 20th century-set TV show “The Knick” that comes closest). And the score for “The Neon Demon” is, if anything, even more integral than that for Refn’s “Drive” — whereas on that soundtrack, the cuts from Kavinsky and Chromatics somewhat defined the film’s sound, “The Neon Demon” features Martinez’ music almost exclusively, apart from a track by Sweet Tempest and a specially commissioned Sia number. Martinez’ work here is, by his and Refn’s admission, was heavily influenced by Giorgio Moroder, Tangerine Dream, Goblin and Kraftwerk. But whether it’s the uniquely confident way Martinez combines his influences into something redolent of 70s and 80s electronica but also new, or, we could cattily suggest, becase the film is so thematically shallow that the score plays an unusually central part in creating and sustaining interest, the music here is delicious, a slick, dark lick of innocence corrupted, or indeed turning out not to have been innocence in the first place.
8. “The Handmaiden”
Reteaming director Park Chan-wook with his frequent composer Jo Yeong-wook (who also worked on Park’s “Oldboy,” “Thirst” and “Joint Security Area” among others) the score for “The Handmaiden” is appropriately deceptive. At first blush, it seems almost traditional — a series of classical, instrumental cuts, making full and lavish use of all the various orchestral sections. But listen closer, and as the film itself reveals layers of intrigue underneath the apparently pristine period surface, the score too reveals a sense of mischief, with some quite modern melodies cropping up, and a few that are playful to the point of jokey. It is a score partly dedicated to the film’s thrillery twistiness, partly to its ornate decor, costuming and mise en scene, but it also has tracks that are suffused with the film’s sense of the erotic. Sometimes that’s understated, as in the restless, tempestuous, yearning romance of a track like “My Tamako, My Sookee.” And sometimes it’s explicit (in both senses of the word) as on the later track “Sea of Bells” in which bells tinkle in a most evocative manner (for anyone who has seen the film) while the gentle slurping sounds of kisses, and breathy female giggles and moans also play throughout, like a Korean lesbian take on “Je t’aime.”
7. “The Childhood Of A Leader”
We part ways with a number of our critical brethren on the quality of Brady Corbet‘s self-important and ponderous parable about the evolution of 20th century European fascism (indeed with the current re-emergence of far right ideals, the film’s simplistic, ahistorical take seems even less insightful) but can’t deny the incredible impact of Scott Walker‘s brazenly experimental and provocative score. Either ruined or enhanced by being played at an ear-splitting volume at the film’s Venice premiere, the Walker music absolutely dominates the rather placid, often inert visuals, with the cacophonous, discordant, vehemently anti-melodic music doing far more than performances or script to communicate the idea of oncoming cataclysm. If they sound like anything, the compositions from the 1960s pop icon-turned-iconoclastic avant garde musician slightly resemble the kind of themes used to good effect in 1970s paranoid thrillers — especially in the score’s quieter moments, of which there are some, though they’re much easier to appreciate when the tracks are tamed into a manageable list on the soundtrack album. Undeniably exciting, at times punishingly harsh, building to climaxing drones that sound a little like the wail of air-raid sirens, it is among the least restful but also most interesting soundtracks of recent times and provides one thing, at least, we can unequivocally recommend about the film.
6. “20th Century Women”
Music plays such an integral part in the intergenerational, life-phase story that Mike Mills’ gorgeous “20th Century Women” tells, that it’s a film in which the soundtrack, comprising existing famous tracks from 1970s bands, Roger Neill‘s delicate, rueful, sunny and synthy original compositions, as well as the multi-perspectived voiceover that Mills deploys throughout, is more than usually crucial, not just to the mood but the plot, such as it is. Annette Bening‘s frazzled but optimistic and energetic single mother tries to reconcile her absolute love of her son and her feminism, with raising him to be a decent, autonomous man, and with the slightly heartbreaking fact that she can’t ever know him as a friend, only as a mother. And as music is one of the ways he’s defining himself, she tries really hard to understand the appeal of a Talking Heads track, and listens with respectful attention to Greta Gerwig’s free-spirit photographer playing her a Raincoats song, before wondering why music “can’t just be pretty anymore” and reverting to sentimental favorites like “As Time Goes By.” Meanwhile Neill, who also scored Mills’ “Beginners,” complements rather than competes with the exceptionally well-curated soundtrack choices with his faintly nostalgic but genuine incidental music, a trick he also manages on undervalued 2016 release “Don’t Think Twice” from Mike Birbiglia.