Best Scores Of 2017

 
NUTS4R2s Top
Fifteen Scores of 2017

Okay... so I’ve been fairly ruthless again this year with my selections. If the film was released first run either at the cinema or ‘straight to home’ releases then it’s eligible on my list, as long as the score got a CD release. If it only got a vinyl release or, worse still, some kind of rubbishy electronic download (okay, those two formats are almost as bad as each other these days), then it’s not going to be on here.

Also, no archival releases are on here. As with most recent years, there have been some absolutely fantastic CDs of great, past scores in 2018, most of which would easily win out against the newer ones... so it’s not really fair to let them be on this list.

Anyway, here’s are my picks in reverse (aka ascending) order...

15. The Limehouse Golem by Johan Söderqvist
Söderqvist wrote a pretty cool thriller score which included some nice string orchestrations for this Victorian mystery tale. I could also hear some very specific influences from Jerry Goldsmith making their way into the film (although I don’t remember if those sections I’m thinking of made it onto this album). This CD was a very limited release from Varese Sarabande but... well... at least we eventually got a CD version. You can read my original review for this movie here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-limehouse-golem.html

14. Wind River by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
Wind River had a very quiet and contained score, to match the icy visuals of this stark chiller. Everything seems like it’s a lesson in restraint as the score keeps sounding like it’s going to burst forth in anger at any moment. It also contains some vocal passages which I really didn’t like at first but which have grown on me and work as a part of the stand alone listening experience. My review of the accompanying film can be found here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/wind-river.html

13. Pirates of the Caribbean - Salazar’s Revenge/Dead Men Tell No Tales by Geoff Zanelli
Probably the best of the poor crop of sequels to the original, much better movie, Zanelli’s score uses the themes developed by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer throughout and, it has to be said, he does so in a much less subtle but certainly way more entertaining manner than most of the sequel scores manage. I was pleased that this didn’t jettison the soundscape developed over the years and was delighted with the results. My review for the ‘not as good as the score’ movie can be found here.
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/pirates-of-caribbean-5.html

12. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women by Tom Howe
This is a lovely selection of cues from an amazing movie. When you have a dialogue based film with a script that sparkles the way this one does, without relying on any action sequences, some composers are better off just letting their music get out of the way as a support to the visuals. However, Tom Howe provides a rich accompaniment which raises the emotional highs and lows of the characters perfectly. It was an absolute nightmare to get hold of this CD, for some reason. After my third supplier told me it had somehow been lost in the post (How, when every other thing I ordered this year arrived safe and sound, did three copies of this from three different suppliers get lost in transit?) I despaired of ever getting to hear this before it went out of print but, thankfully, it’s here now and worth the wait. My movie review is here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/professor-marston-and-wonder-women.html

11. Happy Death Day by Bear McCreary
This is one of a few movies with scores by the wonderful McCreary in it this year, for what turned out to be a kind of teen slasher remake of Groundhog Day, no less. Bear’s score matches the slow burn shock of waking up every day and I love how the first four cues on the album, titled Day One through to Day Four, have similar, chilling, slow building openings to the tracks to enhance the familiarity of where the main protagonist wakes up every morning. The film wasn’t without some minor flaws but the same couldn’t be said for the score, which is absolutely marvelous.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/happy-death-day.html

10. Dunkirk by Hans Zimmer, Lorne Balfe and Benjamin Wallfisch
I’m not the greatest fan of Christopher Nolan’s, admittedly epic feeling, movies but I do like the scores on some of them and this one is no exception (thankfully, it’s no Inception, either). The film is quite intense in the way it piles on the suspense but I think, if you took away this score which, it seems to me, is doing all the work, then the whole film would collapse. So a score which, I suspect, saved the move in some ways. As reviewed here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/dunkirk.html

9. Spider-Man Homecoming by Michael Giacchino
The first of two Giacchino scores in my top fifteen this year is one which I wasn’t overstruck on when I first heard it (asides from the immediate impact of the Marvel Logo music being a new version of the old cartoon series theme). However, it’s really grown on me and it’s had a fair few spins this year. I reviewed the film here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/spider-man-homecoming.html

