T.'s Top 10 Favorite Movie Soundtracks

I love a great musical score just as much as I love a great movie. Heck, a great musical score can be better than the movie itself!

Frankly, I don’t know how to describe music as well as I know how to describe filmmaking, so I’ll get quickly to the point in listing my top ten favorite movie soundtracks! The list is in alphabetical order, and I’m limiting how many entries each composer will get so that half of this list won’t be taken up by John Williams.

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E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) - John Williams
In terms of how well the score compliments its film’s equally masterful direction, E.T. may be Williams’s magnum opus, and likely a big reason why such an intimate story became the highest grossing movie in its time — the first to surpass a revolutionary spectacle like Star Wars (also happened to be scored by Williams) — and still holds #7 of all time adjusted for inflation.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) - John Powell
Since I didn’t want John Williams to take up half this list, I couldn’t fit in his Superman score. But John Powell’s Celtic-flavored How to Train Your Dragon score is one of the next best things in capturing the wonder of flight.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - Alan Menken
It’s really weird that Disney made this very-not-family-friendly novel into one of their family musicals, which results in some infamous tonal issues. But, I’m not above laughing with its broad comic relief, and its score filled with Latin chanting makes its dramatic beats some of the most epic I’ve seen in any movie.

The Land Before Time (1988) - James Horner
James Horner is the passed-away composer I miss the most (even if he often plagiarized, especially from his own work; heck, I long thought Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was one of his most unique scores until I learned he got sued for what he plagiarized for it), and this score of his may be his most beautiful, making every moment of both heartbreak and elation within a runtime that’s barely over an hour long feel earned.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) - Howard Shore
I’ve praised Lord of the Rings as the greatest escapist story ever put to film; you think I also wouldn’t feel the same way about its musical score?

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007) - Hans Zimmer
What I mean most by a score being better than the movie itself. Such a creative and exciting first two entries of this trilogy lead to an overly serious, overly complicated, overlong slog that ruins its immediate predecessor. And yet, this slog’s musical score is somehow one of the best I’ve ever heard!

The Prince of Egypt (1998) - Hans Zimmer
The best soundtrack Disney never produced. Not only is the score in general breathtaking, but I haven’t heard a better song lineup in an animated musical.

The Rocketeer (1991) - James Horner
Perhaps the next best thing to John Williams’s Superman score in capturing the wonder of flight, and one of the biggest things that make the pulpy Rocketeer stand out in the superhero genre, even if it’s not one of the greats as a whole.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith is another composer I really miss, and I’ve recently become aware of just how prolific he was with almost every other 80s and 90s movie I see. His score for First Contact not only includes the iconic Next Generation theme — which he originally scored for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978 — , but the main theme composed specifically for this film beautifully captures the wonder of man and extraterrestrial first meeting on peaceful grounds.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) - John Williams
I’ve written two whole pieces on how I love the Star Wars movies in spite of themselves, but the thing I most genuinely love about Revenge of the Sith is its music. Not only do I think it’s the best score of the saga (and not just because it was one of the first soundtracks I owned), but it realizes the story’s potential dramatic power in a way that George Lucas’s characterizations don’t.

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