1. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1
2. Avatar: The Way of Water
3. God of War Ragnarök
4. Turning Red
5. The Batman
6. Jurassic World: Dominion
7. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
8. Ms. Marvel
9. Bullet Train
10. Strange World

Composer of the year: Michael Giacchino

My runner-up is Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. 1-5 got *****. The others got ****½.

My apologies to the other ****½ scores that didn’t make the cut: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Black Adam, Lightyear, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Interview with the Vampire Season 1, Super Furball Saves the Future / Supermarsu 2, and Top Gun: Maverick, the latter the year’s most improbable great score. Owing in part to the franchise imperatives that drive films and television these days, there are a lot of colons in the aforementioned 18 works. The proctology jokes almost tell themselves.

My top two are boring picks because many others like one or both of them, so I can at least take comfort that the rest of my list is a tad eclectic. Ragnarök was better than its predecessor. If you’d told me at the start of the year that my #4 pick would feature more new jack swing than any score in history has, I’d have said you were high. Dominion and Dumbledore are threequels that have to juggle an insane amount of legacy melodies, somewhat at the expense of their new themes, but their many strengths outweigh their weaknesses. Ms. Marvel is the only MCU score that can even be in the same conversation as Black Panther. I thought Wakanda Forever was the weirdest major score of the year, and then I heard Bullet Train. Watching Strange World helped a lot with understanding how it was one of the year's most dextrous scores when it came to varying its melodies to represent characters as well as story themes. Anything I could say about The Batman would run the risk of just being the same thing over and over and over.

The **** occupants of my top 20 are Legend of the Forest and Moon Knight.


2022 specialty releases
Lotta goodies. Spider-Man added solid material. The Godfather finally overhauled the wretched sound of its original album release. I’ve already raved here about Tomorrow Never Dies. How To Train Your Dragon 2 proved there perhaps is a way to improve a perfect score album. The Weather Man filled a notable gap in Zimmer’s discography. The last score of Miklós Rózsa’s career got a long overdue complete release. Mary, Queen of Scots turned out to be even better when heard in full. The L.A. Confidential and Matinee expansions both earned their scores another half star from me. Becket was a revelation, the best “I have no idea what this sounds like, but here goes” release of last year, though it took me until early 2023 to get around to listening to it.

But nothing can hold a candle to Intrada’s all-powerful expanded release of Willow (1988), which easily wins on the basis of the 11-minute stretch across Willow Captured, Arrival at Snow Camp, and The Sled Ride at the end of the first disc. The latter track’s back half is an unstoppable freight train of musical thrills. The release catapulted the score into my all-time #6 entry. I honestly don’t remember listening to anything else in the month of July.

And yes, I hate that I now have to specify the year thanks to the new, truly desultory Disney+ legacyquel series not even bothering to have a different name. Kasdan’s brother at least had the decency to do that on his Jumanji movies.

Almost the same note as last year: If the full set of Rózsa Polydor recordings (maybe my sole remaining “holy grail”) gets released in 2023, it wins the year. Game over. It’s in the rulebook.


The best older works I discovered in 2022
****½
1. Home (2015) - Lorne Balfe
2. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002) - Michiru Oshima
3. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) - Michiru Oshima
4. Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) - John Barry
5. Walkabout (1971) - John Barry
6. The Haunted Mansion (2003) - Mark Mancina
7. Presumed Innocent (1990) - John Williams
8. Zulu (1964) - John Barry
9. Only You (1994) - Rachel Portman
10. Toy Soldiers (1991) - Robert Folk

**** runners-up:
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) - Geoff Zanelli
- Kong: Skull Island (2017) - Henry Jackman
- Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) - Julian Nott, Rupert Gregson-Williams, Jim Dooley, Lorne Balfe & Alastair King; produced by Hans Zimmer
- And, to throw Riley a bone, Flyboys (2006) - Trevor Rabin

Not scores, but still great:
- Tapestry of Nations (1999) - Gavin Greenaway
- Dream & Variations (2007) - Don Harper

This is the third straight year I’ve decided to call out a score discovery that rated below 4.5 stars but provided at least one addictive track, with last year’s being the Western-infused romp The Bad Guys / Hit Me / Car Trouble / Flying High from Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the first instance being the groovy medieval jazz in the suites of The Monks of St. Thomas Affair from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Season 3 (RIP Gerald Fried). This year’s winner is Guns from The Rundown, which is about as badass as film music gets.

