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Jesus' Son

Jesus' Son

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I Knew Every Raindrop By Name
Review: Movie Summary: F***Head is a fool. He is a drug addict who allows life to happen to him. He drifts from day to day interested only in getting his next fix. He has a girlfriend who drifts in and out of his life as well. He is a very likable guy and has the friends to prove it. This is the story of how F***Head learns to live life and not just let it happen to him.

My Opinion: Jack Black is awesome in this film. It's worth seeing just for his performance. He was so misused in Saving Silverman. That said, let me go ahead and talk about the movie. Jesus' Son is offbeat and different. It's told slightly out of order which may throw some people. The out of order telling is used to reflect both F***Head's way of thinking and his life. It is narrated by the main character F***Head whose real name we never do find out. The narrating keeps you in touch with F***Head and really helps to make him likable. You can see that he's not a mean person, only a screwup. This is a dark movie interspersed with moments of humor after which reality usually comes crashing back down. It's a lot like a drug trip itself. For a drug addicted loser, F***Head comes off as a very likable character. The movie is basically the story of F***Head's search for what is missing in his life, what his soul is craving. He spent many years looking for it in drugs, but the highs from the drugs were only temporary. Finally he moves on and starts taking control of his life little by little. Billy Crudup does a great job in this roll making such a pathetic character likable. Also look for Denis's Leary and Hopper as well as Holly Hunter.

DVD Quality: Widescreen anamorphic - 2.35:1, DD2.0 The trailer is the only extra. The picture quality is ok. The sound is DD2.0 but this isn't a movie that needs great sound.

What You Should Do: Check this out if you can handle the offbeat and different. There is a lot of drug use so steer clear if you don't like that. This is not a movie that hits you over the head with a message. You will have to get that out of it by yourself.

Related Movies To Check Out: Drugstore Cowboy, Sid and Nancy, Traffic, Outside Providence

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dark laughter: tears: redemption
Review: 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: 5 stars
Summary: ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT
Review: Oscar Award shows come and go and pass up so many unbelievable movies which deserve Oscar's, JESUS' SON is one of those many films. This film is one terrific ride with alot of dark comedy to make you laugh but still focuses on a very serious subject drug addiction. Billy Crudup (of the most recent film ALMOST FAMOUS) delivers an nothing less than brilliant performance and the ordeals of his crazy life. Some unforgettable scenes make this one of the greatest original films of the past decades. Be warned watch out for parasailing nude ladiess. Watch the film and you will know .

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Why You Should See This Movie
Review: Simply stated, here are a few reasons why you might watch Jesus' Son. This movie is about drug culture. This movie doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a humorous but passionate look about drugs, modern culture, responsibility, religion etc. The movie is well done in terms of the writing, and has a certain artistic movie film quality, which I suppose is more a product of the budget than the talent of the shoot.

Just another great movie that many people didn't hear about or get a chance to see.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Terrific film will put you through a heroin wringer
Review: Taking cues from the Velvet Underground psychedelic epic "Heroin", from which the phrase "Jesus' Son" was extracted, this film is likewise hallucinogenic, perplexing, fragmented, and disjointed. The messiness of its episodic structure gives the film its genuine feel of a story being told by a heroin survivor who is confused about whether the surreal events in his memories really happened or not, and even more confused about how he got to be involved with those events. The main character, known only as F**khead, reminded me of the sweet-natured and clueless James LeGros character in Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy", who followed Matt Dillon everywhere only because it allowed him the convenience of avoiding making any of his own decisions. In fact, this film will likely draw many comparisons to "Drugstore Cowboy" (and maybe even to "My Own Private Idaho", also by Van Sant) since they're both road movies set in the early 70's and they're both clearly indifferent to the morality of hard drug use. The best parts of the film are F**khead's bizarre adventures, with the most memorable taking place in an emergency ward where F**khead had been hired on as an orderly, and where he considers his regularly raids into the prescription drawers as a job perk. The funniest movie line of the year also takes place in this scene ("Patient complains of a knife in the head."). The film does lose some steam at the end and why the final scenes were still so perplexing and episodic when F**khead was sober is, well, perplexing. I realize the film is based on several loosely related short stories (by Denis Johnson), so the script can't help but offer vignettes, but I think Maclean could have made some different stylistic decisions near the end of the film.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Captures the flavor and freedom of early-70's cinema
Review: This film isn't perfect but it is wonderfully-original and refreshing. The acting is excellent, the story is fractured but interesting, and there's not a cliche to be found. Watching the film, I found it interesting that while the film takes place in the early 70's, it also reflects the freedom given to directors back then in that post-"Easy Rider"/pre-blockbuster era. I'm a little amazed that a movie this off-the-wall and different could be made these days but I'm glad it was.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The real deal - profound and entertaining
Review: 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 year, Billy Crudup's performance is the best. Hopefully he will soon achieve the widespread recognition he deserves. The entire cast performs admirably, every actor gets at least one scene to shine, with Crudup providing the link from one to the next. My favorite scene was Dennis Hopper's - his final line speaks volumes about life and death and the human condition.

The direction is self assured and impressive. There is not much self conscious camera trickery, and when it is used, it is to good effect. The soundtrack is another stong point, all of the songs enhance the mood of the scene perfectly.

Jesus' Son reminds me of last year's Bringing Out the Dead in the way it subtly reveals so much about the nature of redemption and the beauty that can be found in life if you just allow yourself to see it. Also, this is one of the few movies that gets better the more you think about it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A strange but very good movie
Review: This movie is funny, sad, and interesting. The movie maintaines a certain sense of reality. What I mean is that the movie rides the rollercoaster of our lives. Sometimes up, sometimes down, and sometimes somewhere in between.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A strange but very good movie
Review: This movie is funny, sad, and interesting. The movie maintaines a certain sense of reality. What I mean is that the movie rides the rollercoaster of our lives. Sometimes up, sometimes down, and sometimes somewhere in between.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: the early 70s, told "look at me i'm fabulous" late-90s style
Review: This was a huge disappointment. It tries to be oh-so-cool in depicting early 70s America. The big problem, though, is that this film applies today's standards of glamour and self-induced fabulousness, which I found throughly distracting and annoying.

It's basically about a sexy, Midwestern Forrest Gump.

Stick with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman films from the early 70s. Those are the real deal.


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