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.
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Buffalo Bill puts on makeup and dances to "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus pretending that he is a woman. (Q Lazzarus is a woman who sounds a lot like a man when she sings.)
This scene is parodied by Jay in Clerks 2.
Before she becomes the hostage of a serial killer, Catherine Martin is introduced driving in a car at night in Memphis listening to Tom Petty's "American Girl."
- The Deer Hunter (1978)
A group of people gathered for Nick's funeral sing "God Bless America" and toast Nick in the last scene of the movie.
- Whiplash (2014)
This is a sports movie that shows music as a joyless competition instead of an inspired art that the musicians love to make. In one intense scene, an abusive music teacher at a jazz college resorts to insults and violence when a student drummer struggles to keep the right tempo in a band rehearsal.
- Frozen (I) (2013)
After learning of her secret powers Elsa sings the Oscar-winning song "Let it Go" (sung by Idina Menzel) in a powerful scene that also helped the movie win an Oscar for best animated picture. (Just try to remember how great the song was in the scene the first time you heard it - before you heard it a thousand times....)
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Andy plays a record of a duet from Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro" over the prison's loudspeakers as a message of freedom for all the inmates.
- Amadeus (1984)
A dying Mozart dictates his Requiem to Salieri who writes it down.
- Johnny Guitar (1954)
Johnny and his guitar are featured in a long series of bar scenes in this bizarre feminist western melodrama, where his wit and guitar playing reveal his character and stir up trouble.
"Heads I'm gonna kill you mister, tails you can play her a tune."
Johnny Guitar to Dancin' Kid: "Can you dance?"
Dancin' Kid: "Can you play?"
Johnny plays an upbeat tune and Dancin' Kid grabs and dances with a repressed woman who almost explodes with anger because of it."
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Original score Oscar winner and three original song Oscar nominations. And the Oscar goes to - Mrs. Potts the teapot singing "Beauty and the Beast."
- The Tree of Life (2011)
Lacrimosa 2 by Zbigniew Preisner during the Genisis sequence.
Francois Couperin's "Les Barricades Misteriuses" is used in a few scenes but my favorite is when the boys go wild when they find out their father has gone on a trip.
- Philadelphia (1993)
The opera scene when dying Tom Hanks explains the aria "La Mamma Morta" sung by Maria Callas from Umberto Giordano's opera "Andrea Chenier."
- Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Elvis Presley sings "Viva Las Vegas" as we see the gaudy bright lights of Vegas during the opening credits.
- Minnie the Moocher (1932)
This short Betty Boop cartoon opens with Cab Calloway doing a moonwalk dance while his band plays the title song. Later Betty and her dog Bimbo encounter a scary ghost who sings the song with Cab Calloway's voice.
- The Lure (2015)
This is the best Polish man-eating-mermaid musical I have ever seen. Mermaids are known to lure fishermen to their deaths, but this is a love story between a young mermaid named Silver and a musician. During the animated opening credits we hear a song from Silver's perspective underwater. When she lifts her head above the water, the song gets clearer and louder as she sees the man singing it who she falls in love with. He continues singing the song, playing guitar on the beach at night and having a picnic with a man and a woman. The lyrics show that it's a love song about a girl. When a second mermaid comes out of the water, the musicians stop as if in a trance and the two mermaids sing their beautiful siren's song that enchants and lures the men, imploring them to help the girls come ashore and not to fear because they will not eat them. The female musician screams when she sees the mermaids, then immediately under the title of the movie we hear the music from Donna Summer's "I Feel Love." We see the female musician in full costume singing the song on stage with the other musicians. As they play, the boss of the nightclub dances a bit, then searches for the source of a fishy smell, passing club patrons, waiters, and cooks who are dancing to the beat. Finally he finds the mermaids in a dressing room, singing "I feel love" and dancing to the song. This all sets up the love story and the tragedy to come.
- Hereditary (2018)
After two hours of anxiety and horrors, hearing Judy Collin sing "Both Sides Now" over the end credits was almost more shocking.
- Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
Elmer Bernstein's score is perfectly paired with Saul Bass' magnificent opening credits sequence whose cat fight sets us up for what happens after hobo Jane Fonda becomes a hooker.
- The Pianist (2002)
The pianist is hiding in a house and the Nazis are practically surrounding him so if he makes any noise at all they will discover him. He sits at the piano and starts to play a Chopin polonaise and we think he's decided to give himself up until we learn that the music we hear is only playing in his head and his hands are just hovering over the keys.
Also, the Chopin Ballade performance for the Nazi soldier.
- Enter the Void (2009)
The LFO track "Freak" over the second part of the amazing opening credits sequence. This should have set the standard for all credits thereafter, but then corporate logos took over.
- Office Space (1999)
Three office guys wearing ties take a computer printer to a vacant lot and beat it with a baseball bat like nerd gangsters as we hear some aggressive gangsta rap - Geto Boyz "Still."
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Shakespeare's sexist play The Taming of the Shrew is re-made with high school students and non-stop pop songs, including several good music scenes. The most memorable is Heath Ledger's stadium serenade, where he bribes the high school band to play "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" while he sings through the stadium microphone and dances down the concrete steps, all aimed at winning over Julia Stiles.
Stiles, the "shrew", gives us a taste of her tamer side when she does a drunken table dance at a house party to The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize."
And the final pre-credits circling helicopter shots of the band Letters to Cleo playing 'I Want You To Want Me" on the rooftop of Stadium High School in Tacoma Washington (which is supposed to be in Seattle in the movie) are outstanding.
Ledger asks the band (Letters to Cleo) to play "Cruel to Be Kind" for Stiles at the prom. It's a favorite of hers and the title is based on a line from Hamlet, one of many Shakespearean Easter eggs in the movie.
- Love Actually (2003)
Among the many story lines in this movie, the funniest is the one about aged rock star Billy Mack hoping for a comeback by singing a cover version of "Love Is All Around" by The Troggs and making it into a terrible Christmas song that he publicly calls "a festering turd of a record." It's a wonderful spoof of the music business and of the obsessive contest in the UK concerning what song is number one on the pop charts at Christmas.
- Cold War (2018)
Several times in the movie we hear the traditional Polish folk song Dwa serduszka (Two Hearts) sung by a woman swearing she will love a man until she dies even though they can't be together. We hear it in its simple folk version, sung by a large group of folk-costumed young women on stage during performances of a large national Polish folkloric ensemble, and then we hear it sung in a Paris nightclub as a sad jazz torch song by the same female singer who sang the song in the folk group, accompanied by her lover on piano. The song's lyrics mirror the tragic love story of the plot, and the song changes style to mirror the times, the new location and the cold war politics, and the mood of the singer and her lover.
- Quadrophenia (1979)
"My Generation" by The Who. Although it isn't on the album from which the movie was derived, they could not omit this song, and they did not. It was perfectly used at a Mod house party.
'I've Had Enough' by The Who. Used over the end scene with Johnnie riding a scooter on the edge of a cliff.
- Somewhere (2010)
Sofia Coppola always uses music very nicely in her movies, but this film relies on music more than most since it is more visual than verbal, more poetic than narrative. My favorite use of music in the film is "I'll Try Anything Once" by The Strokes, used in the father/daughter ping pong, pool, and puppy scene. It's a slow bare bones demo of one of their later faster and louder hits, but the simple electric piano and nonchalant vocal is a perfect match for her images. The soundtrack music by Phoenix is also outstanding, especially the end scene.
- Marie Antoinette (2006)
I love how the film uses lots of music from the post-punk/new wave era, just far enough back in time to seem dated but not ancient. It makes the era of the film feel more like recent history. We understand her better since Marie becomes more like a contemporary celebrity diva than a big-wigged historical figure.
New Order - Ceremony
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden
Bow Wow Wow - I Want Candy
- 500 Days of Summer (2009)
X 500 Days of Summer 2009
Summer (Zooey Deschanel) sings Nancy Sinatra's "Sugartown" at a Karaoke bar. It's short and sweet and somehow unforgettable.
- The Great Gatsby (2013)
We hear Jay-Z's "$100 Bill" after Gatsby brings the narrator into a speakeasy behind a barber shop. 21st century hip-hop rapping about money and power is the perfect soundtrack to the illicit excesses of the rich and powerful of the 20s. Rudy Vallee crooning through a megaphone just wouldn't have the same flow.
- The Abyss (1989)
There's a nice scene where the cowboy-hat wearing female driver of an underwater "truck" and other members of the underwater drilling crew sing all Linda Ronstadt's version of Little Feat's classic truck driver song "Willin'"
- La Vie En Rose (2007)
Piaf singing "Je ne regrette rien," was the obvious but perfect way to end the film.
- The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Sondra Locke plays a teenage girl who is angry at a deaf man because her parents rented her room to him. He finds out that she likes classical music and buys a turntable and some records and plays them to attract her into his room so he can make friends with her. In one great scene she tries to describe the music to him as he reads her lips and watches her move her arms. She describes the orchestra as sounding solemn like old ladies walking to church, like the sun feels on a hot day when you don't have a hat on, like water running down hill, like leaves blowing in the wind just before it rains.
- The Cable Guy (1996)
Jim Carrey sings the Jefferson Airplane song "Somebody to Love" at a party with a karaoke machine, imitating Grace Slick's vibrato by rapidly rubbing his finger on his throat.
- Drive (I) (2011)
In the ending scene into the credits We hear A Real Hero by College featuring Electric Youth as blood-covered Driver drives away.
- The Social Network (2010)
In the end scene into the credits we hear The Beatles sing Baby You're a Rich Man as the youngest billionaire in the world Mark Zuckerberg sends a friend request to his ex-girlfriend (who told him at the beginning of the movie when they broke up that she had no intention of being friends with him). He keeps refreshing his screen to find out if she confirms that they are friends, but we never find out if she does.
Also: the Henly Royal Regatta rowing scene in England with Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King remixed electronically. It's a great clash of classical and modern with the twins losing.
- The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018)
Several teenage "disciples" who were forced to go to a Christian gay conversion brainwashing camp are peeling potatoes when one of them changes the radio channel to a station playing the forbidden non-Christian music "What's Up?" by Four Non Blondes. Cameron jumps up on the counter and sings along using a potato masher as a microphone. This is a rare moment of joy in a grim environment, but it ends quickly when a grownup enters.
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Paul Newman rides Katherine Ross around on a bicycle as we hear B. J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." It's a very cheesy song for a western about violent outlaws. Up until this scene there has been almost no music in the movie, so it is completely unexpected. When Ross gets off the bike, Newman does tricks to some comic circus music, bringing on even more unexpected comedy when he crashes and gets chased by a bull, as Ross gets back on the bike and the "Raindrops" song returns. This music feels cringe worthy today, but it was popular in 1969, and The Academy loved it, awarding Oscars to the movie for Best Song and Best Music.
- Under the Silver Lake (2018)
This movie uses music in a number of interesting ways. Sam discovers that there's a secret code in a song by the band Jesus and the brides of Dracula, so he deciphers the code and follows its instructions which lead him to discover a secret underground survivalist bunker. He doesn't understand what this means so he tortures the singer Jesus who tells him that the record company gave the band the song to sing which was written by their songwriter. Sam visits the Songwriter, a very old man in a huge mansion, to find out what the message means but he sits at his piano playing a medley of parts of songs that he has written, including Smells Like Teen Spirit, Ode to Joy, In A Gadda da Vida, Axell F, the Cheers theme, I want to Know What Love Is, and La Bamba. He tells Sam that there are hidden messages in all of pop culture and that all of the music that is the voice of Sam's generation and his parents’ generation are essentially the meaningless and phony results of corporate greed and that Sam should just smile and enjoy the melody. Sam, who sleeps under a poster of Curt Cobain, is so incensed, that he crushes the songwriter's head with a guitar that once belonged to Curt Cobain.
- Captain Marvel (2019)
Most of the songs featured in this movie about a female superhero in 1995 are from 1990s female singers. After Captain Marvel finally achieves her full superpowers and is in the middle of the climactic fight scene, we hear "Just a Girl" by No Doubt sung by Gwen Stafani, and it is the perfect song for the moment. (And it's a song from 1995, too.)