5. The Grand Budapest Hotel

Here’s where we see Desplat’s versatility. That he’s able to create two scores as wildly different as Godzilla and The Grand Budapest Hotel in the same year is insane. Desplat has composed the score for the past three Wes Anderson films in a row, and with The Grand Budapest Hotel he crafts an opulent, Eastern European-influenced piece of work that weaves in and out of the caper genre. Given that this is a Wes Anderson film, the music is delightfully playful, but the director goes darker than ever before in certain areas of the picture, which gives Desplat the opportunity to follow accordingly. It’s quite possibly the richest Anderson/Desplat collaboration to date, and it makes me hope this partnership never ends.

4. Gone Girl

Here’s another director/composer collaboration that offered up a departure from what came before. With Gone Girl, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross crafted quite possibly the funniest score of the year; a composition that mirrors the character arc of Rosamund Pike’s titular Amy Dunne by beginning in surprisingly traditional fashion (well, traditional for Reznor and Ross anyway) with sappy, melodic tones before taking a sinister turn at the film’s halfway point. It’s a score that’s in lock-step with Fincher’s satirical, darkly comic tone for the film itself, and it’s incredibly creepy to boot.

3. How to Train Your Dragon 2

With How to Train Your Dragon, composer John Powell created one of my favorite scores of the past decade, so my expectations for his work on the follow-up were high. Instead of simply relying on the success of what he did before, Powell dispenses with the first film’s themes in the opening sequence of How to Train Your Dragon 2 before moving on to new territory. It’s a score that’s as sweeping as it is intimate, drawing on traditional Celtic music but never relying on it too heavily. Powell uses choirs to chilling effect, evoking the grandness of the landscape while maintaining focus on the specific characters’ emotions, which is where the music really sings. The key to Powell’s genius is that he values emotion above all else, and that carries over into how the music accompanies the film itself, and results in an overwhelmingly emotional experience.

2. The Imitation Game

It feels like overkill to put Alexandre Desplat on here three times, but the guy is just that good—and I’d argue The Imitation Game might possibly be his best work to date. The propulsive, sweet, and melancholic score gives immediacy to this World War II drama about Alan Turing, a genius mathematician and code breaker who helped win the war but was persecuted for being a homosexual. It’s a simple score really, mostly piano and strings-driven, but Desplat has put together an unforgettable theme that almost feels like stepping inside Turing’s mind.

1. Interstellar

Quite possibly the most popular composer since John Williams, Hans Zimmer has been responsible for a great number of memorable themes and scores over the past few decades. His partnership with director Christopher Nolan has been fruitful, giving us the “BRAAM” of Inception and the massive chorales of The Dark Knight Rises, but for Nolan’s sci-fi epic Interstellar the two went to church to spectacular results. Zimmer’s unique, dreamlike score uses pipe organ to incredible effect, giving us something as majestic and emotional as what Nolan puts up on the screen. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve heard before, and when the score hits its climax through those booming IMAX speakers, it’s impossible not to be moved. This is the power of movie music.

Honorable Mentions: The Theory of Everything, The Homesman, Fury

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