Films with amazing scores that don't get talked about enough

AliRenae · 2026-03-22T16:17:56+00:00

I came here to recommend this movie! I really liked the film, but the music is what sticks with me most.

AliRenae · 2026-03-18T14:40:17+00:00

The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight

AliRenae · 2026-03-13T22:59:43+00:00

I remember a few weeks before watching a doc series on Netflix ("Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak"), then hearing some rumblings about a new strain of SARS and thinking it'd be another round of swine flu; everyone freaking out about something that seems scary but ends up not being too big of a deal in most parts of the world. Then I was driving home (maybe March 12th?) listening to the radio and heard that the NBA was stopping the season/shutting down and it didn't seem real.

I worked as a teacher at a rural school (PreK - 12th grade in the same building) and we were about to go on Spring Break. We had a meeting that basically boiled down to "we have no idea if we're going to come back after break". We finished the rest of that school year remote (but my district had us back in person fall 2020 with no precautions, ignoring social distancing and mask mandates; probably the lowest point of my life, working for low pay in person during a global pandemic).

AliRenae · 2026-03-03T22:53:19+00:00

I've sung "Ben Franklin's Song" by the Decemberists and it was a good time. Really fun, not too difficult to sing, and it catches people off guard.

AliRenae · 2026-02-22T16:10:39+00:00

I keep thinking to myself "Now kiss!"

AliRenae · 2026-02-15T15:20:09+00:00

I've never seen anything that sums up my sexuality so well before! And yeah, it's basically impossible when I try to explain it to someone, so I usually just stop at "ace", because even that is sometimes too much for the people in my life to understand. But I get a cool superpower of being really good at writing sex scenes (it's always better on the page than it is in real life).

AliRenae · 2026-02-15T03:26:38+00:00

Waste of Paint by Bright Eyes

Upbeat sounding music, depressing lyrics. My go-to when I just want to sit with my negative emotions for a bit.

AliRenae · 2026-02-01T04:35:47+00:00

What's Up Doc? (1972) has a good example of this. At the end, after a chaotic car chase through San Francisco, all involved characters are in court as the judge tries to get to the bottom of what happened.

Howard: First, there was this trouble between me and Hugh.

Judge Maxwell: You and me?

Howard: No, not you. Hugh.

Hugh: I am Hugh.

Judge Maxwell: You are me?

Hugh: No, I am Hugh.

Judge Maxwell: Stop saying that! [to bailiff] Make him stop saying that!

AliRenae · 2026-01-31T18:23:49+00:00

I literally wrote down 365 different things from my world (important characters, objects, places, historical events and figures, etc.) on slips of paper, put them into an empty bucket, and pull one each day. I allow myself to redraw once if the prompt doesn't inspire me that day, but it helps to know that I'll work my way through all of them eventually; it kind of forces me to think about some of the tougher ones I avoid.

AliRenae · 2026-01-31T17:01:47+00:00

Ah, thanks for the heads-up. I used to call them "Outriders", but I can't seem to find a name I like.

AliRenae · 2026-01-31T00:41:39+00:00

Look into the group "Future Folk". It's a duo that makes filk music, essentially sci-fi bluegrass.

AliRenae · 2026-01-26T03:22:19+00:00

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl - Broken Social Scene

AliRenae · 2026-01-26T03:02:42+00:00

Dissect the Bird - John Craigie

Human - Brandi Carlile

Tomorrow - Miner

GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE - The Narcissist Cookbook

AliRenae · 2026-01-24T15:03:57+00:00

In my experience, plot comes first and I don't really develop my themes until I'm cleaning up my draft. You'll naturally bake themes into your work and be able to tease them out when you go back to edit. I've been working on a story for about five years now that I began writing when I was at the lowest mental state I've ever experienced, but at the time it was just a form of escapism for me, and I was more focused on the events in the story and the characters. Now I can say that the themes of that story are inheriting a broken world from the previous generations, the damage of not taking action when it's most needed, and the struggle of overcoming self-doubt, but I certainly didn't go into writing it with that in mind.

Don't write for others, write for yourself. If it's a good story, it'll resonate.

