Movies ruined by bad music

True Romance. This shit is almost unwatchable.

Also lols at Christian Slater taking every alterna-dude cool guy role in the 90s and still emerging with no hipster cred

Heathers - high school rebel
Gleaming The Cube - skateboarder
Pump Up The Volume - pirate radio DJ
True Romance - comic book store employee
Interview With The Vampire - vampire interviewer

Zinade: A 21st Century Portrait - Mogwai. It's also ruined by being too long.

^^^ crazy talk

Which part?

I get that it's as long as it is for conceptual reasons (also that it's not very long), but I feel like after 40 minutes or so, the movie just sort of plays out.

that sounds like a movie ruined by bad movie.

Stage Beauty (2004) had such an overbearing score I could not pay attention to the events on screen. I've no idea whether the film is good or not, I think I turned it off about an hour in and sold it back to the used DVD shop.

fucking True Romance has bad fake Elvis songs and like hokey fake Steve Reich marimba bullshit for tension building. And "White Wedding" for the wedding scene... I can't watch this anymore.

its fake carl orff

hahaha "Vampire interviewer"

iirc the hokey fake Steve Reich marima stuff from True Romance was stolen from/an homage to/rip-off from Badlands.

I hated everything about True Romance.

*******JUNO!!********!!

^was expecting this

I don't really mind that Moldy Peaches stuff, but good God, far too much of it. Also, they kept talking about how the character liked lots of old punk, yet there was none of that to be heard.

yes, FUCKING WELL ********!!*!**!* JUNO **************!!*&!**!**!*!

Juno: IS THIS IT?!?! (the soundtrack was supposed to be good, but it wasn't even that noticeable)

another one: The Mark of Cain, though that one was just a big failure anyway.

also: Hal Hartley to thread :) some reaaally strange MIDI-soundtracks there. It even works sometimes, but in his recent work, oh boy...

Any decent movie with a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.

koyaanisqatsi

"Any decent movie with a Tangerine Dream soundtrack."

^---Sacrilege.

Well, to clarify, I like TD's music, but put it to some eighties horror film, it's just wrong sounding. Maybe that's sacrilege too!

^^^Strange Behaviour?

Incidentally, if anyone has the music to that film please to upload.

I don't like many movies where there is music all the way through (unless its Koyaanisqatsi or something). Some kids movies are almost unwatchable because of this and it seems to have got worse recently.

Timecode suffers from a dreadful M. Le Sting style jazz score, totally undercutting the cinema verite thing it otherwise is trying for.

Well, to clarify, I like TD's music, but put it to some eighties horror film, it's just wrong sounding.

Is it the music or the 80s? I would have thought that Zeit-era Tangerine Dream would have been perfect for the spooky foreboding bits of horror films. I mean proper horror, not woaaah! slasher films, mind.

only one i can think of is spike lee's "clockers," which isn't ruined so much by bad music selection (though there are some wtf choices) but by the music being mixed really loud against dialogue and constantly running through the whole movie with no breaks

Stage Beauty (2004) had such an overbearing score I could not pay attention to the events on screen. I've no idea whether the film is good or not, I think I turned it off about an hour in and sold it back to the used DVD shop.

― derelict, Friday, January 2, 2009 12:37 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if orchestral scores are fair game here and we're not just talking about bad/obnoxious pop music soundtracks, I've never had my enjoyment of a movie ruined by music so much as in Miracle At St. Anna.

haha xpost to another Spike Lee joint

Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper pwns this thread.

Zeit era TD would be awesome for certain films, it's def the 80's ness of the movies they scored that
leaves a bad taste.

Risky Business was on tv a couple of days ago and it (film and music) was hair raising.

I wonder if they recorded any of their score for 2001.

I would say hearing Chris Cornell's Audioslave stuff in both Collateral and Miami Vice ruined those films, or at least created a massive sticking point for the former. But upon rewatching, they are oddly fitting, as there is very little that truly personifies (angsty) hyper-masculinity quite like Cornell's voice.

Tangerine Dream soundtrack to 80s horror flick The Keep is awesome, both in the movie and on its own. Never understood the dislike of TD's 80s film scores.

Dislike the Phillip Glass score for Tod Browning's Dracula. Nice music, but there's little connection between the movement of the music and what's happening onscreen, as though he's unwilling to subordinate himself to the film.

Was also (mildly) annoyed by the Steve Reich score for The Dying Gaul, which I saw last week. Movie flirts with overstylized pretention. Soundtrack pushes it over the edge. Could have used something a bit more anonymous.

the music was the least of miracle at st. anna's problems!

my answer is apollo 13

South Park

Time After Time, the M. McDowell as HG Wells travels to 1979 to nab Jack The Ripper and bone Mary Steenburgen movie, has terrible music. The movie still completely rules, though.

Dude on a Wire

apocalypse now. synthesisers all over.

Yeah the music in Man On A Wire was sucky and distracting

you mean Michael Nyman's scores to 80s Peter Greenaway films?

every Spike Lee movie ever

you mean Michael Nyman's scores to 80s Peter Greenaway films?

