Tarantino strikes again. See also his use of Gerry Rafferty’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” in Resevoir Dogs … to set off what ius essentially a torture scene.
Kubrick again: The soundtrack for 2001 was oddly retrograde, but it worked fine. As one sour-grapes composer at the time put it, “The genius wants to create the universe here, but instead of a film score, he plays a bunch of records.”
I vote for the wild Indian video and accompanying music that leads off and closes Ghost World.
Also, I never heard “In Dreams” or “Blue Velvet” the same way after seeing the movie Blue Velvet.
It’s not that the music is “the same,” but the entire score is played solo on a zither, an unusual choice to say the least.
In a similar vein, the entire score to The Last Detail is played by a military band and most of it is banal, would-be-inspirational marching tunes, often contrasting pointedly (and purposely) with the melancholy action on screen.
Neil Young’s electric guitar score for Jarmusch’s Dead Man is pretty incongrous, given that the movie is set in the old West.
Whether any of these examples “work” is a matter of opinion, but I tend to like them even if the music itself is pretty lousy. (I’d never want to own the Last Detail soundtrack, but I can’t imagine the movie any other way.)
“Lost in Translation” has some pretty interesting stuff. Of course the Japanese inspired techno stuff is quite fitting, but the karaoke stuff is surprising apt.
But the nicest/oddest song is “Just Like Honey” at the end. The music is great, but the lyrics, umm, ahh; well, let’s just say that the words may not apply to that particular situation.
(BTW: according to the display on my DVD player, I’m 10 minutes from that scene.)
Ah, well, in that category we may also add “Pretty in Pink” as used in the movie of the same name. When asked in an interview once how far from the meaning of the song the movie fell, Richard Butler replied “About a million miles.”
On the flip side a case where it doesnt’ work…
“Black Like Me” About a white journalist who goes undercover as a black man in America. The soundtrack is “jungle” rythms and percussion. It’s offensive and does not work at all. The music sounds like it came from “Planet of the Apes”.
Oooh. Should have thought of “Pretty in Pink”, nice catch spoke-. It fits the movie perfectly only if you focus on the chorus. Since I already loved the song before the movie, I was thinking "Are they really trying to suggest that Molly Ringwald is a “girl with something extra?”
Surprised no mention of Dick Dale &c’s surfing music in “Pulp Fiction”. C’mon folks, this is Cafe Society, every movie thread has to have a mention of “Pulp Fiction.” It’s the law you know. A movie with surfing music and no surfers. The closest you get is when Vincent and Jules walk around in Tshirts and shorts. Even that Urge Overkill cover sounds great, but trying to picture Uma Thurman as someone who is not yet a woman…
Yet more Kubrick: In Full Metal Jacket, when Joker’s squad approaches the town with the massive grinning caricature on a building (Ho Chi Minh?), some insane song with a phrenetic tempo is played in the background - something to the effect of “Let me tell you a word about the bird” iirc. I guess the Mickey Mouse song at the end fits the category too.
Whoops. Meant to type frenetic.
Thanks, everybody! Now I have quite a few movies I’ll have to watch (or re-watch) with an ear out for the music.
I still haven’t heard any suggestions for the earliest movie that purposely used incongruous music.
The score by Michael Nyman/Damon Albarn (of Blur) for Ravenous used folksy traditional instruments (banjo, squeezebox, etc.) but in a very arty, ahistorical way, eschewing the traditional song forms that actual settlers of the 19th C. would have known (jigs, reels, waltzes, hornpipes, hymns, etc.) for eerie, off-kilter psychological pieces that, in their unusual tonality and rhythms, underscore the general air of insanity depicted in the film.
And for the one-off George Lazenby Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, both the score (by John Barry) and theme song (sung by Louis Armstrong) broke away from the prevailing patterns in the Bond franchise to date. Breaking away from the brassy theme songs sung by Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey (and the chanteuse number “You Only Live Twice,” sung by Nancy Sinatra), the titular opening-credits theme (by Barry) was an ominous-sounding instrumental. The song (“We Have All the Time In the World” was pointedly not about Bond or his nemesis, but was presented as a music video, with the song layered over a striking montage sequence condensing the love affair between Bond and Tracy (Diana Rigg), which, uniquely to the franchise, culminates in Bond’s getting married.
I liked the '60s Britrock soundtrack to Rushmore. The lyrics generally matched the feel of the scenes (although the “You are forgiven!” climax to The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away” is used to ironic effect in a revenge sequence), but the movie is set in 1990s America so the music is obviously something from another place and time. As the hero is a rather strange and geeky teenaged boy who very much lives in his own world, it seemed appropriate that the music was not contemporary or currently “in”.
I was always jarred awake at “Back In The Saddle Again” in the middle of Sleepless In Seattle" , but in context it works as a quick throwaway joke.
Plunkett and Macleane is set in the mid-18th century (it’s the semi-true story of a pair of highwaymen), but has music that sounds like it was recorded in the back room of a bar in New Orleans. But it works.
That would be Surfin’ Bird by The Trashmen. A classic psychobilly tune also covered by such luminaries as The Cramps and The Ramones.
Another good one not mentioned yet is the song Brazil used as the theme for the movie of the same name. Michael Kamen’s score isn’t all that great but the title song’s bright, happy 1940’s style latin beat provides a wonderfully ironic counterpoint to the bleak trials and tribulations of Mr. Sam Lowry.
I nominate “Roundabout,” by Yes, in the stripjoint scene in Buffalo 66.
Ray Charles’ I Can’t Stop Loving You from the anime Metropolis.
Maybe it isn’t entirely “improbable,” considering the semi-retro feel of the rest of the movie, but it’s still unexpected. And it works, dagnabit. And works well.
One of the best scenes ever put to film, if you ask me.
I happen to like Hudson Hawk. Plllll. I knew that Bruce was totally riffing on his tough guy persona right from the start, when he and Danny sang ‘Swinging on a Star’ while doing the heist at the beginning of the film. Too bad nobody else got the joke.
Unless you already saw “Semi-Tough” (among others), in which case it’s a very unoriginal non-joke.