In small-town Texas, the popular mortician Bernie Tiede strikes up a friendship with Marjorie Nugent. She is a wealthy widow well known for her sour attitude. When she becomes controlling and abusive, Bernie goes to great lengths to remove himself from her grasp. Jack Black plays the role of Bernie and it’s easily one of Black’s best performances. It’s a weird true story, but this movie took me by surprise. It’s highly overlooked.
Set in a record store, that doesn’t get a lot of costumer’s. It follows Rob, the store owner portrayed by John Cusack, who’s dealing with some problems. Jack Black plays the role of Barry, an exhibitionist music freak who wants to be in the music business himself. “High Fidelity” finds a good balance between humor and drama, but is mostly carried by the music and the meaning of it in the character’s lives. I think it’s an underappreciated movie, more people should love it. As Rob, I’m an avid top 5 list maker and “High Fidelity” is definitely in my top 5 of all-time favorite movies!
Three fanatical bird-watcher, played by Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin, spend an entire year competing to spot the highest number of bird species. I loved the theme, it’s a feel-good film. It could have easily fell into the ridiculous comedy trend, where everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. Luckily that didn’t happen and this film felt fresh and I really enjoyed it. It’s such an underrated film.
Mos Def and Jack Black play tow bumbling store clerks, who inadvertently erase the footage from all of the tapes in their video rental store. In order to keep the business running, they re-shoot every film in the store with their own camera, with a budget of zero dollars. This is a film that probably doesn’t speak to the younger crowd. Us 80s and 90s babies, we know what the phrase ‘be kind rewind’ mean. Because how annoying was it that you lend a VHS tape to someone and they’d return it to you without rewinding it. The cheap ways to recreate expensive special effects of some of our favorite movies. Those are the most fun parts of the film, when they are shooting the movies. Sometimes hilarious. And for someone who is creative herself, I can appreciate the creativity behind it all.
Shaun Brumder is a local surfer kid from Orange County, played by Colin Hanks. He dreams of going to Stanford to become a writer and to get away from his dysfunctional family. Somehow mistakes are made and Shaun doesn’t get into Stanford. With the help of his brother Lance, a role by Jack Black and his girlfriend Ashely, he tries to do everything to get into the school. I don’t think there are a lot of people that even know this film. I know my friends haven’t, which is such a shame. It’s a good film, with great humor and fun characters. Like Jack Black’s Lance, he is hilarious as Shaun’s useless and lazy brother. I’ve seen it many times, there was a time I rewatched it several times a month.
