Jesus' Son (2000)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fresh and Exciting

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Being a huge fan of Denis Johnson and Lou Reed, I was curious how they could make a movie from such unusually random events. The movie does such a great job stitching together Johnson's stories. They are extraordinary, humorous, and often touching. Together they make, in my opinion, one of the best 'drug' related movies ever. It is Borroughsesque in its candid, accurate portrayal of heroin addiction. The flashbacks and fuzzy pieced together vignettes resemble the actual effect heroin has on time. Time seems to slow down with days starting to blur into nights. The movie really touched me as I saw some of FH in myself. I too am a recovering addict. I have been clean for over a year now. Thank god for suboxone!!! For anyone grappling with heroin addiction please consider suboxone therapy. It has truly saved my life, marriage, and sanity.

Last night I watched Jesus' Son I easily give it an A- Billy Crudup as "Fuck Head" gives a strongly addicting performance, showing his acting prowess to be well beyond his years. The range of humanity he is able to bring to this character is reminiscent of a young Robert De Niro. Although Crudup is cast seemingly at random with Samantha Morton, who plays "Michelle" the catalysts for much of "Fuck Head's" evolution; their performances together are gritty and riveting.This is a completely original telling of the over used genre of how a man from the 1970's "turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion." With such a story, there are scenes of absurdity and excessiveness, during which I found myself about to write-off the rest of the movie until I realized that each spectacle of a scene came with a sudden blunt crash back to a harsh reality. This allows us as viewers to experience some of the roller-coaster ride the characters go through without the side affects usually associated with Heroin.Furthermore, this movie is splattered with brilliant cameos from Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, and two of my favorites come from Jack Black and Denis Leary.I suggest you turn the lights off, sit down, crank the volume, and watch this movie with a stiff drink; you won't be disappointed.

There was only one other review of this film when I wrote this and it deserved more than that, so here I am. I'll refer you to that review for much more detail, but I wanted to second the motion that this film deserves wider recognition. It's a bit "arty" but in an unpretentious kind of way, with some good laughs as well as some deep ideas. It's also not a bad film to watch with your teenagers (if they'll do something like that!) as a surreptitious way to get them to "just say no" to drugs. It paints what looks like a realistic portrait of life on drugs.I wanted to stop here, but IMDb is telling me I need 10 lines before they'll accept a review, which I hope they'll change. So what to add? Great acting and some great one-liners.

We are treated to the world as seen from the perspective of a young druggie (Billy Crudup) who repeatedly screws up through his mixture of bungling, passivity, and choice of companions. I frequently found my interest in the narrative and the characters waning, with particular memorable scenes that made it worthwhile to keep a watch. The uniqueness of the main character's perspective is presented in scenes with a mixture of surrealism at times (along with his own narrative that he can't quite remember). This could have made for an interesting production, but at times I just found it irritating. Maybe I've just seen too many loser druggie films and the mostly pointless lives they portray to empathize with these people and their situations, in contrast to the real-life addicts I have known. The film does have its own redemptive conclusion, however, and deserves credit for being more realistic in the way it is presented than we might have anticipated. In fact, the film's clever title may just have a double meaning, with reference to the Velvet Underground song "Heroin" and a semi-spiritual theme all in one; we're all God's children. Just having seen Crudup in Almost Famous, a film made around the same time from a similar period, may have typed him for me in this kind of role, although he was a far more "succesful" character in that far better film.