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A great movie soundtrack can be just as memorable as the film itself. A few notes might bring an entire scene rushing back, and an old song can find new life in the right movie. Below, six Atlantic staffers share their favorite film soundtracks of the 21st century.

One Battle After Another (streaming on HBO Max and Prime Video)

Beneath its cat-and-mouse tale about fascism and rebellion, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 Best Picture Oscar winner is a masterpiece of cadence. The story progresses in slow creeps and sudden, skittering leaps. Characters crash together and pull apart like excited molecules. The sizzling energy owes to an unusual process: Anderson hired the Radiohead multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood to compose music before shooting began and then edited Greenwood’s work. The soundtrack pairs percussive piano with drums hooked to robotic circuits to create backbeats as insistent and unsteady as hiccups. Twanging guitars and symphonic strings express unsettled, ugly-pretty chords. The effect is an astonishingly original reminder that social movements are but collections of individuals, each squiggling along their own trajectory.

— Spencer Kornhaber, staff writer

***

Darkest Hour (streaming on Apple TV and Prime Video)

I love soundtracks, but my favorites—Glory, Miller’s Crossing, Crimson Tide—are all at least 30 years old. I am a sucker for a John Williams march or an elegiac Thomas Newman moment, but when I consulted my playlist, I found that one soundtrack kept rising to the top: Darkest Hour, by Dario Marianelli (with piano by Víkingur Ólafsson). The movie follows Winston Churchill’s first days in office, in 1940, after France fell and Britain stood alone against the Nazis. The score alternates between piano meditations and orchestral flight; like Churchill, it is fussy and elegant, quiet and then bombastic. It conveys the tension and urgency in the man and the moment. The final track, “We Shall Fight,” plays over Churchill’s speech to Parliament in which he vows to never surrender to evil. It is a moving and uplifting piece, but also tragic: He knew the horrors that awaited, and he led Britain to its fate anyway.

— Tom Nichols, staff writer

***

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (streaming on HBO Max)

On the subject of movie music, much comes to mind. My single favorite piece of original movie music this century might be “The Alien,” Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s eerie composition for Annihilation; my favorite repurposed song might be Plumtree’s “Scott Pilgrim,” the lovey-dovey indie-rock namesake of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Jon Brion’s off-kilter bricolage for Punch-Drunk Love, the torch ballads of A Star Is Born, the uncut Daft Punk–ness of Tron: Legacy—all of this matters to me. However, play two seconds of “Concerning Hobbits,” and I’m back in the Shire, awaiting the appearance of a great wizard and hanging out with my vertically challenged friends. Howard Shore’s score for Fellowship, and for the rest of the Lord of the Rings series, is both transportive and formfitting, making Peter Jackson’s movie sound as epic as it looks.

— Jeremy Gordon, senior editor

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Shrek 2 (streaming on Peacock)

When I first watched Shrek 2, I was far more interested in the movie’s ridiculous fairy-tale antics than in the music. Years later, I’ve come to appreciate that the soundtrack is every bit as good as the movie itself. The song choices, including Counting Crows’ “Accidentally in Love”  in the opening sequence, are absurdly perfect for a film about a green ogre meeting his in-laws. The soundtrack also features David Bowie, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits, but the undisputed highlight is Jennifer Saunders’s rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero” as the Fairy Godmother, which turns the climactic rescue scene into a musical spectacle that has no right to be as thrilling as it is. A villain belting out a Bonnie Tyler song while a giant gingerbread man storms a castle? As a kid, I thought it was the height of cinema. I may have outgrown some of my other childhood favorites, but I still think the Fairy Godmother deserves a Grammy.

— Rafaela Jinich, assistant editor

***

Challengers (streaming on Paramount+ and Apple TV)

Ever need to outrun a serial killer, punch a bully, or fight a bear? Have I got the soundtrack for you! Nothing gets me going quite like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s magnum opus, the soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s film Challengers. (To fans of their work for The Social Network—sorry, this one’s simply better!) The film makes the compelling argument that everything in life is about sex, except sex, which is about tennis. The pulsing, almost panic-inducing score draws on Berlin techno and ’90s rave music to heighten the anxiety of the film’s central love triangle. The frenzied sounds amplify the adrenaline that elite tennis players feel as they play (and sometimes kiss) each other. Listening to the climactic track, “Match Point,” one almost feels like the tennis ball being flung around the court. Whenever I need to crush a deadline or motivate myself to tackle a hard task, the Challengers soundtrack is my go-to. Plus, I once heard it played in a nightclub, and I haven’t been the same since.

— Madeleine Carlisle, staff writer

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Sicario (streaming on HBO Max and Hulu)

The Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s work in Sicario has been ripped off a million times. The beautifully foreboding noises he pioneered and perfected for Denis Villeneuve’s ultra-stylish, very violent feds-versus-cartels thriller—the subterranean bass groans, the trapped-in-the-birth-canal percussion, the tinnitus-like swarms of strings—are now part of the standard kit of horror-movie soundtracking: You can hear them, in degraded form, everywhere. But Jóhannsson, unlike his imitators, had other registers, other capacities: Sicario also features the elegiac “Desert Music,” which sounds less like the industrial metal nihilists Godflesh and more like, I don’t know, Bach. Something else Jóhannsson shared with Bach? I think he was probably a genius.

