Jesus' Son [HD]

Highly Recommended
"Jesus' Son" barely got a theatrical release, so here's your chance to discover one of the quirkiest and most heartfelt movies to come along since the `70s output of the late, great director Hal Ashby ("Harold & Maude," "Coming Home").

From Denis Johnson's low-key, disjointed short stories about addicts and outcasts, director Alison Maclean and her writers/adapters have distilled a narrative that's both goofy and lucid. The story drifts and meanders, as it should - our protagonist is a survivor who's still trying to comprehend his salvation. Anyone who took drugs in the `70s will be stunned by how familiar and true is the recreation of that era; bigger-budgeted period pieces often settle for easy nostalgia via bad wigs and hit parades, but here, offbeat locations and music selections spark forgotten memories of two-laned interstates, abandoned drive-ins and AM radio.

Unlike flashier but similar-themed junkie laments, "Jesus' Son" is a triumph of substance over style:...

The real deal - profound and entertaining
This movie changed the way I look at life. We all take so much for granted and it could all end at any moment. This is one of the main ideas of Jesus' Son. The main character, FH, stumbles through life while many of his friends die, yet he remains unharmed and only gradually begins to change his ways. This movie may be about death and pain, but it is optimistic and hopeful; as long as life continues, something good can happen. There is a surprising amount of humor in the film, all of it compassionate, it doesn't result to mocking the characters or the situations as so many movies these days do.

Some people have complained that Jesus' Son imitates Pulp Fiction in its narrative. This is untrue - the story unfolds as FH tells it, sometimes he doubles back to give more detail or fill in gaps, but for the most part it is linear. FH's narration gives the movie much of its personality.

The acting is astoundingly realistic throughout. Of all the movies I've seen this...

A Drugstore Cowboy for the '00s
It's hard to believe "Drugstore Cowboy" was released as long ago as 1989. Just as "Trainspotting" was often described as a "Drugstore Cowboy for the 1990s," it's tempting to describe "Jesus' Son" as a "Drugstore Cowboy for the 2000s".

Like Gus Van Sant's now-classic film, the story revolves around two heroin addicts (Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton, both excellent), it's set in the past (the 1970s instead of the 1960s), and it's based on a pre-existing literary source, in this case, Denis Johnson's story collection of the same name. But despite everything--mostly bad--that F@#khead (Crudup) experiences throughout the course of the film, "Jesus' Son" is more of a character study (FH, as he's known, also serves as narrator).

Like Portland's Gus Van Sant, New Zealand's Alison MacLean refrains from judging her characters. But "Jesus' Son" isn't as concerned with FH's drug use as much as his very character, his nature--his essence, if you will. And if you can't find...

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