I like almost all of Clint Mansell’s stuff. The soundtracks for Moon and The Fountain are also great (as are some of the others, though they don’t all fit in the “beautiful” category).
Children of Men (mainly composed by John Tavener)
The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda’s western) has a great soundtrack by Bruce Langhorne.
Not a huge Jazz fan, for soundtracks, I like world music or stuff like it:
The soundtrack to Time of the Gypsies is one of my all-time favourite records.
Also, any soundtrack with Lisa Gerrard (solo or in Dead Can dance) on it is going to be be great - Gladiator, for instance. Or Baraka
Eleni Karaindrou’s soundtrack for Ulysses’ Gaze by the late Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos.
Or any of her music for his films, really, but I prefer this one although I’ve not seen this particular film.
This is always very personal. I like Stanley Kubrick movie scores since he decided he liked classical music (as with Barry Lyndon above), and I agree about Amadeus – who wouldn’t like Mozart (and Salieri).
Among film composers, I love Bernard Hermann. I was raised on his stuff – Harryhausen and Hitchcock films. Symphonic music with lots of deep bass. I like a lot of John Williams scores, and Dmitri Tiomkin’s stuff (like The Guns of NavaroneMy current orchestral favorite, as I’ve noted before, is James Horner’s for The Rocketeer.
Magnolia
The Road, by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is 3/4 hauntingly beautiful and 1/4 dissonant tension/terror.
Same here. Although not “beautiful” except in a subjective sense. I own his soundtracks for The Devil and Daniel Webster, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He also did Citizen Kane and Jane Eyre.
I also recommend his non-film, “serious” music. The Symphony (he only composed one), the String Quartet, and the Clarinet Quartet.
For those unaware, Knopfler’s done the soundtracks for a number of films in addition to Local Hero and The Princess Bride; others include Comfort and Joy and Wag the Dog. A 1993 album (YouTube link to entire album) collects tracks from four of them, including Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Princess Bride, and Local Hero.
I’m particularly fond of Local Hero’s soundtrack, natch, but Last Exit to Brooklyn’s is absolutely beautiful (especially for such a depressing movie).
Knopfler’s talent as a songwriter, meaning someone who writes music, is underrated, in my opinion.
The “Watership Down” soundtrack by Angela Morley is beautiful and quirky and when Art Garfunkel sings Mike Batt’s “Bright Eyes,” there isn’t a box of tissues big enough.
Chariots of Fire has Vangelis and Gilbert and Sullivan. Which then leads to Topsy-Turvy.
Kubrick was sometimes pretty good. E.g., 2001 and Clockwork Orange.
One of my favorite and very little known soundtracks is from the movie W.E., directed by Madonna. It’s actually a good movie about King Edward’s abdication of the throne because of his relationship with Wallis Simpson.
The soundtrack is music not by Madonna, but by Abel Korzeniowski, a polish composer. It is awesome. It is all instrumental and mostly piano and cello.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
PBS’s series on New York.
The O Brother, Where Art Thou? sountrack is one of the finest collections of American folk music.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the soundtrack also, but considering most of the music was recorded just for the soundtrack, I don’t believe your statement can be true.
The Sting
I fail to see how this invalidates my statement…
Jurassic Park is John Williams’s most beautiful work. I bought the CD before I even owned a CD player. IMHO, “Journey To The Island” compares favorably with Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Williams got robbed of an Oscar for it; it wasn’t even nominated, leaving the win to go to some schlub.
Speaking of scores from that year, *The Firm * was pretty cool, too.