— James Parker, staff writer

Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

• What the U.S. is really doing in Venezuela, by Anne Applebaum
• The man who saved the internet this week
• The new food movement

The Week Ahead

1. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, a crime thriller about an aging pickpocket who steals a valuable USB drive and becomes the target of a vengeful crime family (in theaters Friday)
2. Nocturne, a crime-drama series about a Pennsylvania detective who enlists his FBI-agent protégé to catch a serial killer (streaming Friday on Apple TV)
3. The Brightness, a novel by Chad Harbach about two young women who navigate friendship, love, and ambition as they face life-changing decisions in their 20s (out Tuesday)

Essay

50 Unforgettable Love Stories

By The Atlantic Culture Desk

Centuries before bookstores had shelves labeled romance and fictional hockey players locked eyes across the ice, the love story, with all of its attendant joys and sorrows, was an organizing principle of life—and of literature. The sentiment that another person might “complete” us enchanted both Plato and Jerry Maguire, and the search for that someone, along with the desire to understand why it can hurt so bad, has animated fiction from the beginning. The list below is an effort to name those love stories: novels, of course, but also poetry, plays, and short stories—that we consider to be the most enduring. We asked a jury of scholars, librarians, critics, and authors across genres, as well as many colleagues, to name their favorite titles that were originally written in English. We thought of our own personal touchstones, deliberated over the choices, and emerged with a group of standouts: 50 titles you won’t soon forget.

Read the full article.

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This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

There’s a lot to love about fall: the changing leaves, the crisp air, the return of cozy sweaters, and, of course, pumpkin-spice everything. As the days grow shorter and the weather cools, the season offers plenty of reasons to slow down and indulge in life’s little comforts.

Although fall has its familiar rituals, there are always new ways to enjoy it. Maybe you’re looking for your next great read, a recipe to try on a chilly afternoon, or an excuse to spend more time outdoors before winter arrives. To help you get into the autumn spirit, explore some of our favorite Atlantic stories and recommendations for the season.

Fall Favorites

Six Books to Read by the Fire

Each of these titles is a perfect companion while the days grow imperceptibly longer.

By Amanda Parrish Morgan

Read the article.

Six Movies to Get You in the Fall Mood

From cozy classics to unlikely favorites, The Atlantic’s writers and editors share their seasonal picks.

By Rafaela Jinich

Read the article.

How Starbucks Perfected Autumn

The pumpkin spice latte has defined fall for 20 years. (From 2023)

By Ian Bogost

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• What the falling leaves taught Thoreau: His autumnal observations held a lesson for him in his final years, Jake Lundberg writes.
• No one knows how big pumpkins can get. A decade ago, the world’s heaviest pumpkin weighed 2,000 pounds. Now the 3,000-pound mark is within sight, Yasmin Tayag wrote in 2024.

Other Diversions

• Can Elizabeth Holmes drop the act?
• The rise of the IRL influencer
• What three gene-therapy deaths have in common

PS

My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “We were lucky to head East before the storm because the foliage is incredibly colorful,” Lynn D. from Moretown, Vermont, shared. “This photo was taken from the Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire.”   

We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Rafaela

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

“Forgive the bad texters,” Julie Beck wrote in a recent Atlantic essay. Beck is one of them: She routinely leaves messages unanswered for days or even weeks, not because she doesn’t care but because she gets distracted, is burned-out, or simply forgets. Yet in a world where everyone is expected to be constantly reachable, a delayed reply can easily be mistaken for indifference.

Texting has made staying in touch easier than ever, but it has also turned communication into a near-constant obligation. A third of Americans report feeling overwhelmed by the number of texts they need to respond to, Beck writes. People have felt guilty about unanswered correspondence for centuries, but technology has escalated both those expectations and the anxiety that comes with meeting them.

Being a good texter, Beck suggests, isn’t the same as being a good friend. Someone who takes days to reply might still be the first to show up when you need them. So the next time a friend leaves you on read, consider giving them the benefit of the doubt. And if you’re the one with a growing pile of unanswered messages, maybe give yourself a little grace too.

The Texting Trap

Forgive the Bad Texters

By Julie Beck

We are truly sorry for our delayed response.

Read the article.

The Agony of Texting With Men

By Matthew Schnipper

Many guys are bad at messaging their friends back—and it might be making them more lonely. (From 2025)

Read the article.

Another Symptom of Growing Isolation

By Olga Khazan

A recent study found that people spoke fewer words a day in 2019 than in 2005.

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• Would you go back to a time before smartphones if you could? In this episode of How to Touch Grass, Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck explore what’s behind analog nostalgia—and what it means for our relationship with technology in the future.
• The tension that defines modern life: Most people have a smartphone. But many want to use it less, Beck writes.

Other Diversions

• “The nobel laureate who rescued me”
• The children of philanderers, by Tom Junod
• The marriage that captures a high point of American art

PS

My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “About ten years ago, I saw a Joro spider for the first time. They are an invasive species from Asia. Since that time, they have become ubiquitous in my area,” Nancy C. from Marietta, Georgia, writes. “Last year I began to notice how incredibly beautiful the adult female spiders are. Their abdomens have a gorgeous, intricate design that looks like a colorful maze. I realized that for years, I had been walking by such sublime beauty, and I hadn’t even recognized it.”

We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Rafaela