'Super 8' - Michael Giacchino
In my opinion this film seemed to be a merge between 'The Goonies', 'E.T.' and Abrams' TV series, 'Fringe'.

The interesting storyline lent itself to a huge palette of possibilities in terms of the film score's soundtrack. Yet, I must say I expected more from recent Oscar sensation, Mr Giacchino.

His orchestral scoring was traditional, and the epic narrative codes were mostly effectively applied. Yet there was, for me at least, a lack of integrity in terms of the music and film marriage. Why I say this is because I often would question the role of the music in this film in terms of its placement at times and also it's effectiveness in co-existing with the film's narrative.

Something was missing. I did hear attempts of references to John Williams' idiosyncratic style (in terms of middle ground woodwind ornamentation while strings and percussion create a counter texture), yet in my opinion, this 'form' could have been muscled out with at least one unique melodic-harmonic-rhythmic-timbre-tempo-dynamic bound signifier, which is typical of successful and memorable audio brands. Beyond this then the various theme-and-variation etc techniques lend themselves seamlessly to create a memorable sonic experience, co-existing meaningfully with the film.