Garden State

Sony

It had been some time since a soundtrack had mattered, but when writer-director-star Zach Braff took the reins of the award-winning compilation, too, he helped push indie music into the mainstream with what was essentially a mixtape of what Braff was listening to when he wrote the screenplay. The crux of both the film and soundtrack is when Natalie Portman’s character hands Zach’s a pair of headphones playing the Shins’ “New Slang” and says “You gotta hear this one song -- it’ll change your life." But the mid-2000s music scene is captured throughout the album, most impeccably Iron and Wine’s Postal Service cover of “Such Great Heights.”