Full breakdown:
Newly heard scores - 227
- Part of MV/RC rundown - 188 (Zimmer 29, HGW 18, Jablonsky 17, Balfe 16, Rabin 15, Powell 12, Djawadi 10, Morris 9)
- Others - 39 (Jerry Goldsmith 5, Barry 3, Beltrami 3, Horner 3, Mancini 3, Oshima 3, Tyler 3, Waxman 2)

Catch-up on 2021 - 48, the best being Benedetta, Eternals, Fear Street Part Two, Spirit Untamed, and Succession S3

Expanded releases - 20, the best being The Godfather, HTTYD 2, Spider-Man, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Willow

Non-score works - 5 - Gavin Greenaway’s IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth and Tapestry of Nations, Elliot Goldenthal’s Fire Water Paper, Don Harper’s Dream & Variations, and Craig Armstrong’s The Edge of the Sea

Concert recordings - 2 - The Wings of a Film and Hans Zimmer: Live in Prague

Compilation re-recording - 1 - The Golden Age of Hollywood

Finally owned legitimately - 1 - Star Trek III


10 favorite tracks, in no particular order
- The “oh snap, is the track of the year out already?” wows of the Galadriel suite, the floor-shaking Numenor-centric duo of White Leaves and Sailing Into Dawn, the beguiling True Creation Requires Sacrifice, and the seductively haunting Where The Shadows Lie from The Rings of Power (had to limit myself to five).

- The relentless The Batman and the whispers of John Barry in Catwoman from The Batman.

- Suite, Suite Dino Revenge from Jurassic World: Dominion, mainly due to that out-of-nowhere 90s Goldsmith arrangement of the new Satler / Grant love theme.

- The jazzy, elegant opening track from The Outfit.

- The dazzling Make or Brake from Bullet Train.

The next batch: The thrilling thematic summary in the Main Titles from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; the glorious build-up in Wyvern Rescue and the emotional explosion in He Sought to Kill, I Sought to Protect from Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore; the giddy nonsense of The Aunties and the absurd synthesis of traditional music, boy bands, and beatboxing in Pandas Unite / Nobody Like U (Reprise) from Turning Red; the bustling Main Title Theme from The Gilded Age Season 1; the cultural fusion in the Ms. Marvel Suite and the gorgeous tension in Answered Prayer from Ms. Marvel; the moving End Titles from Notre-Dame on Fire; and Lorne Balfe’s energetic take on the Top Gun Anthem for the end credits of Top Gun Maverick.

The next batch: The bombastic Getting Through from Doctor Strange; the mystical and playful Giantess of Ironwood from God of War Ragnarök; the lovely Payakan and the rampaging Na’vi Attack from Avatar: The Way of Water; the stylish Tentomushi from Bullet Train; the abstract ecclesiastical beauty of The Banished Angel and the powerful Love Across Worlds from His Dark Materials Season 3; the striking Constellation and the awe-inspiring Welcome Travelers from Moon Knight; and John Williams’ marvelous Obi-Wan theme from Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Honorable mention: One of my favorite tracks from The Gilded Age Season 1 which astonishingly didn’t make the album was a piece from the season finale that started as source music for a dance, evolved into full score, and dramatically ended right as a carriage door slammed.


Every other score I gave a rating to
Other **** - Babylon, DC League of Super-Pets, Emily, The English, Enola Holmes 2, The Fabelmans, 5,000 Blankets, The Gilded Age Season 1, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, His Dark Materials Series 3, The Lost King, Luck, My Father’s Dragon, Notre-Dame on Fire / Notre-Dame brûle, Outlander Season 6, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Polar Bear, Slumberland, The 13 Lords of the Shogun / Kamakuradono no 13-nin, Violent Night, Wednesday Season 1, and The Woman King

***½ (round up to 4) - Amsterdam, Blueback, Death on the Nile, Frozen Planet II, Ghost Book / Ghost Book Obakezukan, Nope, The Outfit, Prehistoric Planet, The Railway Children Return, Thor: Love and Thunder, Ticket to Paradise, and The Time of Secrets / Le temps des secrets

***½ (round down to 3) - The Book of Boba Fett, Devotion, The Faith of the Three Kingdoms, The Gray Man, Petra de San José, Redeeming Love, The Sea Beast, See How They Run, The Serpent Queen Season 1, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Thai Cave Rescue, Till, and Werewolf by Night

*** - Ambulance, The Bad Guys, 1883, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, The King's Daughter, The Last Warrior: Emissary of Darkness / Posledniy bogatyr 3, The Legend of Vox Machina Season 1, The Lost City, The Witcher: Blood Origin, and Wolf

Eh - Ice Age: Scrat Tales

Meh - Dying Light 2 Stay Human, Man vs. Bee

Oh dear - Thankfully nothing this year!


One other random thought
I truly despised the Halo series on Paramount+. It was maybe the worst season I’ve ever watched from start to finish, and I’ve seen Fargo season 4! But it is surprising that Sean Callery’s music still hasn’t received an album release, especially since the streamer’s YouTube channel featured a making-of video with the composer.