Uncut

Bret Easton Ellis' second novel was very much of the '80s, but one of the many clever things Roger Avary's done with his pulsing movie adaptation is to catch the feel of that decade's music without slavishly nuzzling obvious nostalgia trends. The underlying score, by indie-flick stalwarts tomandandy (sic), is both inventive and unsettling. Around it are layered songs of a chic, shiny kind of darkness, borrowed from various eras: tone and temperature are more important here than timeliness.

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No self-disrespecting finger-snapping swinger should be without the music to Clooney's clever directorial debut. Suave as the fella himself, it kicks off with a song written by the movie's hero, Chuck Barris—or at least he claims he wrote it. Of course, he claims a lot of things. His shining pop moment, "Palisades Park" by Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon, is as kitsch as the night is long.

Bernard Herrmann. To any soundtrack devotee the name's sacred. From Psycho to Taxi Driver, his music made good movies great and great movies greater. Here he even caused a rubbish film to linger in the collective memory. Flying saucers and robots were '50s cinema staples, spawned by a real public fear of science (in the aftermath of the atomic bomb). Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi message movie (war is bad) would today look more hilarious than it does were it not for Herrmann's tonal and symmetrical score. Conducted by Joel McNeely, here it's been recorded in digital sound for the first time.

Yann Tiersen rose to the front rank of film composers with the irresistible Amelie, but he's keen to stress that he'd recorded for years prior to that. He's collaborated with The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, among others, and sells out the Royal Festival Hall in his own right. Goodbye Lenin!, directed by Wolfgang Becker, won awards at Berlin this spring, and Tiersen's score is a chest-swelling thing of beauty and a million violins. Actually, 17 violins—I've just checked. Yann himself plays piano, melodica and violin—so that makes 18. Claire Pichet is guest vocalist.

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