All this aside, this list will have both scores from films of 2014 or archival releases (from films made prior to 2014) released for the first time in 2014 or newly recorded.
Hans Zimmer - The Amazing Spider-Man 2
While most reviewers seem to be paying greater attention to Zimmer's Interstellar (which is good but not great, more "inter" than "stellar"?), his real payoff in 2014 was his Aaron Copland meets dubstep meets Tangerine Dream mix for Marc Webb's latest Spider-Man film. Though the movie its self was a narrative mess from two of the worst screenwriters in Hollywood and directed by a man who seems nothing but overwhelmed by a large-scale project, the film gets one thing very right and thats the *tone*. A big reason for this single success is the music, which has a youthful pop groove to it. Though the rap-whispering throughout tracks like "My Enemy" seem all at once to be experimental (good!) and out of place (bad!), other parts excel. The score really hits some beautiful marks with "I Need To Know" (probably my favorite track of the year), "You're That Spider-Guy" and (from the two disc collector's set only) "Cold War" where Zimmer veers closer to post-rock than he does his usual sounds. This is Zimmer being his most clever since The Dark Knight Rises (very underrated) or possibly as far back as The Last Samurai.
Michael Giacchino - Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes
In a lot of ways, Giacchino is a fan's composer. He not only grew up on all the nerd franchises that Generation X fans did but ended up taking up the franchise mantle from some of them. After the awful Burton POTA film already a decade old, the current more emotionally sensitive series seems to be going against the established grain of the previous franchise - no longer are the apes an angry race to enslave Mankind but simply a humanized new species. So out goes the thundering experimental sounds of Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman and in comes a much more harmonic and even gentle form of Ape score. And surprisingly with that major shift in tone - Giacchino's score is damn good. Almost running counterpoint to the 1968 original, the best parts of it are the quieter. "The Great Ape Processional" starts off as a rollicking moment of awe not out of place with his earlier John Carter score, before becoming a gentle rattle of almost Glass-like percussion. The End Credits promise a more harsh, muscular suite that wouldn't be entirely out of place in the original franchise (though some of the harmonies are a little too sweet for that. An observation, not a complaint).
Clint Mansell - Noah
Mansell continues a relationship with director Darren Aronofsky that could stand toe-to-toe with many of the great composer / director relationships in film. And while the films vary widely in their critical and public reception, the music is rarely anything but top form. Mansell fills a gap in film score between both classical and modern, both "serious" music and "pop". Few allow such crossover and even fewer within the realms of minimalism (serial music if you're Philip Glass). The score to Noah continues in the tradition to Mansell's masterpiece The Fountain, though this is a much wider epic in scale and motif. Sort of like a "big brother" in approach. The thing is Mansell's output (perhaps more than anyone else listed here) is not for everyone, so those that enjoy him will likely really enjoy the music and the rest will just as easily dismiss it readily. Its an "all or nothing" sort of affair, though those that dare wade in may find something richly rewarding and unlike music from the rest of the year.
Leonard Bernstein - On The Waterfront
Likely one of the most important film scores ever written (and Lenny's single contribution to the form), On The Waterfront is not only a movie I greatly enjoy but one that really affected me in terms to how I listened to music as a whole. Jazz was a revolutionary concept for a filmscore at the time - I believe only Alex North and Elmer Bernstein (no relation) had used it at that point - and the form was considered somewhat scandalous and reactionary compared to more "common" forms of film score. But this newest release by Intrada is especially important since its the first time *ever* that the original score and not a rerecording has been made available to the public. Be it for a historical perspective or simply for enjoying truly great music, On The Waterfront is a must-have if you enjoy instrumental music, film score or just film its self.
Jerry Goldsmith - Star Trek: Nemesis Deluxe Edition
Jerry Goldsmith ended his career with three perfect assignments: a film with the director who got him his only Oscar (Richard Donner's Timeline), a film for a director he did some of his best remembered worked with (Joe Dante's Looney Toons: Back In Action) and the final entry in a franchise that made him famous (Star Trek Nemesis). And while some of the original complaints from 2002 are valid (I still hold blame to Varese overselling the score as "soaring to apocalyptic heights"), the score on the new two disc set closes the book on expanding all of the original and Berman era scores (We won't discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Abrams reboot here). And while some may complain that this set doesn't really give anything new outside of the great "Battle Stations" montage cue, its amazing to go back and compare what was considered only okay over a decade ago versus what is deemed acceptable today. The quality in the genre has taken a big beating as studios continue to brow-beat the audiences with recycled concepts; a valid complaint so often improperly attributed to the composers. And when one considers a wall-to-wall noise score from (Insert Name Here) to the wall-to-wall action score of Nemesis, well, proof and pudding and all that.
George Oldziey - Wing Commander
I'm putting this here solely as a matter of pride. Though Wing Commander is actually a computer game, the fact that eighteen years after the last major installment on PC we finally have a live orchestra playing the music is pretty damn impressive. Composer George Oldziey (who has since cut his teeth on several major motion pictures like Once Upon A Time In Mexico) got the ball rolling with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $42,000 (over a projected $35,000 budget) to have a live orchestra record a 43 minute album of music from Wing Commander 3, 4 and Prophecy. The result was an impressively assembled album with all the cues every WC fan has wanted to hear for almost twenty years. Backed with a nice choral accompaniment, if there was one album to get my stamp for "most personally satisfying" release of the year, this is it.
Shirley Walker & Co - Batman The Animated Series Vol 3 and Superman The Animated Series
If you haven't bought at least one of these two, I don't know why you even care about a list like this. The golden age of animated television may have started with the Disney Afternoon but it only grew into its own with the WB's cartoon series and spin-offs which were of a more adult flavor. Best described as full-blown film score and not simply television or kid's programming, the series composed by Shirley Walker and her scribes (three of which have gone on to form Dynamic Music Partners) are as diverse as the following names and words:
John Williams-styled leitmotif
Jazz
Action Score
Film Noir
Bernard Herrmann "cells" (congrats if you know what that means)
Aaron Copland Americana
Truthfully, there is more style and substance in these two sets than in some entire careers. The playing is by the best players in Hollywood and the arrangements and orchestrations are on par with anything (or anyone) else you can name. For pure dollar per pound, these are the best your money can buy.
John Powell - How To Train Your Dragon 2
Continuing on the point of animation, Powell's final filmscore before his sabbatical is one of the finest things he's ever written or, perhaps, even the best the animated genre has seen in over fifty years. Very few composers can outdo themselves on a sequel to critically acclaimed score and yet: here we are again. Like Williams's Empire Strikes Back or Temple Of Doom - Powell's HTTYD2 is everything the previous score was while also building on it and introducing new themes and variations. It is the single best evidence made in 2014 that the "old guard" approach to filmscore remains the best.
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