Jack Black: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

1. Bernie Tiede - Bernie (2011)

Having bounced around the 00s with a hit rate of about one in every three or four films, and more success as part of Tenacious D, you could probably have forgiven Black for never challenging himself again on screen. After all why should he? The roles he was being picked out for were as sure to come around every few months at the same rate that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson get work, despite everything. He could have effectively gone out to pasture there and then, knowing he'd never make a better film than High Fidelity - which is nothing to sniff at in itself. Instead he teamed up with Richard Linklater to work on a risky little indie comedy that took all of 22 days to shoot and which played with form and performance in a way that most people buying a Jack Black ticket would have been utterly confused by. And the result was glorious. For the first time in a long time, Black played that deeply charming grotesque he'd always worked so well as in a quirky, devilishly dark humoured. And Linklater deserves to be knighted for the simple instruction to leave the mania at the door.