Penn's Pix

As it’s always fun to rank movies by a given genre, it seems appropriate to take a moment and reflect on the best movies as it relates to music.

I'll start us off with one that often gets overlooked: The Big Chill. This one has a soundtrack I happened to have on tape (remember tapes?) which I wore out as it became part of the soundtrack to my teenage years. Deadpool, Baby Driver and Guardians of the Galaxy are modern winners in terms of great soundtracks from the last couple years, but go back a little bit and talk about Pulp Fiction. C'est la vie, said the old folks and whatnot...

But I'm talking about soundtracks. What about musicals? Do you count La La Land up there with Les Miserables, and do either compare with what I will say has to be the most "popular" musical of all time, Grease? Does The Greatest Showman deserve a spot on this list, or was it just a big box office hit?

These movies are powerful. We know all good movies are powerful and we know good music is powerful. Certain songs become the soundtrack of our lives, as the saying goes, and to some degree, movies are markers too. Somewhere, there is a 14-year-old boy who will know exactly where he saw Avengers: Infinity War, and in 30 years he will still reflect on how lost he got in the movie and how it relates to the other things going on in his life.

So you take these two powerful art forms and weave them together it becomes pretty intense. I didn't even touch on the elements related to scores like the masterpieces written by John Williams.

So what is the all time? Grease? I'll just leave you with this thought: Rocky Horror Picture Show needs to be included in any intelligent conversation about movies and music. As Frank said, "Don't dream it- be it!" And that is all I have to say about that.