The Daily Swarm

3. “Morvern Callar” (2002)
This spectacular film and its soundtrack never get enough props. Samantha Morton comes home to discover her live-in author boyfriend has committed suicide. He exits this mortal coil with a cryptic note that doesn’t explain his intentions, but does leave her a mixtape that becomes the oblique soundtrack for making sense of her now decimated life. He also leaves a novel which she appropriates and its potential kicks off a peripatetic and hedonistic voyage. The soundtrack, which includes a lot exquisitely disaffected and disembodied tracks by Aphex Twin, Can, former-Can founder Holger Czukay, Broadcast, Stereolab, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Boards of Canada, the Velvet Underground and many other achingly tasteful choices, acts as the aural fog and haze in which Morton wanders through struggling to find a larger life meaning. There’s a dreamlike, almost-hallucinogenic tone to the film and the abstract songs underpin this eerie mood. That final scene however, recontextualizing the Mamas & The Papas to haunting effect is incredible. No one’s quite made a film about losing oneself like this.

2.“Lost in Translation” (2003)
This isn’t actually meant as a criticism, but there are very few filmmakers on this list for whom the soundtrack is as integral a piece of the finished product as Sofia Coppola. She’s a director who focuses above all on mood and atmosphere, and neither “Virgin Suicides” or “Marie Antoinette” would be the same film without their music. The best example of this is “Lost in Translation” — on the page, a rather slight comedy, on the screen a heartbreaking travelogue/romance, almost entirely due to its shoegaze-fuelled, dreamlike soundtrack. My Bloody Valentine frontman Kevin Shields contributes the atmospheric score (as well as the band’s song “Sometimes”), and the song picks are sublime, from Phoenix’s electric “Too Young” to the unforgettable use of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.” Plus, Bill Murray’s version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” is surprisingly affecting.

1. “Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2” (2003, 2004)
Quentin Tarantino loves to boast how he would never trust a composer with scoring his film, but trust two of them he did on “Kill Bill 1 & 2”: Wu Tang Clan godhead the RZA to score part one and his buddy filmmaker (and accomplished musician) Robert Rodriguez to score part two. RZA‘s contribution didn’t surprise, but was another solid helping of hard beats and cold rhythms coated in kung-fu samples while Rodriguez’s take was more dusty, reverb soaked guitars straight outta Texas. Both worked fantastically well, but yes, “Kill Bill” is more well-known for all the music cues QT borrowed from past films he loved (including eight Ennio Morricone cuts from his favorite Spaghetti Westerns). Say what you will about Quentin — and lord knows we’ve complained once or twice — but the selection of cuts (Charlie Feathers, The Zombies, Isaac Hayes, Quincy Jones, Nancy Sinatra, Bernard Herrmann, Luis Bacalov, Neu!, Ike Turner, etc.) here and their use is staggeringly good. There might not be a better scene of music in the entire two parts however until the burial scene set to Morricone’s “L’Arena” from the 1978 Sergio Corbucci film, “Il Mercenario.” Deeply inspiring and stunning.
Also? How genius is Quentin for taking a Zamfir song (ostensibly the cheesy master of the pan flute) and making it the gorgeous conclusion to “Kill Bill Part 1.” To that day, it still gives us chills. Brilliant.