Soundtrack New York

John Carpenter is a rarity among film directors in that he is also a composer who writes the musical scores for his movies as well. Carpenter's 1981 film Escape From New York was a kind of genre hybrid, a science-fiction crime thriller with suggestions of a spaghetti western thrown in. Set in a near future when Manhattan has been converted into a no-man's-land prison, the movie needed an appropriately futuristic soundtrack, and Carpenter came up with a score for synthesizer that he played with his sound designer Alan Howarth. Despite the instrumentation, however, the composer retained a style familiar from such earlier works as Halloween. He favored simple, repetitive keyboard figures, generally two per sequence, set in a fast-slow counterpoint. The Escape From New York score had a few changes of pace, notably a borrowing from Debussy and an ersatz Broadway show tune, "Everyone's Coming to New York" ("Shoot a cop with a gun/The Big Apple is plenty of fun"), but most of the music sounded like earlier Carpenter scores, similarly creating a tense, ominous tone much of the time.

Richard Gere is the aging romantic in love with the youthful Winona Ryder, except that while Gere is approaching the "autumn" of his life, Ryder's already there, suffering from a terminal disease. The heady situation has its grim moments, but the bittersweet mix of despair and euphoria is what much great art has always wrestled with. Here, it is presented sentimentally. The title track, arguably best performed by Lady Day, Billie Holiday, herself no stranger to life's troubles, is given a suitably smoky run-through by Yvonne Washington. Jennifer Page contributes "Beautiful," a lush pop ballad. But most of the soundtrack is handed over to the very capable Gabriel Yared, an Oscar Winner for his soundtrack to The English Patient. The Lebanese-born Yared draws on his own 25-plus years of scoring films to brilliantly build the drama to cathartic heights without sacrificing the quiet moments that match this romance with the season's explosion of color.

Georges Delerue's score to the cult favorite Joe Versus the Volcano beautifully captures the film's complicated mélange of romance, comedy, and suspense. His melodies are light but dramatic, bursting with spontaneity and invention. The "Love Theme" that weaves its way in and out of the onscreen narrative ranks among Delerue's most passionate and memorable pieces, its epic sweep articulated by outsized orchestration. Even more impressive is the climactic "The Storm and the Rescue," a glorious eruption of trombone, strings, and timpani.