The 5 Coolest Movie Soundtracks

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1. Lost in Translation (2003)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_UGaEus53I&w=584&h=390]

As any movie by filmmaker Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation’s soundtrack plays within the movie like a needed and reasonable character. Between the main characters (Bob and Charlotte) boredom and the chaos of existentialism, the outstanding collaboration of Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine’s vocalist and guitarist) with his four Shoegaze (a 90s music genre) songs glue the silence and the desperation and the random scenes of the movie together; making it easier to see how every single take makes sense as an explanation and show of something completely abstract. It’s love and distance, here but there.

2. Psycho (1960)

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It’s not hard to imagine how much of an explosion this movie was when it came up in the early 60s. A movie that repulses clichés, that makes us all feel as a dirty voyeurs just by watching characters flee and watch other characters and have its thriller not by graphical images, but by the constant unsureness of the viewer. This movie is a complete masterpiece, not only in terms of filmmaking but definitely in music. As you watch this movie, is almost impossible not to be moved by its strong sense of music. Inspiring pretty much every single movie that came after (even comedies) with an example of how music can build a room of sensations, Alfred Hitchcock’s film is the Godfather of movie soundtracks.

3. Donnie Darko (2001)

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Donnie Darko is a movie as confusing as it’s full of hidden meanings. It’s so cool and dimensional that more than 10 years later, people are still devotedly discussing its story. Like a fog that engulfs bodies, this movie has a dark, mysterious atmosphere. Things aren’t plain scary, but they don’t just “exist” either. It feels like a nightmare that you feel bad once you wake up. Thankfully they made a soundtrack that beautifully translated its relative meanings, with Echo & The Bunnymen singing about a “killing moon” in the softest voice and all. It’s a go-to everytime you feel like seeing someone wearing a costume of a weird rabbit.

4. Christiane F. (1981)

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This is a German movie, about drugged kids in a particular time, however it’s timeless and anyone, even a virgin Christian kid can feel like relating somehow. Even it being a shocking movie with sharp and nonfiction scenes about kids getting too hard into drugs, this movie has such an untouchable level of coolness… It’s not about sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, but because of the lost void inside each character’s eyes: high or not, and how their bodies wander around just like their gazes. Of course having David Bowie all over this soundtrack didn’t make this movie any less cooler, making it a time capsule of his Berlin’s times that we all wished we had lived on. 

5. Fight Club

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If you want to be cool in every language, every group, every interpretation… Go Fight Club. A fulfilled movie in corporeal and mental ways, it grabs us without an explanation, makes us aroused by its rude ways, never apologize in when it puts us intact back in the ground and even makes us thank it at the end, especially because it plays Pixies’ “Where’s My Mind”, being the cherry at the top of the cake that makes us go: “Wow! Cool as fuck!” And there’s no better expression of coolness than just being blown away, just saying it like we just learned the language.