Jesus' Son | | Cast : | Billy Crudup | | Director : | Alison Maclean | | Studio : | Lions Gate Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | July 22, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 24, 2005 | | Summary | Funny, dark, and most of all, darn good entertainment. | Content
 | As is the case with most of the films I watch, I saw this movie on IFC one day in 2003. I have to say, it was one of the most compelling films I've saw that year. The basic premise deals with a young man who's trying to keep his life in order while attempting to say goodbye to heroine and other notable drugs. His one huge problem is that everything in his life before drug rehab revolves around the narcotics he's so earnestly trying to flee from. The result is a journey - spiritual and psychological - where the young man begins to see life for what it really is: simple beauty, and finds himself taking pleasure in listening to a woman singing each day as he walks from work and the insane patients he works with.
Fluent all throughout this film, characters that we encounter are there for a reason and in some ways, each newfound character is like another individual in our anti-heroe's own personal odyssey.
Jack Black, Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter and Will Patton(Mothman Prophecies, Armageddon) also make notable apperances.
One of my top ten indy films, Jesus' Son lacks the sacrilegious tones that many might envision it possesses. A worthwhile film for fans of story-based screen plays. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 24, 2004 | | Summary | Sad, moving, funny, surprising -- see it! | Content
| A great movie -- hilarious, bleak, uplifting, really runs the gamut of emotions.
Pretentious opera fans and others who can't bother to imagine what life may be like outside their narrow existence may dismiss this movie as being about a hopeless junkie loser with the same cursory manner they use to order a Starbucks every morning. Some people are unable to see certain others as people too. Their loss.
Those who are able to open their eyes will see it's about a junkie drifter overcoming tragedy and loss to become a feeling human being again. There isn't much of a plot, but it's directed with stunning empathy and lyricism. The scenes between FH and Michelle are so raw and full of their clawing, aching need for each other they're at once beautiful and difficult to watch. Jack Black's scene in the hospital is outrageous. The movie's final scenes are emotional and poignant in a very odd and moving way, like nothing I've ever seen but the feeling is familiar.
I don't know much about the director, Alison McLean, but I'm a huge fan based on this movie and her equally odd and excellent earlier film, Crush. Her latest work is a documentary called "Persons Of Interest" and is about Arab americans detained after September 11, and she also directed an episode of HBO's Carnivale. I hope to see more movies from her soon.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 15, 2004 | | Summary | Dark laughter: tears: redemption | Content
| My first take on first viewing was: right, I want to watch a movie about some disgusting, sleazy, young idiots. The sex. The violence. The drugs. And then, you start to pay attention to the narrator's voice, and you begin to understand the intelligence, the attempt at a philosopy of life that lies behind the voice. And you laugh as a dead guy gets beat up in a corn field.
I own two movies--the other is John Huston's "The Dead". I only buy movies that have enough complexity in script, acting, and production, that you can watch over and over and still see new things.
This is a movie that changes gears on you constantly. One viewing will not suffice.
I still scream with laughter when I see it, and I still weep. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 18, 2004 | | Summary | "I Feel Just Like Jesus' Son" | Content
| If you came of age (or nearly did) in the 60's, you may recall a moment--very likely sometime in the early 70's, unless you were extremely prescient and saw it coming earlier--when all the hippie idealism pretty much just dissolved before your eyes and was replaced by...well, whatever it was replaced by. I recall being actually kind of angry at all these small town stoners whose only countercultural value was, quite frankly, drug taking. Society was not about to undergo a profound spiritual transformation at their hands. Of course, it was scarcely about to at anyone else's either...but who knew back then? Lost souls like JESUS SON'S "FH" were really not uncommon back in the day. They may not have been uncommon back in any day. But the 60s and early 70s brand was perhaps a little more noticeable and, in some senses, sympathetic because of their vaguely anti-establishment stance. For a brief moment in history, outcasts were almost taken seriously. These people really did exist. As surreal as JESUS' SON sometimes gets, it remains grounded in its very vivid, very authentic characters. Yes, there were certain junkie truths that ultimately became cinematic cliches. The numrerous OD's, the failed love relationships and the sporadic attempts at redemption are all elements of JESUS' SON. And yet, they come across as less cliched in this particular druggie film than in some others. Perhaps it's because the acting is almost uniformly excellent--with leads, Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton, deserving of particular praise. Perhaps too it's, at least in part, because FH's ultimate redemption is a plausible one. Out of rehab, he gets a job in a different kind of rehabilitation center, a home for sufferers of rare neurological diseases. It is finally there that he realizes that there may indeed be a place in the world for people like him. Many viewers will find the final, sobered up segment of the film a little weaker dramatically than the drug addled scenes that precede it. That's true, but the end is also something of a relief. FH would surely have joined the ranks of his fallen comrades in arms had it not been for rehab and the chance at a new life in a new city. It's the kind of ending you could call "bittersweet"--if you use terminology like that. It's also one of only two possible endings for someone like "FH"--and, like him, you're grateful for that much. When I first heard of this movie, I immediately recognized the source of the title as being a line from Lou Reed's "Heroin." I was disappointed, at first, to see that that song was not incluced on the soundtrack. But on further reflection, that actually seemed the better choice. Lou Reed is the quintessetial urban poet. FH never even comes close to New York City or any other real metropolis. The Neil Young, Doug Sahm and Louvin Brothers tracks actually used in the film are actually more fitting. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 08, 2003 | | Summary | Strictly for white bread suburban wannabes | Content
| I'm not really sure what market movies like this & Drugstore Cowboy - highly artificial romanticized Hollywood fictions about life's total losers - is meant for. Possibly it's the losers themselves, a potentially large if unsung & untrumpeted demographic; or it could be for the great hard-working law-abiding shop-to-help-the-economy consumer middle class which needs to feel that there is really is some flip-side kind of bandit/outlaw culture out there whose lives make all their own compulsive security meaningful. It could be a combination of both. In any case it's the worst kind of voyeuristic self-indulgent airhead garbage. |
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