Music as Quiet Revenge
Mateus Alves and Tomaz Alves Souza's original score for The Secret Agent is the quietest thing about its soundtrack. What surrounds it - MPB deep cuts, a Morricone sex-comedy cue dropped beneath a severed leg, Donna Summer arriving by way of the safe-house radio — is one of the densest acts of curated national memory in any film of the past decade. Recife, 1977, under military dictatorship, scored as if the city already knew it would one day need to remember itself.
Read →- May 2026
Fassbinder in Room 2046
A review of the soundtrack to Wong Kar-wai's 2046
- May 2026
The Composer Who Brought Hou Hsiao-hsien's Hush
A review of the soundtrack to Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night
- May 2026
A Foreigner's Piano in a Brazilian House
A review of the soundtrack to Walter Salles's I'm Still Here
- Apr 2026
Billions
How a composer named after a Residents record scored the sound of money.
- Apr 2026
The Pumpkin Eater
A French composer, a Pinter screenplay, and the sound of a marriage coming apart.
- Apr 2026
The Mastermind
Fifty records, three decades, and a debut film score that behaves like a character.
- Apr 2026
The Girl With All The Gifts
Why directors kept ringing him asking for "the Utopia sound" — and missing the point entirely.
- Apr 2026
The Zone of Interest
Fourteen minutes of music in a 105-minute film — and the ethical grammar of what was left out.