Diegetic or non-diegetic music, original music or not, anything goes here. Most of these are feature-length movies that are not Musicals, but some are, and there's at least one short cartoon here. Music is included here not just because of what it adds to the plot - sometimes the music is just a song I'd never heard or forgot about that I heard in a movie.
- Shaft (1971)
Opening credits "Theme from Shaft" by Isaac Hayes is a perfect introduction to John Shaft.
- A Fantastic Woman (2017)
Marina (Daniela Vega) is with her singing instructor when she starts singing an operatic piece by Vivaldi "Sposa son disprezzata." We hear her continue to sing as we see her outside walking down a windy street directly into the wind. The wind picks up strength until it's so strong it leaves her standing leaning forward motionless.
- Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
“He Needs Me - ” Shelley Duvall, heard as Barry travels to Hawaii to meet a girl.
- Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
Title song heard in a nightclub while dancing, sung by Juliette Greco.
- Flashdance (1983)
The final dance to best song Oscar-winning "What a Feeling" by Irene Cara is incredibly cheesy, but unforgettable. Oh, I wish I could forget it.
- Dancer in the Dark (1995 TV Movie)
Bjork and Peter Stormare sing "I've Seen it All" at the train tracks while the train provides the percussion.
- Diva (1981)
There is lots of good music in this film, including the aria sung by Wilhelmenia Fernandez, "La Wally" and the beautiful scene with no dialogue only the piano piece "Promenade Sentimentale" by Vladimir Cosma.
Throughout the movie we see a thug with an earpiece listening to music we never hear but because of his nasty attitude and the fact that he is young and looks like a punk rocker, we are led to assume he's listening to rock music or something loud and angry. Eventually his earpiece falls out and we hear that he is listening to conservative French accordion music.
- Sound of Noise (2010)
Near the beginning, we see a van with a woman driving it. We hear someone playing rock style drums. The woman starts a metronome and puts it on the dash then we see that the drummer is playing in the back of the van. The woman shifts gears in time to the drums and the noise of the engine and the tires on the road and center dividers adds to the music until it is interrupted by a police siren from a motorcycle that is chasing them. It's a good introduction to what is to come when a group of six drummers unleash a work of musical terrorism called "Music for One City and 6 Drummers" which includes playing hospital equipment and a human body in an operating room, taking over a bank to make music with adding machines and a paper shredder destroying piles of money, and bulldozers and jackhammers tearing up the front of a concert hall.
- L.A. Story (1991)
The opening credits montage with Charles Trenet singing "La Mer." This song has been used in several movies along with the Bobby Darrin's English version "Beyond the Sea" which was used a year earlier in Goodfellas, but this is the first time I remember hearing the French original in a movie. It seems out of place in a montage making fun of Los Angeles, but that makes it even funnier.
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
End montage with no sound except Julio Iglesias singing "La Mer."
- A Bridge Too Far (1977)
After 2.5 hours of hearing machine guns, bombs, and typical bombastic war movie music, we see a group of wounded and defeated Allied soldiers retreating through a crowd of Nazi soldiers during a cease fire after their massive military operation code named "Market Garden" has failed. We hear a solo flute playing a melody from the third movement of (German composer) J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #6 then we see the Allied soldiers gathered in front of a building, some in foxholes, and one with a silver flute. The music only lasts about a minute but it is incredibly powerful. Then we see artillery fire exploding the entire area where the men and the flute player were gathered. Later, at a field hospital, the men all sing very softly the hymn "Abide With Me" and we see the flute player with his right hand bloodied and bandaged and his flute taken apart.
- Annie Hall (1977)
A third of the way into the film, we see Annie (Diane Keaton) singing the song "It Had to Be You" in a nightclub with microphone feedback, breaking dishes, a ringing telephone, and a noisy audience that ignores her. Two thirds into the film, we see her singing the song "Seems Like Old Times" this time to an attentive audience that applauds her, and afterwards a music industry guy approaches her to offer to work with her. This shows us that Annie has changed, she is making progress, moving ahead, while her partner Alvie is making no progress, like a shark that is dying from not moving forward. After their relationship has ended, the two meet again and we see a montage of their relationship with Annie singing "Seems Like Old Times" to the end of the film.
- An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Blue Moon:
Bobby Vinton sings the song under the opening credits;
Sam Cook sings his version of the song during the celebrated transformation scene;
and the Marcels sing their doo wop version under the end credits;
Two other pop songs in the movie also have the word "moon" in their titles.
- Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
American servicemen talk about listening to music in combat.
"Fire Water Burn" by The Bloodhound Gang.
- Forty Guns (1957)
"High Riding Woman with a Whip" by Harold Adamson and Harry Sukman, sung by Jidge Carroll. This song is a real camp classic. (Check out The Sons of the Pioneers version.)
In the opening scene of this great Sam Fuller western, we see Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) and her men, later described as "a woman on a white stallion and a regiment of riders" nearly running a small buggy off the road and we hear an orchestral arrangement of High Riding Woman with a Whip."
Six minutes into the movie we see a man singing the song as a ballad accompanied by an acoustic guitar player as men are bathing in outdoor tubs. The singer explains to gunfighter Griff Bonell (Barry Sullivan) that he wrote the ballad about Jessica Drummond but nobody on her land is allowed to sing it. That's no wonder, since it's one of the cheesiest most anti-feminist songs ever written - about a powerful woman who, without her whip, can be tamed because she's "only a woman after all."
The song is brought back at the very end after Stanwyck has been tamed.
- Face/Off (1997)
The big shootout scene - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by Olivia Newton-John
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Dorothy (Judy Garland) singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to her dog Toto is still one of the greatest musical moments in movies.
- Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to her crying sister proves that sad Christmas songs are the best.
- 200 Motels (1971)
Frank Zappa's "Centerville" in a very trippy scene when they get to the town of Centerville.
- Deadpool 2 (2018)
There are hilarious uses of music throughout including when Deadpool says "Hit it Dolly" and we hear Dolly Parton singing "9 to 5" under the first action montage as he goes to work killing dozens of bad guys; Vanessa tells Wade they should watch some porn, then we see them watching "Yentl" with Barbra Streisand singing "Papa Can You Hear Me?" (a song that recurs a couple more times); a joke about the music of Enya that pays off much later when we hear "Only time;" and best of all, we hear Cher singing "If I Could Turn Back Time" after Deadpool - spoiler alert - has gone back in time and is cleaning up the timeline, including killing off earlier versions of himself and destroying the script to "Green Lantern."
- The Third Man (1949)
The use of the upbeat zither-based "Third Man Theme" in such a dark story is unexpected and brilliant.
- The Singing Detective (1986)
1940s era music is used in diegetic performance flashbacks in and in surreal musical numbers.
- We Are Your Friends (2015)
A movie about DJ culture and producing EDM better include some dance bangers, and this one does, especially Years & Years "Desire" and Deorro feat. Erin McCarley's "I Can Be Somebody."
- Brazil (1985)
From the opening credits to the final scene when the theme is hummed by a man driven insane by his resistance to dehumanizing dystopian society, most of the soundtrack is a variation on the melody of the 1939 song "Aquarela do Brasil" (aka "Brazil").
- Fish Tank (2009)
An angry 15 year old girl does a sad sexy dance for her mom's boyfriend to Bobby Womack's version of "California Dreaming." Great movie. Great cover song I'd never heard.
- Spring Breakers (2012)
James Franco playing piano and singing the Britney Spears ballad "Everytime" with his three rifle-carrying pink-ski-masked college girls and the transition to the Britney version under a crime spree montage is brilliant.
- Law of Desire (1987)
"Déjame recordar" sung by Bola de Nieve is the perfect song for the final violent love scene and end credits.
- The Singing Detective (2003)
Nurse Katie Holmes lubes up her white rubber gloves and tells skin disease patient Robert Downey Jr. she's going to have to lift his penis and grease around it and we see a fantasy sequence to "Mr. Sandman" by the Chordettes.
- High Noon (1952)
One of the first songs used in a film's opening titles and an unusual way to open a western, Oscar-winning song "High Noon" sung by Tex Ritter describes the plot in its lyrics, then recurs throughout the film.
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
Merlin, Eggsy, and Harry are trying to break into Poppy's compound but there are too many armed guards, so Merlin prepares some explosives, steps out of hiding, and sings "Country Roads, Take Me Home" with his Scottish accent. The song adds a great mix of nostalgia, comedy, and sadness. Merlin's singing attracts a group of guards to him as the song changes to a higher key and increases in intensity until it ends with the big explosion we knew was coming.
- The Fifth Element (1997)
The blue diva sings on stage while Leeloo fights the Mangalores.
