Ayazid

I think that Debussy can't miss in that list too. He has been mentioned as having influence on, e.g., the scores of Jaws and Hook.

Until now have been mentioned only composers from late romantic to modern period but personally I find already Mendelssohn's Hebrides from 1834 surprisingly fresh and evocative given how old it is and that Mendelssohn was a rather conservative composer (his early music is pretty Mozartean).

Basically all works of Debussy and Ravel are very imaginative and colorful and very "cinematic". It doesn't surprise at all that modern film composers frequently use their "impressionist" musical language (they didn't really like such label themselves), mixed with late romantic style (Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov etc.) and modernism (Stravinsky and others). My favorite works: La mer (the Sea) of Debussy and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé. You can hear their influence in several scores of John Williams and others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFy3tPt2Il8 The sunrise in Daphnis et Chloé (after 38:40) is one of the most moving moments in the history of symphonic music. It's a pure gem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUS1VOh-aIw