Scores that bend time.

Nobody has done more to make tension feel like physics. The ticking in Interstellar is the actual clock of relativity, and the dread in Dunkirk is an illusion that only ever climbs.

The entire Inception score is built from Edith Piaf's 'Non, je ne regrette rien': every cue is the song's tempo multiplied or divided, and the slowed track is the kick between dream levels. The Shepard tone behind Dunkirk is the rising-forever illusion you can play above.

Two Best Original Score Oscars, for The Lion King (1995) and Dune (2022). Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk were never nominated.

He scores time itself. Oppenheimer accelerates until you cannot breathe, and Tenet runs the music backward without it ever sounding wrong.

For Tenet, a film where time runs backward, he wrote passages that work played in reverse as well as forward. For Oppenheimer, 'Can You Hear the Music' simply keeps speeding up until it is unbearable.

Best Original Score Oscars for Black Panther (2019) and Oppenheimer (2024). Tenet was shortlisted, not nominated.

Proof that the most classical-sounding composer working is also the most hip-hop. He bends real strings the way a DJ bends a record.

For Moonlight he took the Houston hip-hop technique of chopping and screwing, slowing and pitching the tape down, and applied it to his own orchestral strings and piano. You can drag the same effect on a synth phrase above.

Oscar-nominated for Moonlight (2017) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2019). Emmy winner for the Succession main title.

A fish-god love story scored as a waltz, because a waltz is what bodies do when they fall in love. His secret is repetition that never feels repetitive.

The main theme is a waltz in three, his nod to a love story between a woman and an amphibian: triple time is what bodies do when they fall in love. His signature is the ostinato, a small rhythmic cell repeated like clockwork.

Best Original Score Oscars for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2015) and The Shape of Water (2018).

He writes melodies you leave the theater humming, then uses tempo to make sure you can never quite relax while you hum them.

He has scored every Damien Chazelle film since they were roommates at Harvard. In Whiplash, the whole movie hangs on one question a teacher screams: 'Were you rushing, or were you dragging?' Set the tempo above and feel it.

Won two Oscars in one night for La La Land (2017): Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

The Radiohead guitarist who scores like the orchestra is nervous. The strings do not soothe; they scrape.

His There Will Be Blood score was disqualified from the Oscars under the rule that bars scores 'diluted' by pre-existing music. By day he is Radiohead's lead guitarist.

Oscar-nominated for Phantom Thread (2018) and The Power of the Dog (2022). There Will Be Blood was ruled ineligible.

They proved a film score could be a drum machine and a held breath at the same time. The unease is in the arpeggio, ticking under every scene.

The Social Network was the first film either of them, both members of Nine Inch Nails, had ever scored. They won the Oscar on the first try.

Best Original Score Oscars for The Social Network (2011) and Soul (2021).

He scored from the bottom of the orchestra. Sicario does not rise to scare you; it sinks.

Sicario's 'The Beast' is driven from the floor of the orchestra: downward-sliding low strings, tuba, and contrabassoon over a relentless pulse, so the menace seems to come from underground.

Oscar-nominated for The Theory of Everything (2015) and Sicario (2016). He died in 2018.

She detuned her own viola until it stopped sounding human, which is exactly the point. The most alien score of the decade is one instrument, wrongly tuned.

She recorded her own viola and detuned and pitch-shifted it into sliding, microtonal, insect-like lines: a familiar instrument bent out of tune on purpose until it stops sounding human.

Oscar-nominated for Jackie (2017).

She plays the cello like it is a body under stress, and built a whole series score out of sounds recorded inside a dead nuclear plant.

She built the Chernobyl score entirely from sounds she recorded inside a real decommissioned reactor, the Ignalina plant in Lithuania, which uses the same design as Chernobyl.

First solo woman to win the Best Original Score Oscar, for Joker (2020). Emmy winner for Chernobyl.

The composer who can make a waltz feel like a whole life passing. Few writers route a melody straight to the tear ducts this reliably.

The 'Married Life' montage in Up scores an entire marriage, from courtship to widowhood, with one waltz that keeps getting quietly sadder. His Lost score did the same across six seasons, building a whole island on a handful of recurring themes.

Won the Best Original Score Oscar for Up (2010), plus a Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Grammy. Emmy winner for the Lost pilot.

Not written for film, yet it has scored more grief on screen than almost anything. When a director needs you to cry, this is the cue they license.

He wrote it for an album protesting the Iraq war, not for any film. Directors have been borrowing it to break your heart ever since, which is why it feels like a score you already know.

Not a film cue at all: a 2004 concert work from The Blue Notebooks, later licensed into Shutter Island, Arrival, and many more.

The opposite of a ticking clock. Minari floats free of any beat, the way memory does, sung in a voice that sounds recalled rather than performed.

The score floats on spare piano and wordless vocals; the lullaby 'Rain Song' is sung by the film's lead, Han Ye-ri, so the music sounds remembered rather than performed.

Oscar-nominated for Minari (2021).