I said USE of the musical score. The music itself wasn't that bad but for the film it was overbearing and headache-inducing, especially for the first.
And Howard Shore's early nineties stuff was pretty good, such as Single White Female, Silence of the Lambs, and Ed Wood. I have not seen eXistenZ, and the score to Dogma was a little too cartoonish for me (except for some of the stuff at the end).
You're right though, I really shouldn't be blaming Shore. Maybe it was the music supervisor or Peter Jackson. It's just in LOTR they'd have tamborins and brass and cymbals overplaying it while people are just having a conversation or something. In fact, it seemed like there was very few points of the film where there was no music. Because of this, when a huge battle kicked in, it would seem completely unimportant. I think like 95% of the film had music going on and 80% of that music was all epic and brass.
I don't really remember the Fifth Element's music, but I know that one opera scene was pretty sweet.