- Shaun of the Dead (2004)
This zom rom com is full of callbacks. Dialog and situations we see before the zombies appear are repeated later post zombies. One great example is the use of music on a pub jukebox. The dialog is the same, though spoken by different characters, and the songs have similar titles.
First we see Shaun and Ed at a pub with Shaun in tears over a recent break-up with his girlfriend. A song comes on the jukebox - Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now." Ed says: "Who the hell put this on?" Shaun replies: "It's on random." Ed says: "For f**k's sake!"
Later when Shaun and Ed and their friends are trapped in a pub trying to remain quiet to avoid attracting the thousands of zombies roaming around outside, a zombie suddenly appears inside the pub and Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" starts playing loudly on the jukebox, startling everyone.
This time Shaun says: "Who the hell put this on?" and Ed replies: "It's on random." Liz then says: "For f**k's sake!" Shaun then tells David to "kill the Queen." The thought of regicide startles David until Shaun clarifies that he means the jukebox. Then they all attack the zombie with pool cues in sync to the music which is not so random after all. David tries to shut off a fuse to stop the music but instead he makes a light show as he shuts off one fuse after another making the zombies look like a rock concert audience. As the zombie fight continues, Shaun asks "Why is Queen still on?" after David fails to stop it at the fuse box. "Don't Stop Me Now" finally stops when the zombie's head crashes into the jukebox.
- Full Metal Jacket (1987)
A group of war-hardened Marines sing the Mickey Mouse Club March as they march into a burning town at the end of the film.
- Groundhog Day (1993)
Every morning at 6 AM Phil begins the same day over again as his alarm clock plays "I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher.
- Zulu (1964)
In the final battle scene, 4,000 Zulu warriors sing and chant and pound on their shields to intimidate 150 British soldiers before they attack them. In return, the British sing the song "Men of Harlech" to show they are not afraid. The two armies then fight with massive Zulu casualties. Before retreating, the Zulus sing a final song saluting the victorious British soldiers.
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
This is literally a jukebox movie with lots of great songs mostly from the 1970s and a best-selling soundtrack. The movie opens in a strange dark foggy wet place with ominous sounds and music and a creepy masked character with red lights for eyes who is exploring some ruins with a device that seems to let him see ghosts of the past. Then the character suddenly removes his mask, puts on headphones and pops a cassette into a Sony Walkman and the mood changes completely as we hear the funky upbeat song "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone as he dances and pretends to sing.
- American Ultra (2015)
In one of the bloodiest romantic proposals on screen, "Stoner Bourne" Jesse Eisenberg and his girlfriend played by Kristin Stewart exit a burning store, having just killed more than a dozen C.I.A. operatives as we hear the minimal electronic track "Snow" by The Chemical Brothers with the repeating words "your love keeps lifting me...lifting me higher." The two slowly walk through the haze covered in cuts and blood and with lots of green laser sights on their bodies from police weapons aimed at them. He drops to his knees and pulls out the engagement ring he's been holding onto for just the right moment and proposes.
- Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
In an amazing fight scene, a blind man plays a harp that shoots swords and daggers.
- This Is the End (2013)
After being raptured up to Heaven to Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" where they are welcomed to "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum, Jay and Seth are greeted by Craig Robinson who tells them they can have anything they wish for in Heaven. Jay's wish is to hear the re-united Backstreet Boys sing "Everybody (Backstreet's Back).
- The Breakfast Club (1985)
High School students on detention dance in the library to Karla DeVito singing "We Are Not Alone."
- The Phenix City Story (1955)
Meg Myles and the band sing "The Phenix City Blues" in a nightclub. "Satan's a woman all dressed up to kill." Thank God for that.
- Days of Being Wild (1990)
"Perfidia" by Xavier Cugat and his orchestra.
- Tropic Thunder (2008)
Despicable talent agent Les Grossman (Tom Cruise) does a completely unexpected end credits montage dance to "Get Back" by Ludacris.
- Big (1988)
Inside a huge toy store, Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia play Heart and Soul then Chopsticks with their feet on a huge floor piano with keys that light up.
- The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
The three elderly women play a song on stage at a club using a newspaper, tapped shoes, a plucked refrigerator rack, a vacuum cleaner and the spokes of a wheel.
"Belleville Rendez-Vous"
- Freaks (1932)
The Circus Freaks accept Cleopatra as one of their own, pounding on a table and singing "we accept her, we accept her, gooble gobble, one of us" but she throws an angry fit, calling them "dirty, slimy, freaks" and demands that they leave. But they get their revenge later....