10 Best Musical Numbers In Film

10. Savages - Pocahontas

As the only major studio regularly producing movie musicals, Disney has been honing their craft since the early days of animated films. Their catalog of truly "iconic" songs is extremely vast, from Aladdin's "A Whole New World" to more recent entries such as "Let it Go" and "How far I'll Go" (time will tell if the next Oscar-nominated Disney song has 'Go' in the title).

But the reason I chose to put "Savages" here is for how effective it is at a single sequence. Pocahontas is a middling entry in the Disney canon on the whole - handicapped by a pair of fairly one-note protagonists - but this particular number plays to all of the film's strengths. It is stunningly animated, crisply edited, and fuelled by the power of real-world racial divides that still trouble the world even today.

'Savages' packs a punch even when viewed completely out of context. For a short three minute sequence, the film achieves the powerful social commentary it is striving for through its entire runtime. While neither John Smith nor Pocahontas are particularly interesting characters, this song reminds us how interesting the setting and aesthetics around them are.