The Passion of the Christ. Every cue is beautiful, but the Crucifixion theme, the Mary goes to Jesus theme, and the Resurrection theme stand out. I love how Debney's music is epic and powerful rather than just non-stop depressing as alot of composers would've chose to score it.
Hannibal. The Hannibal and Clarice love theme and the recurring piano cue for Lecter suit the characters perfectly. The score as a whole is beautiful, suspenseful, disturbing, sophistocated... It's tough to find a score more multi-layered.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (all three, but this one in particular). Each culture and group has its own memorable theme, adding to how complex the world of Middle Earth is.
The way the Fellowship theme evolves from epic and heroic to subtely uplifting is a testament to Shore's versatility.
King Kong (2005). Kong's hero theme makes me want to stand up and cheer everytime I hear it, it's also brilliantly used as a more menacing theme to convey the monster he's viewed as at certain times. The Central Park theme couldn't have been more romantic and uplifting with a great blend of piano and violin cues, and the scoring of the entire Empire State Building sequence was spot on. Howard weaves in and out from exciting to dramatic to heartbreaking, and his music manages to bring tears to my eyes before the planes even begin the attack because of how well it built the impending doom.
Jeepers Creepers 1 and 2. Perfect horror scores. Instead of typical orchestral scoring, Salvay uses a combination of eerie groans and sound effects blended with the instruments, and works in moving themes for the human characters so that the music supports the people as well as the monster.
