Jack Black’s five favourite movies of all time: “It took me a while to recover”
It’s almost impressive that Jack Black has remained so popular for so long when he doesn’t make a lot of good movies. Then again, his enduring appeal over the last quarter of a century doesn’t have much to do with his innate acting prowess, or lack thereof.
While there have undoubtedly been highs, with School of Rock, Bernie, and High Fidelity standing out as highlights, critical acclaim has become increasingly thin on the ground. Obviously, nobody goes to see a Jack Black flick expecting to be blown away by an Oscar-worthy performance, but he wouldn’t be any worse off if he had a frank conversation with his agent about making sure he gets some better scripts.
In the last two years alone, he’s lent his name to Eli Roth’s woeful Borderlands, the mindless Minecraft Movie, and the Farrelly brothers’ lamentable Dear Santa, all of which traded on his innate Jack Blackness to wildly varying degrees of success. Still, the exuberant funnyman and musician hasn’t seen his star power dented in the slightest.
Is he capable of doing great dramatic work? Bernie would suggest that he is, but unlike almost every other household name who got their start in comedy films, he hasn’t felt the urge to try his hand at serious drama. Maybe he doesn’t want to, or perhaps he knows that it’s never been and never will be his strongest suit. Either way, he remains a likeable guy, and 25 years into his time as a mainstream presence, it’s safe to say he won’t be going anywhere for a while.
You wouldn’t necessarily call any of Black’s movies stone-cold classics, but his personal favourites do at least fit the bill. When cornered by Letterboxd and pressed to name his four favourite features of all time, he decided to let his knee-jerk reactions take over. “Just off the top of my head,” he clarified. “Because that’s the best response.”
Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the first to roll off the tongue, which makes sense, knowing that Black is a massive and undying fan of the ‘Big Five’ Oscar-winner’s leading man, Jack Nicholson. Funnily enough, the next title also boasted the legend in the leading role. “Here’s the weird thing,” he explained. “I’ve got two Nicholsons on my list.”
It’s not really that weird when Black had previously gone on record calling Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining “my favourite movie of all time,” and it would have been more surprising had he left it off. Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was up next, followed by Ari Aster’s Hereditary.
“Scariest movie I’ve ever seen in my life,” the Tenacious D co-founder said. “When I first saw it, I felt a little damaged, I felt a little trauma, and it took me a couple of days just to recover. I didn’t sleep right for a while after I saw it.” That covers four, but what was bizarre about Black’s quartet is that he didn’t mention the movie he’s literally called “the greatest motion picture of all time.”
That honour belongs to Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap, which he also celebrated as having “the greatest performances of all time” and “the greatest directing of all time,” all while “breaking ground left and right at the beginning of the mockumentary.” Despite that, when he was asked for his four favourites, it was nowhere to be found.
Jack Black’s five favourite movies:
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975)
- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971)
- Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)
- This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
