Mark Kermode's top film scores of 2020
Discover which soundtracks made it into the top five from Scala Radio's Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode’s Film Show is on Scala Radio every Saturday between 1pm-3pm and across the year Mark has guided us through the film scoring process, marked special anniversaries, celebrated the release of new films and played some of the best film scores to date.
Listed below in reverse order are Mark Kermode's personal selection for the Top Five film scores of 2020.
5. 'Shirley' (music by Tamar-Kali)
Mark Kermode says: “Shirley's a very interesting film, it's like a fictionalised biography of Shirley Jackson, the author of The Haunting of Hill House. Played by Elisabeth Moss, it's a great performance and her character is very spiky, very difficult, and very, very edgy. The film sees reality and fiction blurring. It's got a very strange atmosphere to it and that atmosphere is absolutely captured by the score, which both lends an eeriness to the film but also draws us into the character.”
4. 'Da Five Bloods' (music by Terence Blanchard)
Mark Kermode says: “The film itself is a hybrid. On the one hand, it's a story about American Vietnam vets returning to the country in which they fought the American War, as they call it. But it's also an action adventure film about the search for buried treasure. The soundtrack uses bursts of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, which intertwines with Terence Blanchard's score. It's a really effective soundtrack, that works really well holding together a film which otherwise would be quite disparate.”
3. 'Rebecca' (music by Clint Mansell)
The soundtrack to this film got a bit of a kicking by critics being sniffy about the fact it was revisiting a classic. It’s Ben Wheatley's remake of Rebecca, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier.
Mark Kermode says: “Now, critics may have turned their noses up, but I found an awful lot to like in this movie, not least the wonderful score by Clint Mansell – I'm a huge Clint Mansell fan. We played his score for Out of Blue over and over again, when that film was out. Again, that was something that wasn't really appreciated by film critics, but what a great score it was.
The soundtrack that Clint Mansell does for Rebecca, I think really plays up the romance, the lushness, all the things that are in the Ben Wheatley version, also the intrigue and the strangeness that perhaps are different to the Hitchcock version.”
2. 'Clemency' (music by Kathryn Bostic)
If you're a regular listener to the show, you'll know that one of the things Mark really likes is an ambient score that mixes with the soundtrack of a film - not necessarily big staring tunes that you can hum or sing.
Mark Kermode says: “Clemency, which is a low key death row drama with terrific central performance by Alfre Woodard, required something special. I think that's what composer Kathryn Bostic gave it. It's a very claustrophobic environment, often very unsettling, and the soundtrack puts you right there in that environment.”
“It's a really beautiful, really disturbing, really atmospheric score, and it does what I think a film score should do – it tells the story of the film. There is also a really lovely bluesy song that features in the background in a bar scene that's in the middle of that score.”
1. Calm With Horses (music by Blanck Mass)
A wonderful electronic score by Blanck Mass, aka Benjamin John Power, for the movie Calm With Horses.
Mark Kermode says: “It's a very powerful drama. It has a wonderful central performance by Cosmo Jarvis. It's a film about people being torn apart by different allegiances and different loyalties. It’s a really great piece of work and what struck me when I first saw it was how much I was being drawn into it by the music.
The music really got under the skin of the characters, let us see the world through their eyes and let us experience the world as they experienced it. We played the score many times on my show on Scala Radio and I got in touch with Blanck Mass to say how much I liked it and to ask for some comments about the score. And I treasured my own personal copy of it.
If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, or to see the film, I advise you to do both. My favourite score of 2020 is Blanck Mass' score for Calm With Horses.”
When is Mark Kermode on Scala Radio?
For more movie music with Mark Kermode, listen to Scala Radio every Saturday from 1-3pm or listen again whenever you like on the free Scala Radio app.
How to get in touch with Mark Kermode at Scala Radio
Email kermode@scalaradio.co.uk. Follow @KermodeMovie on Twitter.