8. Blade Runner 2049 by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch
This unwanted sequel to the greatest movie ever made really missed the mark in a big way but I was really interested in seeing what the director’s more recent collaborator, Jóhann Jóhannson, was going to do with the score. Alas, he was replaced fairly late in the game with Zimmer and Wallfisch, both excellent composers in their own right but almost every decision about this film seemed ‘off’ to me. However, this final score, with an overpriced limited edition soundtrack which then turned out to be not so limited after all, is an okay listen, although it never quite seems to get to the heights of sonic empathy it really sounds like it wants to in terms of relating to the original Vangelis score for the original classic. The CD album suffers from the placement of songs dropped into the score which doesn’t help maintain a steady atmosphere in places. My review of Blade Runner 2049 is here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/blade-runner-2049.html


7. War of the Planet of the Apes by Michael Giacchino
My second Giacchino score is his second score for the Planet Of The Apes series but, it’s also the first one of the modern films, as far as I am concerned, that doesn’t sound out of place with the stylistic leanings of the majority of the scores from the original, five films from the late 1960s and early 1970s. This one has some really great stuff in it including a kind of march for the apes to counter some of the rich, emotional stuff at other points in the movie. I reviewed this one here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/war-for-planet-of-apes.html

6. A Ghost Story by Daniel Hart
About the worst thing you can say about this truly interesting score by Daniel Hart for this amazing film is it’s too short. I could quite happily have listened to a double CD of this stuff. It even has a not unlistenable song on it which carries a lot of the emotional weight at times. My look at A Ghost Story is here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/a-ghost-story.html

5. Shin Godzilla by Shiro Sagisu and Akira Ifikube
The score from Shin Godzilla is a far greater achievement than the actual movie itself, as far as I’m concerned. Shiro Sagisu’s new material blends in perfectly with the new recordings of Akira Ifikube’s melodies from some of the original films and it’s a pure joy to listen to this. The CD is a bit pricey, as it comes from Japan but, worth every penny as it’s been in my player quite a bit since it arrived. I recently reviewed this one here.
https://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/shin-godzilla-aka-shin-gojira.html

4. La La Land by Justin Hurwitz
Despite what I said in my initial review, this film has both a strong score and a pretty good, if small, range of songs in it too. When I’d listened to the songs a second time, after writing my review, I realised just how great they were and what I’d been missing. The album had a strange release in that it was split, unnaturally, into two albums... one for mainly score and one for mainly songs... which is an expensive way to do it, especially when I suspect most people, myself included, were going to recompile it into a proper album reflecting the combined order in film sequence. Then, towards the end of the year, a third double CD in a box was released with even more stuff and alternate material which is finally, more or less, what should have been released in the first place. My slightly wrong headed review of this movie is here.
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/la-la-land.html

3. Jackie by Mica Levi
I was absolutely gutted this music by relative newcomer Mica Levi didn’t win the Oscar for best score last year. Well, at least it got nominated, I guess. Like her earlier Under The Skin score, this one is just pure genius and may take you to emotional places you didn’t realise you had. Any other year, this may well have been my number one choice but, as you can see below, the competition for the top spot was tough in 2017.
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/jackie.html

2. King Arthur - Legend of the Sword by Daniel Pemberton
Well, this is one of those ‘not so rare as you may think’ instances when a quite terrible movie has a truly stupendous score which takes on a life of its own as a stand alone listen. This is right up there with Pemberton’s equally cool score for the same director’s recent reboot of The Man From U.N.C.L.E and it basically feels like... well... medieval rock n’ roll. The percussion and various other effects like the use of breathing as a musical instrument really serves to give a fresh and ‘beyond toe tapping’ suite of musical delights. I gave this one a lot of play and you can read my response to the less than stellar movie it’s trying its best to support here.
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/king-arthur-legend-of-sword.html

1. Wonder Woman by Rupert Gregson-Williams
I couldn’t believe I missed just how brilliant Rupert Gregson-Williams’ score for Wonder Woman is on my first listen through at the cinema. I sure as hell twigged it when I heard it away from the images which inspired it, though. This is a case of my number one film from 2017 and the score from the same both taking the top spot. While Gregson-Williams occasionally uses Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme from Batman VS Superman (to very good effect... less is more) he also introduced numerous rich, extremely emotional and, for sure, powerful themes which tend to sweep me off my feet every time I listen to it. In fact, when I was walking around London with earphones on and listening to this thing, I began to start tearing up exactly the same way that I do when I see the movie (actually, tearing up may be a bit of an understatement). A truly soulful set of cues which, considering just how much good music has been left off the CD, really needs an expanded 2-3 disc release from one of the boutique soundtrack labels like La La Land or Intrada. This disc has been played to death by me this year and I suspect it will be getting a lot of spins by me over the next decade or more. My review is here.
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/wonder-woman.html

Wind River

Huckleberry Fiend

Wind River
2017 UK Directed by Taylor Sheridan
UK/Canada/USA
UK cinema release print.

