And the best film composer right now is Hans Zimmer, a German (though, to be fair, he used to play keyboards for the Buggles of "Video Killed the Radio Star" fame).
Without “Video Killed the Radio Star” MTV would never have gotten off the ground.
Zimmer is good. I especially liked his soundtrack for the "Pacific" HBO series.
But the undisputed master of the contemporary film score is John Williams. Besides Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, listen to the absolutely brilliant soundtrack from "Empire of the Sun." His "Exultate Justi" is worthy of any of the classical maestros. Who writes in Latin these days????
Zimmer’s kind of overrated, imo. He recycles the same themes over and over in most of his soundtracks. It’s beyond just having a thematic style, because you can instantly recognize Zimmer is the composer for a film from the first few seconds of any trailer (just listen for the long, booming bass notes with reverb).
Morricone did that a bit too, using the same themes only varied a little bit for multiple scores, but that was the exception rather than the rule with him. With Zimmer, it’s the other way around. The only thing different that he’s done from his standard fare (at least that I’m aware of) are the “Sherlock Holmes” soundracks, which I admit were very good.
I’d rate Elfman a superior film composer to Zimmer any day, even though I think he limits himself by working with Burton a bit too much. Elfman manages to have a distinctly recognizable sound, while at the same time not really adhering to a single style, which is pretty impressive to me.