January 7th, 2008
7. Jonathan Richman, There's Something About Mary (1998)
The Farrelly brothers are regarded as pioneers of the gross-out comedy, but the secret to their success—something that unsavory facsimiles like Say It Isn't So and Tomcats never got—is that they're genuinely good-natured and whimsical at heart. Still, the Farrellys pulled off a tough balancing act with There's Something About Mary, which had to charm as a romantic comedy while offering extended lowbrow setpieces on natural "hair gel" and a guy getting his scrotum caught in a zipper. To that end, they did well to bring in Modern Lovers' Jonathan Richman as a one-man Greek chorus who pops in occasionally with his acoustic guitar to comment on the action. Typical of Richman, the songs are tongue-in-cheek and frequently hilarious, but they have a tone that gently serenades the romance, too, and makes the film's nastier bits go down that much easier.
8. Seu Jorge, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
Like Jonathan Richman in There's Something About Mary, Brazilian singer Seu Jorge drifts through Wes Anderson's tragicomic adventure as a one-man Greek chorus. Rather than commenting directly on the action, Jorge simply sings covers of David Bowie classics that don't really have anything to do with what's happening onscreen, but fit well anyway. Sometimes Jorge's Portuguese takes liberties with the lyrics: "Five Years" shifts from a tale of looming apocalypse to a tale of romantic longing and transoceanic travel. But Bowie didn't mind, telling cokemachineglow.com in 2006 that Jorge "paid equal tribute to both myself and [his] own formidable abilities."
9. Metallica, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders At Robin Hood Hills (1996)
As the music of Metallica plays throughout Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's stunning true-crime documentary, it serves multiple purposes, simultaneously setting an appropriately dark tone for its examination of a triple homicide and its aftermath, and establishing the culture clash that led to a shocking miscarriage of justice. After the gruesome murder and mutilation of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, a small community pinned the crime on a trio of teenage outcasts, alleging that they were carrying out a Satanic ritual. Berlinger and Sinofsky contend—here and in their follow-up, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations—that the "West Memphis Three" were convenient targets, railroaded through the system on a dubious confession coerced from a kid with a 74 IQ. Caught up in all the hysteria, their supposed ringleader, Damien Echols, was damned simply for standing out as a goth kid who dressed in black, wore his hair long, and listened to Metallica. The band's ironic presence on the Paradise Lost soundtrack blackens the mood and makes everyone culpable in this ongoing injustice.
10. Apocalyptica, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)
The empty lives of bored intellectual elites residing in the anonymous urban any-city of Neil LaBute's Your Friends & Neighbors are laid bare with practically zero music. The "soundtrack" here is mostly the long silences of eventless days spent pining for another start, far away from the friends and spouses who have stalled their long-ago dreams. But brief spurts of Metallica, performed by cello quartet Apocalyptica, frame the big picture. As the opening credits roll following a brief prologue, we hear the lower register of "Enter Sandman" as it's bowed with vigorous menace, setting the stage much like a pit orchestra would, announcing the approach of something grim. The metal band's sitar-based slow-burner "Wherever I May Roam" gets the cello treatment at the story's close, leaving the unraveled lives of the film's characters with an appropriate coda. (There's also some sporadic use of their version of "Welcome Home (Sanitarium).") Why Metallica in an understated talkie about sparring couples? And why Metallica as played by cellists from Finland? Maybe because beneath the thin veneer of social mores and our efforts to be polite, we're just masking the monster within us all—like classical battling with metal. Or maybe it just sounds cool.
11. AC/DC, Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Stephen King's lone directorial effort was never meant to be more than a loud, dopey movie about trucks crashing into stuff, and King underlined his intentions by filling the soundtrack with AC/DC's sublimely crude hard rock. The Aussie boogie-metal legends provide a couple of instrumental bridges and the thrilling new thudder "Who Made Who"—a song about men and machines, inspired by King's story of sentient vehicles enslaving their former masters—but most of King's AC/DC selections consist of well-known anthems like "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Hells Bells," and "For Those About To Rock." Because in the world of Maximum Overdrive, obviousness is a virtue.
12. Slayer, River's Edge (1986)
As if the image of a murdered teenage girl and her indifferent stoner boyfriend/killer weren't unnerving enough—"She was talking shit," the boyfriend helpfully explains—this grungy cult favorite ups the menace level with a soundtrack culled from specialty label Metal Blade. When a group of downscale suburban kids drive around and debate whether their loyalty is to their friend or to some higher moral law, the speed-metal riffage of Slayer blasts away on the car stereo, perhaps clouding their judgment. Or at least making it harder to hear themselves think.
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