Warning: A very minor, structural spoiler on this one.

Well this is a terrific little film.

I wasn’t really that sure what Wind River was going to be like from the trailer but it looked like a high quality production and, yeah, that’s something it certainly is. I was personally more interested in the casting, more than anything. Ever since The Avengers: Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) I’d been kinda wondering how long it would be before somebody spotted just how good the chemistry was between Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye character and Elisabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch character in that sequence in the middle of the final battle, where he lays everything out for her before she makes that decision and grows into the heroine she is supposed to be. Well somebody else other than me must have noticed it after all because here they are playing the two lead protagonists in a taut thriller which pitches them against both 'murder most foul' and the adverse, icy conditions of the Wind River Indian reservation, where this film is set.

After a brief prologue of a scene which is better explained in an autopsy room later in the picture, we get around about 15 - 20 minutes of the film just setting up Jeremy Renner’s character. He has an Indian ex-wife and a son and there’s something else which connects him spiritually (at least) to the events which follow and which I am not going to spoil for you here. He is a hunter/tracker for the reservation named Cory Lambert, working hand in hand with the police as he kills wolves and whatever else is killing livestock in the area. I have to admit I was torn with being asked to empathise with someone who goes around killing animals but I am not going to get into that debate now and Renner plays the character very well. The writer, who is also the director, is sensitive enough to not let it be too much of a problem for the audience, I think. As Renner is tracking a family of lions who have been killing off buffalo in the area, he comes across the dead body of the girl from the opening sequence and, after calling the local (and very small) police force in, the FBI are informed.

Enter Elisabeth Olsen’s character, FBI agent Jane Banner, the fish out of water who needs the help of Renner’s tracking skills to investigate various elements of the case as they come to light and who is quite unprepared for the weather conditions. She does, however, prove herself to be a dab hand with a pistol and, although she is the ‘green’ out of town character with the usual dynamic which that brings for the first 20 or so minutes of her screen time, she soon proves to be an edgy and resourceful person. And she’s all the local police have got to help them because, due to the way in which the first victim dies, the coroner cannot ‘officially’ reach a decision of homicide so she needs to wrap things up in a hurry before she is pulled out of there and back to her normal ‘hunting ground’ of Las Vegas.

That’s the basic set up and it’s a real humdinger of a movie, for sure. It actually utilises a lot of hand held camera throughout but it’s used to good effect without spoiling the sharp focused, languid style of the cinematography. Hectic during such scenes as running through a snowy forest and... just a little jittery and inquisitive to heighten tension when, for instance, Olsen is trying to secure a house without knowing who is inside and whether or not someone is going to try and shoot her to pieces around the next corner. This style of shooting can either kill a film stone dead if overused or really add to the weight of the story and this one, I’m glad to say, is definitely in the latter camp.

It’s not all moving camera though. There are some really nice static shot compositions here too and one of them was so well done, not what I’m used to seeing from a big budget movie made in the last ten years or so, that I was quite staggered. It’s a scene from the earlier part of the movie where Jeremy Renner is standing out on the porch of the father of the first murder victim, talking to him. He’s kind of half blocked off by a vertical wooden slat so he is in sharp profile in the left hand side of the screen. In the middle of the screen are some more verticals and diagonals and in the foreground, completely out of focus, is the guy he is talking to, also in profile to the right of the screen. So you have three vertical splits with the right of shot like a blurry after echo of the left. Which is all pretty cool but then the director further surprised me by showing just how much he knew about designing within this kind of widescreen format for the big screen, where a jolting cut could pop an audience right out of the action. The reverse shot is taken with the camera at such and angle that Renner’s head and shoulders takes up the same left hand third of the screen with the other actor still on the right... which is exactly how you make a seamless transition without unsettling an audience in a cinema where the contents of a huge, wide canvass is leading their collective eye at any stray movement or cut. It’s text book movie making and I was glad to see it so well executed here.