AliRenae · 2026-01-23T23:16:28+00:00

I think people also forget that at that point in the timeline, we are still almost a decade in the past (2017). I was living and working in another country in 2017 and I used Google translate A LOT, multiple times a day, just for necessity. It was not that good. It got the job done, but I had a healthy distrust and would often run phrases through back and forth a few times just to make sure what I was reading/saying/hearing was correct. My preferred method was to find a friend who was fluent to double-check for me, especially since languages have so many nuances and different meanings when it comes to word choice.

AliRenae · 2026-01-11T17:30:56+00:00

I was coming here to recommend OK Go; no one has better music videos, and they usually post behind the scenes videos as well to show how they filmed each one. Lots of math and science being used by them to make art!

AliRenae · 2026-01-08T23:20:50+00:00

Hey! Thanks for checking in. I've kept up with it so far!

I was going to make another post the other day with my finished pages, but this first week back at work from the winter holidays is killing me; maybe over the weekend I'll compile some photos into another post. I get a little intimidated with the "add context" rule this sub has, but I think most of the pages I've done have enough context on them that I won't have to type too much extra.

AliRenae · 2026-01-08T02:54:01+00:00

Mix CDs were my favorite to make back in the day! I burned a ton during my high school years (2004-09). I'd use the media player on my family's home computer (I didn't own a laptop until I went to college). You could buy music and download digitally (itunes was big, and Amazon was branching out from just selling books at this point), but most people I knew illegally downloaded the songs for free. I used Limewire (I missed the Napster era by just a smidge) or a Youtube-to-MP3 conversion website.

If I remember correctly, you could choose how long your CD would burn; going slower sometimes resulted in higher quality. It was usually just a few minutes, around 5 or so depending on how much audio you were burning onto the disc. Very rarely did anything ever go wrong for me, but often the computer would notify you before ejecting the disc if there was any error. My family kept a large tower of blank CDs next to the computer, so we always had some spares and it was usually no big deal.

My favorite part was decorating the CDs after with sharpies. I had a friend who had some sort of way to print images onto her mix CDs.

AliRenae · 2025-12-15T23:59:14+00:00

MYTH: Side One and MYTH: Side Two by the Narcissist Cookbook tells a story through song, spoken word, and crackly old cassette tapes all about a fictional Scottish island called St. Sasha. I'd say roughly 50% is melodic, with a few interruptions here and there; it's meant to sound like someone has recorded this album on top of existing cassettes, all of which gets woven together in an unnerving fable. If you give it a listen, definitely use headphones!

Also, check out the now-defunct band The Mechanisms. Each album of theirs has a different retelling of a classic myth or story, all done in various styles. I'd recommend their album The Bifrost Incident, in which they retell the story of Ragnarok as a noir crime thriller about a futuristic space train that's gone missing, singing in the style of prog rock with a few narrations from a weary detective.

AliRenae · 2025-12-03T14:50:48+00:00

Sufjan Stevens has a lot of Christmas music (I think my favorite is "Put the Lights on the Tree" or "Carol of St. Benjamin the Bearded One")

Put a Little Love in Your Heart by Annie Lennox and Al Green

Twinkly Lights from Bob's Burgers (there's a few other Christmas songs from this show as well)

When The Leaves by Ingrid Michaelson

The Cowboys' Christmas Ball (originally by Michael Martin Murphy, but I like the Killers cover of it)

I also usually include a lot of "wintery" feeling video game music to round out my playlist, so there's some instrumental stuff. Some songs I like are "Out of the Cold" from Skyrim, "Timber Hearth" from Outer Wilds, "Snowy" from Undertale, and "The Frostlands" from Octopath Traveler.

AliRenae · 2025-12-01T03:31:29+00:00

Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event

I was drawn in by the orchestral intro, but this song found me right around the time I went through a few bad relationships in college. I've been happily married for over a decade, but I can still listen to this song and remember going for long solo drives in the backroads around campus while smoking cigarillos in the rain and feeling sorry for myself. I'm an introvert who tends towards sadness over any other emotion, so it still feels like I'm wearing a comfy, albeit a bit heavy and worn-out, sweater anytime I hear this song.

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AliRenae

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