The film music of 2023.

Okay, then.

My favorite scores of 2023:

      

(Michael Abels - Amazon)
Abels' score for the true-life courtroom drama plays like the best score Terence Blanchard never wrote.
Favorite tracks: "Call Me a Child of God", "No Intention of Closing", "Gonna Have Him on a Cross"

      

(Thomas Newman - Disney)
Newman's score lent a lot of flavor to the Pixar romance.
Favorite tracks: "Across the Ocean", "Pipe Blows", "Make Connection"

     

(Benjamin Wallfisch - WaterTower)
Easily the weakest comic book movie of the year, but one would never know listening to Wallfisch's exciting score.
Favorite tracks: "Run", "What is This Place?", "Worlds Collide"

     

(John Murphy - Hollywood)
Murphy laces moments of awe and warmth into this lively score.
Favorite tracks: "Warlock vs. Guardians", "It Really Is Good to Have Friends", "The High Evolutionary"

    

(Laura Karpman - Disney)
Karpman provided one of the more unique efforts in the Marvel canon.
Favorite tracks: "Dar-Benn", "Entangled", "The Marvels"

    

(John Powell - Back Lot)
Powell's music for the animated feature is appropriately lush and colorful.
Favorite tracks: "Bedtime Story", "Heron Adventures", "Jamaica"

    

(Daniel Hart - Disney)
It's virtually impossible to write a bad score for a Peter Pan movie and Hart's fun work continues the tradition.
Favorite tracks: "The Darling Darlings", "Peter Pan Shall Perish Today", "Goodbye Peter Pan"

    

(Panu Aaltio - Moviescore Media)
Delightful action music that should point to a bigger career for Aaltio.
Favorite tracks: "Newspaper Ad", "Grand Adventure", "Mystery Never Ends"

    

(Marco Beltrami - Back Lot)
Beltrami revisits his Warm Bodies and injects a lot of musical style.
Favorite tracks: "Wake and Bake", "You're the Monster, Renfield", "Full Husk Emptied"

    

(Christophe Beck - WaterTower)
This robust superhero score might well be Beck's best work of the year.
Favorite tracks: "Main Title Theme", "Philly Tree's Take", "Hero"

(Brian Tyler - Back Lot)
One of Tyler's most exuberant efforts, bolstered by clever interpolations of the game themes.
Favorite tracks: "King of the Koopas", "Lost and Crowned", "Fighting Tooth and Veil"

(Lorne Balfe - Lakeshore)
Balfe's pulsating music channels the feel of the classic video game.
Favorite tracks: "Falling Blocks", "Hard Drop", "TeeWee"

Other good scores:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Christophe Beck), Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Harry Gregson-Williams), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Lorne Balfe), Haunted Mansion (Kris Bowers), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (John Williams), mon crime (Philippe Rombi), Napoleon (Martin Phipps), Rustin (Branford Marsalis), Slotherhouse (Sam Ewing), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Daniel Pemberton), The Tenderness (Fernando Velazquez), Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Jongnic Bontemps) and Zombie Town (Ryan Shore)

My favorite CDs of 2023:

Battle Beyond the Stars (James Horner - Intrada) - Horner (literally) lays the groundwork for future favorites with his score for the sci-fi western.

Hook (John Williams - La La Land) - The complete presentation of the underscore is welcome, but the real attraction is the songs written back when the project was to be a musical.

Mouse Hunt (Alan Silvestri - Varese Sarabande CD Club) - At long last, one of Silvestri’s finest - and most fun - scores receives the presentation it deserves.

The Munsters: the Television Music of Jack Marshall (La La Land) - Compilation spans Marshall's Universal scoring for the small screen, highlighted by the delightful music of the headliner show.

On Dangerous Ground/The Man Who Knew Too Much (Bernard Herrmann - Intrada) - The label's re-recording cleans up the former score and showcases the latter in all its glory.

Peter Pan (James Newton Howard - Intrada) - Howard’s sweeping and lovely music made for a perfect fit to the (sadly) forgotten adaptation.

Rat Race (Elmer Bernstein - La La Land) - Bernstein's rejected score for the chase comedy saw him throwing out the Airplane! playbook and going full-tilt wacky.

Sabrina (John Williams - La La Land) - The romantic comedy remake featured one of the Master’s finest works, supported by an elegant main theme.

Solo: a Star Wars Story (John Powell - Intrada) - Every note of Powell's exciting score is finally available on a physical album, which is reason enough to celebrate.

Venom (Michael Kamen - Quartet) - Kamen provided a wonderfully creepy score for the underrated killer snake thriller.

Other great CDs of 2023:

Hot Fuzz (David Arnold - La La Land)

Humanoids from the Deep (James Horner - Intrada)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Denny Zeitlin - Intrada)

MacArthur (Jerry Goldsmith - Intrada)

The Manions of America (Morton Stevens - Dragon's Domain)

Moment to Moment (Henry Mancini - La La Land)

Pleasantville (Randy Newman - Varese Sarabande CD Club)

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (John Barry - Quartet)

Shattered (Alan Silvestri - Intrada)

Sneakers (James Horner - La La Land)

Random thoughts:

- Hans Zimmer wrote a fine score for The Creator, but it was originally not to be. Writer/director Gareth Edwards’s plan was to have an AI generator replicate a Zimmer score, at least until cooler heads prevailed. As a film music fan for most of my life, I find this to be just offensive; depriving talented composers of work just to save a few bucks. Haven’t seen the film, but I suppose I can be grateful that it was a box office flop, which could certainly throw a wrench in Edwards’ future career and make sure that his psychotic ideas don’t infest other filmmakers.

- Given his amazing scores for Kenneth Branagh’s first two Poirot movies, I eagerly awaited Patrick Doyle’s music for A Haunting in Venice. However, his work on the music for the coronation of King Charles precluded this, leaving the job in the hands of…Hildur Gudnadottir. Her grim, one-note score seemed to wander in from another franchise, one that recoils at the concept of melody…or fun. There are tons of working European composers that could’ve done a better job. To wit: Craig Armstrong, David Arnold, Roque Banos, Bruno Coulais, Alexandre Desplat, Pino Donaggio, Anne Dudley, George Fenton, Alex Heffes, Tuomas Kantelinen, Rolfe Kent, Dario Marianelli, Rachel Portman, Edward Shearmur, Carlo Siliotto, Frederic Talgorn, Fernando Velazquez or Gabriel Yared. You mean to tell me that they were all washing their hair the night came to choose a new composer?

- I don’t know if it’s a case of two composers having the exact same brainwave or a demand of Jason Blum, but I couldn’t help but notice that the scores for Benjamin Wallfisch’s The Invisible Man and Anthony Willis’s M3GAN both feature incredibly harsh, electronic tones for technology going out of control, which I suppose makes it an appropriate affectation, but it is hard to listen to outside of the film.

- Much like the previous year, scores for horror movies were generally a disappointing lot with the exception of Sam Ewing’s colorful work for Slotherhouse, about sorority girls trying to stop a killer sloth. You live long enough, anything will happen, I guess.

- Fernando Velasquez’s score for The Tenderness was pretty good, but the thing that struck me most was the very first cue: “la isla desierta”. Seriously, give it a listen and tell me that Shirley Walker hasn’t come back from the grave: