Only Lovers Left Alive

As an auteur with impeccable music taste, the laconic director Jim Jarmusch is no stranger to providing his films with memorable scores and moments. For his post-modern tale of vampires trying to find purpose in their immortal lives, he employs his own group, SQURL, to provide the brooding score for dead lovers Adam and Eve (played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) to explore what is a romantic paean to the bohemian artistic underground. Providing the doom-fuzzy riffs of Adam's band in the movie, Jarmusch crafts his epic score primarily with Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem, who in turn churns out atmospheric stoner riffs, gliding minimal orchestral strokes, and bewitching vocal chants. The likes of Zola Jesus and Madeline Follin from Cults make appearances, with the latter contributing to a wonderfully hazy and skuzzy version of Wanda Jackson's "Tunnel of Love," which encapsulates the film's "hipsters through the ages" aesthetic to a T. ~ Aneet Nijjar