Although I had no idea who the killer was in this one before the reveal (it’s not that kind of film... the reveal here is the first time you meet the character) there was a point where, quite bizarrely as it happens, where I kinda second guessed the reveal of a certain shot... well I did and I didn’t. To explain, after a certain very intense scene involving a bunch of law officers and Elisabeth Olsen, she is knocking on the door of a trailer and you are almost expecting something to happen. Then you see the person inside the trailer getting up from bed and going to answer the knocking. For some reason, I just knew that when he opened the door I was not going to see Elisabeth Olsen on the other side of the door. I kinda guessed the director was going to pull a switch in the edit and that’s exactly what he did. Where I got it wrong, though, is that I was expecting it to be Renner on the other side of somebody else’s door when, instead, the director doesn’t displace the narrative spatially at all. He instead displaces the narrative in time and it’s here that we are privy to the scene which went on before the opening sequence of the film. That being said, it’s quite a good way to do it and it kinda beats Quentin Tarantino’s way of showing the exact same thing... that is, revealing the back story to an up and coming scene by flagging it up just before it becomes really important, as he did in The Hateful Eight (reviewed here) and as this director does here. It’s a nice little moment and the pay off when we finally do get back to Elisabeth Olsen knocking on that same door is... well, it’s a good one.

At the end of the film we have a scene where the inevitable happens... Renner’s character is a hunter/tracker and he finally catches up with his prey. The nature of the punishment that he metes out is not totally unexpected and, in its ‘poetic justice’ kind of way, it kind of reminded me a little of the way Mel Gibson conducted business at the end of the very first Mad Max movie (reviewed by me here). It’s not a million miles away from that and, after the final denouement, we have two epilogues which pick up some other pieces in the story and... it all goes down very well, to be honest.

The music for the film by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (both of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds fame) is quite supportive in places but did get a little too distracting in some moments. This is mainly in some passages where some lyrics are sang over the scoring and... well, I didn’t think too much of it when Hans Zimmer tried that in his score for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (reviewed here... although that makes an awesome concert piece on it own) and I wasn’t too sure of it here. I might pick up the soundtrack CD at some point and see how it holds up as a stand alone listen but, when the vocals aren’t kicking in, it seems an appropriate and supportive score, on the whole.

All in all, Wind River is a pretty fun and quite suspenseful, tension filled thriller which shows just how good Renner and Olsen are together (and they are ably supported by a whole bunch of great actors) with a more leisurely pace than most modern movies today. Which, as far as I’m concerned, just shows how the director appreciates what a slower approach can bring to a movie when the action scenes are given that kind of setting, so they will really jolt the audience in contrast when... ‘stuff goes down’. It’s edgy, has some beautiful, snowy backdrops and it doesn’t once get boring or outstay its welcome. Definitely one to get to see this year if you are serious about seeing good movies when they come out at the cinema. A well made joy from start to finish.

RED 2

Mirren Image

RED 2
2013 USA/France/Canada
Directed by Dean Parisot
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Yeah, there’ll be some slightly retired 
spoilers resurfacing here and coming up for action.

The original RED from two years ago is one of those movies that, at the time, pretty much charmed the pants off of everyone with it’s mixture of bullet spitting mayhem and senior citizens kicking all the fine young assassins’ and agents’ collective backsides all over the place. It’s the kind of film that begs a sequel but, since the movie really hit the mark and did mostly everything right, it's not necessarily something you want them to really produce, just in case they manage to screw it up the second time around.

Well, I’m here to tell you now... they didn’t screw it up.

In case you didn’t know, the acronym R.E.D stands for “Retired Extremely Dangerous” and it tells the story of a bunch of ex-government killing machines who are trying to enjoy their retirement (for the most part) but who find themselves accidentally embroiled in extremely sensitive, extremely dangerous missions... with the young “civilian” girlfriend of the character played by Bruce Willis tagging along and having a blast in the process. It’s based on a DC comic written by Warren Ellis, one of the better writers in the field, and this gives the first film, at least, a real sense of strong story mixed in with the action and the comedy.

