The Top 40 Movie Music Moments

Did your favourite make our countdown? Hear - and see - them all...

Jan 15th 2009

40. New Order - Ceremony


Marie Antoinette (2006)
Most costume drama directors can't go anywhere without trailing a 70-piece orchestra behind them. Not Sofia Coppola. For her corset-packed portrait of teenage-kicks queen Antoinette, she went with a contemporary selection of songs; the playlist highlight being New Order's classic Ceremony. Like the decadent party it soundtracks, Ceremony's an upbeat affair at first glance - but look closely at the lyrics: "Oh, I'll break them down, no mercy shown, Heaven knows, it's got to be this time, avenues all lined with trees, picture me and then you start watching..." and you'll see the seeds of a (French) revolution.
GET IT: Substance (London)

39. Geto Boys - Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster


Office Space (1999)
White boys get their strop on in Judge’s software-slave satire. First, Ron Livingston’s drop-out desk-monkey Peter Gibbons feels the good gangster vibrations as he decimates his work-space and smears fresh fish-guts on the ‘TPS’ report sheets. Next, he takes Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman) on a post-job field trip: to baseball-bat Hell’s own laser printer, “pc load letter” warnings and all, into stillness.
GET IT: Office Space: Original Soundtrack (Interscope – US import)
 
38. Johann Strauss - The Blue Danube


2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
In space, no-one can hear you waltz. A gliding shuttle is gently courted by a spinning space station in Kubrick's elegant docking sequence. The circular frolics of Strauss's graceful waltz transform the weightless meeting of two spacecraft into what Kubrick called "a sort of machine ballet". Given the film’s theme, it's also laced with sly irony: this delicious courtship dance rendered sterile by the soulless techno-sheen.
GET IT: Strauss Family: Marches, Polkas and Waltzes (London)

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Comments

    • chicks

      Jan 15th 2009, 13:57

      I think number one is spot on, personally. Would have put Fight the Power a few more numbers up though :)

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    • captainchod

      Jan 16th 2009, 9:33

      One that I love is in Kill Bill Vol 1 in the animated section where O-Ren's parents are killed. The bit where her mum is stabbed on the bed, and the music rises as the blood doplets pour down as rain. A moment of sheer brilliance.

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    • alowe

      Jan 16th 2009, 10:18

      Good shout. We also loved Tom Cruise's dance in Tropic Thunder - but couldn't find the vid anywhere.

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    • megageezer

      Jan 16th 2009, 12:55

      Apocalypse Now should have two entries - The Doors "The End" and the classical song in the Napalm bombing. Not the most pleasant but pretty epic

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    • badmofo

      Jan 16th 2009, 21:04

      I thought the song at the end of crash by coldplay should have been mentioned in the list or even the song at the end of donnie darko called mad world.

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    • geezo

      Jan 19th 2009, 5:43

      Agree witn many, but some a bit hard to reach...how about "Crying" from "Mulholland Drive"? Can't get much more visuauditory than that.

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    • jmorell

      Jan 20th 2009, 17:13

      What about a top 40 of songs that use samples from moves? There's some great ones out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVxK8z7zQsE from Ferris Bueller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIPfQ-HtYeM from Shaolin & Wu Tang and loads more.

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    • bionicruth

      Feb 4th 2009, 19:05

      If we are talking Star Wars then for me it is "The Asteroid Field" from Empire Strikes Back. It is my all time favourite piece of movie score because to me it is a musical adrenalin rush that fits perfectly with the scene. Pleased to see Shaun Of The Dead and Back To The Future so high up the list too!

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    • natzandtheratz

      Mar 12th 2009, 20:28

      What, nothing from 'The Graduate'? Shocking.

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    • elmo27

      Mar 20th 2009, 2:51

      I agree with geezo, "Crying" being left off is a travesty. And if you like "Under the Milky Way" in Donnie Darko then don't watch the director's cut; it gets relegated to a scene an hour earlier in the film in which it's being played over a car radio and is barely audible over the dialogue.

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    • Kelisha888

      Apr 17th 2009, 12:53

      Umm... With regard to "A Clockwork Orange"; that's not Beethoven's 9th. It's Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie." Great scene though.

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    • BillC

      Apr 23rd 2009, 5:00

      My favourite movie music moment of the last few years, is Rebekah del Rio miming to her own track, a Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison's "Crying" in the eerie theatre sequence from David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive"...it appears I'm not alone in that.

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    • Gladiatory2k

      Jul 20th 2009, 6:25

      I actually have 2. one is the Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans when Hawkeye and his kin chase down Maqua to the musical score. My favorite also comes from a Michael Mann Film, Manhunter as In-a-gadda-da-vida plays while the FBI is about to charge in after the tooth fairy. When William Petersen crashes through the glass during the crescendo, it is pure gold.

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    • maninacan

      Aug 22nd 2009, 23:04

      goodbye horses by q lazerous disturbing but unforgettable in silence of the lambs

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