Tron Legacy, but that’s cheating as it’s essentially a Daft Punk music video.

The Matrix
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Forest Gump

• Pirates of the Caribbean (personally, At World’s End has the best, Hans Zimmer)
• The Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore)
• Gravity (Steven Price)
• Tron Legacy (Daft Punk)
• Moonlight (Nicholas Britell)
• Harry Potter (can only speak to the ones by John Williams)
• Braveheart (James Horner)
• The Matrix (Don Davis)

More general answer than you expected, but…

I really like when the sound design in movies makes sense - it “plays” in radio, gramophone…

For example “Black hole sun” cover in first episode of Westworld is just brilliant and caught me off guard (I didn’t know what it is about).

Birdman. Just drums. Really fucking good drums. Also they appear in the middle of one scene in an excellent way.

Also: not a movie, but Cowboy Bebop. Lots and lots of great tracks.

• Spawn
• Baby Driver
• Garden State
• the Lord of the Rings trilogy

The Blues Brothers - it’s stringing together performances from famous musicians, and the soundtrack was successful as an album in its own right.

• Ray Charles
• James Brown
• Aretha Franklin
• Cab Galloway
• etc.

The Lord of the Rings

This is Howard Shore’s Magnum opus. It’s what distinguishes this movie as more than just a great adaptation. His use of themes to represent not only races and kingdoms but characters, objects (like the One Ring, of course), and even concepts is a level above most movie soundtracks. There are even elements of storytelling through the music!

For example, the first time we hear the theme for Gondor is when Boromir is in Rivendell. Since he’s more or less alone, the theme is played by a single French Horn in a somber (almost tragic) style. In Return of the King, we see Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, in all its glory, and so the full orchestra plays the theme.

One more: As the Fellowship begins to break down, so too does the theme. We go from heroic phrases to shorter, interrupted instances. There’s a book about the soundtrack written by Doug Adams. I highly recommend it if you’re interested!

Can’t believe no-one mentioned The Crow…

Dazed and Confused

Reservoir Dogs, O Brother Where Art Though, Blues Brothers, From Dusk til Dawn,

• The Village

• O Brother Where Art Thou

• Amélie

• Pride and Prejudice

• Shutter Island

to name a few.

I’m going to reframe this as who I think the best composers are:

Bernard Hermann, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, etc.

John Williams, E.T., Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc.

Akira Ifukube, most of the Shōwa era Godzilla movies

Shiro Shigasu, Evangelion, Shin Godzilla

As far as new work, I’m partial to Scott Stafford on Ultraman Rising. It came out on Netflix this past June and I was really surprised how good that movie and soundtrack were.

I know you said movies, but a soundtrack for a show I’m hooked on currently is Legion (FX/Marvel, on Hulu). The whole entire show has an amazing cast to begin with, but Jeff Russo (Fargo, Star Trek Discovery, more) and Noah Hawley put together one hell of a score. I highly recommend it and the show.

A few not listed:

• The Crow
• Empire Records
• Leaving Las Vegas
• Get Shorty
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• Pulp Fiction (listed elsewhere)