I don’t know if RED 2 is actually based on any of the comics but, I have to say, that the second movie continues to add a lot of fun and, more importantly, heart warming moments in between the various fast-paced and, quite spectacular (if ludicrous in some cases... do people really just walk away from a helicopter crash?) action sequences and, I’m happy to say that most of the characters are back from the first film. Notable exceptions are Morgan Freeman (and if you’ve seen the first movie you’ll know why), Karl Urban (who was brilliant in the first one as the “bad guy’s killer pawn redeems himself” character) and, sadly, Ernest Borgnine. Now Ernest Borgnine is a real shame because I know he loved appearing in his brief role in the first movie and I remember reading an interview with him around the time of the first film’s release a couple of years ago where he said he really wanted to do another one and have a bigger part in it. Well, apparently, a slightly more prominent part was written for him for a scene in this second one but, alas, he died a few weeks before he came to shoot it. Which is a great pity... I’m sure he would have had a blast.

However, most the main actors from the first movie are all back. So the line up for this one is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox. Also along for the ride this time around are Catherine Zeta Jones, Anthony Hopkins (yeah, that’s right... this movie has two actors who have played Hannibal Lektor in it), David Thewlis (who is a sadly neglected genius of an actor) and Byung-hun Lee (who I’ve seen in a fair few Asian films over the last few years).

And guess what? It’s a cliché perhaps but, with a cast this good, it’s going to be hard to fail with this kind of ensemble unless the writing is really bad... and the writing is really quite good, for the most part, so you’re in good hands. Oh, okay, yeah... it has some cheap sci-fi inventions made up just to annhilate certain plot weaknesses (hello, I’m looking at you “red mercury”) but what film doesn’t these days. And it doesn’t matter too much because this film is one where, yes the action sequences are typical modern Hollywood spectacle... but the plot and dialogue which glue these little set pieces together are just as inspired and fun to watch and it feels like an appropriate mix, for the most part.

There’s a kind of twist which, I suspect, most people will see coming (even from the trailer and casting if they think things through) but it doesn’t really matter because, as well as being about a team of not-so-past-it wrinklies kicking ass, it’s also got the brilliant chemistry between Willis, Parker and Malkovich which helped make the first film such a blast. And of course, everyone is getting in on the act of advising Willis on his love life and how to not be so controlling with his girlfriend etc... it’s really humorous stuff. Oh and, yeah, it has the big thing which made the first movie such compulsive viewing...

Helen Mirren firing off machine guns.

All kinds of guns and weapons of lethal destruction, in fact, in what amounts to a slight expansion of her role and importance in the film compared to the first, I think. Which means, of course, you have a few moments where the relationship between Mirren and Brian Cox is, well, hilarious (He likes the way her toes curl up just before she pulls the trigger when she’s on sniper duty, it would seem). Unfortunately, my one criticism of the first movie (as reviewed here), still stands in this one. We want to see a “naked” Helen Mirren shooting off her machine guns... oh well... maybe they’ll do that for the third one which, I understand, has just been assigned writers.

The film does try to repeat, somewhat, the formula of the first film, it’s true... there’s even a “character realises he’s wrong and decides to help the team instead of killing them” moment again from one of the ensemble cast... you’ll probably see that one coming way before it happens too, I suspect. But it really doesn’t matter too much because the formula of the first movie was just perfect and this one really doesn’t drop the ball with it either.

It’s one up on a few fair modern action films too, in that the editing is pretty good and you won’t suddenly find yourself getting lost in the action like you might have in... um... I dunno... Pacific Rim maybe (reviewed here), as an example. This is good and the action and humour/drama of the thing is ably supported with a strong score by Alan Silvestri, who I find a bit hit an miss but he does a terrific job here. It also continues the inventive “comic book” location transitions from the first movie... and this movie does a lot of globe hopping I can tell you. Sometimes back to the same countries (which makes shooting these things out of sequence a good way to save money and add value by changing locales at frequent intervals) but that’s okay... it all serves the story and these transitions are funky.

And that’s my short review of RED 2 done, I believe. If you liked the first one and want to see a sequel which, remarkably, wont sour the sweet taste of the original (as so many of them can) then go see this movie. And if you haven’t seen the first one... well, having the background of the first one is better but you can pretty much gather the relationships between the characters as it goes along... and besides, it has Helen Mirren causing mass destruction... so go see it anyway!