― dan selzer

pistols at dawn

music ruined by bad movies

I love Michael Nyman AND Peter Greenaway, I was responding to the Man on a Wire mention. Almost the entire score is taken from A Zed and Two Naughts and maybe some others.

The Draughtsman's Contract also.

i remembered another one, quite a classic example. Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker has a really weird, sometimes even funky soundtrack by Quincy Jones. (the movie is about an old Jew, traumatized by war, of course)

metropolis w/ that crappy 70s soundtrack
Dead Man w/ Neil Young guitar noodling'

and you wrong about PUTV x99999999999

Dead Man w/ Neil Young guitar noodling'

good call. still liked the movie too, heck, I usually luv Neil Young, but this worked for like 5 minutes. Lazy Neil.

no.

metropolis w/ that crappy 70s soundtrack

It was the 80s, and it worked fine with the horribly tinted print it played with.

I think I might still have the LP somewhere - my mom gave me a bad VHS and the album so I could "recreate the experience."

I remember thinking that Scarface had a pretty horrible soundtrack when I first saw it. But it's been a while.

"i remembered another one, quite a classic example. Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker has a really weird, sometimes even funky soundtrack by Quincy Jones. (the movie is about an old Jew, traumatized by war, of course)"

1) That music is not bad.

2) It doesn't ruin the movie.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg. So gorgeous. Amazing colors and choreography. But the songs are just lame.

scarface. wtf. thread of rong.

Killing Fields (according to flatmate. I've not seen it in many a year)

dead man and there will be blood are like the only two flicks to use music well in the past however many years. so great. i wish the lp of the score was easily available.

My brother and I were watching Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World - not a great movie to begin with - and he pointed how absolutely awful the score is, especially during the action/suspense sequences. It's not clear that the music is ruining the movie or just symptomatic of its problems - there's no real suspense in the sequences (since they rely entirely on arbitrary complications and boneheaded screwups by the heroes or the dinosaurs), so all the music can do is leap and shuffle around trying to create the illusion of excitement. The bongos in particular get a real workout. Not John Williams's best day at the track.

Not bad...but WAY distracting: Glory. I watched it for the first time a couple of months ago (yes yes, lived in a cave, etc etc)...again, it's not that it's bad, but I'd forgotten about those scarily signposted scores, where the music is like a great big flashcard: "THESE ARE THE BRAVEST MEN YOU WILL EVER SEE, AND THEY ARE DYING BEFORE YOUR EYES: WEEP FOR THEM NOW!!!"

24's really bad. i know it's not movies, but bad like the way that jurassic park two sounds bad. you know there's one guy, like the guy on the seinfeld dvds, who flips out in his keyboard enclave making synthesised string blasts with sporadic touchpad marching band drums on top.

Vanishing Point. They could've ponied up for some real soul 'n' funk.

"i remembered another one, quite a classic example. Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker has a really weird, sometimes even funky soundtrack by Quincy Jones. (the movie is about an old Jew, traumatized by war, of course)"

1) That music is not bad.
no it isn't! but it doesn't work in the movie, for me

2) It doesn't ruin the movie.
maybe it doesn't, but with a different soundtrack it could've been a lot better.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059575/board/nest/15121805 (i didn't start the thread, but some interesting thoughts on the music there)

Background music in many movies is distracting and unnecessary imo, but I disagree with the Hal Hartley mention upthread - the "Kool Thing" dance in Simple Men is pretty awesome:

Also this thread makes me want to see The Pawnbroker again.

i said Hal Hartley's recent work, like 2001 No Such Thing and 2005 Girl From Monday. (compared to 1992 Simple Men)

(+ i was referring to the music he wrote himself, as Ned Rifle usually. The man does have a good taste for selecting music from other groups, like Bettie Serveert in Amateur)

Dan in Real Life

Return Of The Jedi

"Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper pwns this thread."

haha, i came here to say that. some of the worst music i've heard in my LIFE, let alone in a movie.

I'd forgotten about those scarily signposted scores, where the music is like a great big flashcard: "THESE ARE THE BRAVEST MEN YOU WILL EVER SEE, AND THEY ARE DYING BEFORE YOUR EYES: WEEP FOR THEM NOW!!!"

soooo many movies upfuck themselves for me in this regard, and i fully realize it's because i'm too sensitive to it but that's not enough to stop me shouting at the screen each time this "meaningful moment" music comes in

i don't have nearly the same problem with "here's something exciting!" or "watch out, impending scariness" but if "meaningful moment" music were banished forevermore i'd be elated (hopefully the comically bathetic oboe denoument could be included in this new, stringent regime)

"Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper pwns this thread."

haha, i came here to say that. some of the worst music i've heard in my LIFE, let alone in a movie.

A friend of mine who worked on that claimed the problem was that Schrader wanted some big name like Springsteen to do the soundtrack and when he couldn't get the budget for that he settled for second gazillionth best.

*******JUNO!!********!!

― Gudrun Brangwen, Friday, January 2, 2009 1:07 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This movie was ruined before the soundtrack was even put in place.