...of Silverado isn't too shabby.

Every track a winner

And this sets the template for all spooky films since:

Particularly American Beauty, the main theme to the Shawshank Redemption and Meet Joe Black. I'd love to find a compilation of his compositions but haven't had any luck so far. Does anyone know of one?

Also got a mega fondness for Craig Armstrong who, for me, does for Glasgow without words what the Blue Nile do with them.

I've had a lifelong love affair with his works, being a Star Wars kid and all. They're normally big and bold, sometimes cheesy, old fashioned and interchangeable. But they're also almost always memorable, big themes that stick in my head. If I want to relax and switch off my mind they're the things that I listen to. Star Wars, Jaws, ET, the Indiana Jones series, Superman, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter - I bet if pushed most people would know what they sound like. Then there's others like Memories Of A Geisha, The Accidental Tourist, JFK, Born On The Fourth Of July, Schindler's List, The Terminal; all of which are less obvious, quite quirky.

I'm pretty fond of Danny Elfman too. And while they're not scores and mostly compilations I love the soundtracks to Sophia Coppola's films, especially Lost In Translation. Oh and Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, which has a lovely soundtrack.

Two that come to mind: Both of them war movies. I like the Patrick Doyle soundtrack for Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, and the soundtrack for Glory (an American civil war movie) by James Horner.

For a modern soundtrack (of collected songs) it's hard to beat the soundtrack for Grosse Pointe Blank - a comedy about a professional hitman who has a crisis of conscience and goes back to Detroit for his 10th high school reunion. Funny movie, great music. It's got the Violent Femmes, the Clash, David Bowie and Queen, English Beat, Guns N Roses, Jam, and Pete Townshend, etc.

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It has to be Morricone's The Good/ Bad/ Ugly soundtrack. I still get goosebumps – especially from the last scene.

(Music starts at 3:02)

I'm also a sucker for John Williams' Long Goodbye magic.

The credits version starts at 4:41, but by then we've already heard two other arrangements. Might as well watch the movie while you're there....

My favourite John Barry piece. And he wrote some classics...

The theme played over the opening credits of 'Hamburger Hill' and reprised later during yet another futile assault on the hill.

The Godfather!

watched death in venice again recently and prompted me to buy the soundtrack .A Hepworthian 32 minutes and the Mahler seems as if it was scored for the film

jack nitzche 's finest hour

a wonderfully diverse soundtrack and this is serene

Once Upon A Time In The West is probably my favourite but gets featured quite a lot on this site as the best film intro ever, so I'll go for this....

Also a mention for Ry Cooder. Paris Texas is probably the most famous but I'll go for this instead...

Brilliant soundtrack. Joe Strummer scores, stuffed with 80s alternatives and pop classics.

The Harder They Come, also brilliant:

And last, but not least, Singles - the classic of my youth. Love this Chris Cornell song. Where did it all go wrong Chris?

I really like Vladimir Cosma's soundtrack to Jean-Jacques Beneix's film Diva, because it features Cosma's 'Sentimental Walk', the best Satie pastiche ever written, played when Jules and Cynthia walk around Paris at first light.

Not the liveliest affair, but I've always liked this very much

how about Betty Blue, Wild at Heart, Moon & Natural Born Killers?

All ace.

One From The Heart - Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle. Terrible movie, sublime soundtrack.

never seems to get the credit he deserves. The music he scored for the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski are sublime:

Also, really enjoying the score Shostakovich made for the little-known Russian film The Gadfly although it's main them Romance was also used later as the them for Reilly, Ace of Spies. I especially love this version of the prelude from the film:

Also, agree with the OP - Wonderland is wonderful :)

Also have a weakness for Morricone. One of his lesser known but no less beautiful pieces, from Malena:

.. obviously totally biased, but for me the Vanishing Point soundtrack is quite simply the best I've heard. Long since deleted - last time I looked reissue CD's were £30 or more & original LP's double that.

Cracking film too - but rarely on TV, must have been released on DVD at somepoint though. As an aside the film also inspired the Primal Scream LP of the same name.

This one of my favourites ...

Cronica da Casa Assassinada which are available on his 1972 album Jobim.

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There's a repeated theme throughout on the film, sometimes just played on the piano, sometimes building to the full orchestra, which made me shiver the first time I heard it, and still makes me uneasy now, even though I adore the film, and have watched it many times.

In one scene, after rehearsals for the play, someone starts playing the music on the piano in the room, and David Nivens character drifts away, until he wakes on the "stairway to heaven" with Marius Goring's "Conductor".

Oh dear, think I'll have to watch it again now...

a favourite western

a favourite Tarantino

a favourite gangster movie

Ulysees' Gaze and Eternity And A Day.

Both on the ECM label, both variations on a theme, both just beautiful.

... there's a lot of great stuff here. I think it is is worth applauding that Bernard Herrmann, after decades of ridiculously good work with strings and harps in the grand old melodramatic style, produced something as skin-crawlingly unforgettable as the score for Taxi Driver. (Thanks, Zanti.)

But does anyone have any recommendations for British composers? I love Roy Budd's music for Get Carter, and who doesn't bend the knee to Laurie Johnson, but I suspect there is a whole world of sixties and seventies UK soundtrack work that I just don't know about. Any links or suggestions?

Here's 1981 Mercury shortlistees The Human League with a glimpse of Get Carter: http://bit.ly/qxqz7J

There is also this gem from Messrs Cave & Ellis;

Peter Weir will always a small place in my heart for this movie in particular, although his oeuvre is just fantastic.

TYOLD had the never-lovelier Sigourney Weaver.
A great score by Maurice Jarre:

And L'Enfant, by Vangelis. It fit SO perfectly in the movie, and it still generates a Pavlovian reaction in me whenever I hear it:

Amelie. I love a bit of Yann Tiersen.

Very good call on Singles and Midnight Cowboy.

IMHO, just about the most stirring & memorable movie theme ever.

The Magnificent Seven.

Avant-Garde funk classic

and a personal favourite, from Hal Hartley's film Trust composed by himself under the pseudonym Ned Rifle...a tad New Ordery...

John Barry's 'The Knack'
'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush'
'Up The Junction'

Trouble Man soundtrack

T Plays It Cool

Life Is A Gamble

Trouble Man

ex-Curved Air, The Long Good Friday. Of course it's the main theme (and especially it's use at the end) rather than any incidental music but it's great crowd-pleasing stuff all round. Can't embed but easily checked out on YouTube. Also a vote for Bernard Hermann again but this time for North by North West.

Isaac Hayes - Shaft. I'll post the obvious bit...

Soundtrack - probably The Life Aquatic, for introducing me to the rather wonderful Seu Jorge. Best ever cover of Life on Mars

I've never seen Alex Cox's film 'Walker,' but by all accounts it's a bit of a turkey.

Joe Strummer's (mainly instrumental) soundtrack to the film, however, is quite beautiful. I rate it higher than "London Calling".

This is one of the few vocal tracks:

for the soundtrack to 'Bullitt' gets my vote

Perhaps with criminal tendencies."

"Yes. That's a pretty fair appraisal. Sir."