Five of these 15 movie scores will be nominated for an Oscar, but some are far more deserving than others.
In December, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the 15 film scores that would be moving forward in the 2019 Oscar race. The shortlist runs the gamut from mega-blockbusters like “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War,” to prestige holiday season releases like “First Man” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and mixes some of Hollywood’s most revered composers (Alan Silvestri, Alexandre Desplat) with major talents who are just starting to assert themselves in the movie world (Nicholas Britell, Ben Salisbury). On the morning of January 22, five of the 15 remaining suites will be nominated for Best Original Score, but some of the shortlisted efforts — it goes without saying — are more worthy of the honor than others.
Now that Oscar voting is open and the battle lines are being drawn, here are all 15 shortlisted scores ranked from worst to best.
15. “Avengers: Infinity War” (Alan Silvestri)
Alan Silvestri deserves real credit for sewing palpable signs of life into one of the busiest and most banal superhero movies ever made. While his score is muddled by the standard-issue Marvel bombast whenever Thanos enters the fray, many of the tracks in the first half of this mega-blockbuster feel like they’re genuinely attuned to some recognizable kind of human emotion. The tender flutes that float beneath “No More Surprises” capture what’s at stake better than any of the dialogue, while the sharp violin that cuts through “Undying Fidelity” grounds the imminent Infinity War in a palpable sense of love and longing.
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And then, as usual, the grumbling horns arrive to swallow those nice things in a thick shadow of noise, as Silvestri hopelessly scrambles to keep pace with the film’s orgiastic special effects. “Forge” is the sound of a talented composer trying to harmonize between 389 different heroes at once, and there isn’t a single note that stands out with any personality of its own. In a year when Marvel upped its game with “Black Panther” and finally recognized that music doesn’t have to be treated like a necessary evil, it would be inexcusable to nominate Silvestri’s tired “Infinity War” score.
14. “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (James Newton Howard)
James Newton Howard could have re-used the score for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” note-for-note and no one would have noticed. Given how similar “The Crimes of Grindelwald” sounds, he might have been wise to save himself the trouble. No disrespect to Howard (a titan of his field who currently has eight Oscar nominations to his name), but every single one of the “Harry Potter” scores was more enchanted and memorable than this.
13. “Mary Poppins Returns” (Marc Shaiman)
On the one hand, Marc Shaiman’s tingling, full-bodied score is one of the biggest reasons why “Mary Poppins Returns” is able to channel the magic of the original movie. On the other hand, Marc Shaiman’s prefab, slavishly nostalgic score is one of the biggest reasons why “Mary Poppins Returns” isn’t able to create any magic of its own. Shaiman is a skilled and deserving veteran with five Oscar nominations to his name, but his sixth would come at the expense of some far more interesting work.
12. “A Quiet Place” (Marco Beltrami)
No score worked harder this year, or was more instrumental to the effectiveness of the movie for which it was written. And while Marco Beltrami’s music really just needed to be loud in order to get the job done, it was also tender, and provided “A Quiet Place” with the bedrock of human feeling that it needed to anchor its many, many, many sudden jolts; a pro like Beltrami (nominated for “The 3:10 to Yuma” and “The Hurt Locker”) knows how to do the job without getting in his own way, and he knows how to make it look easy.