This ran in the UFS series at the Carmike, too. I missed it then, but luckily it came out the next week on video, because it turned out to be rather enjoyable -- a less frenetic, more lyrical, bucolic, Americanized Trainspotting. Billy Crudup, looking a lot like his Almost Famous character from the same early-'70s period would after losing his record contract, plays an itinerant Iowa heroin addict whom we never hear called anything but -- I can't say it here, but it rhymes with Buckhead, so that's what we'll christen him. Buckhead (did you know there's a metal guitarist who calls himself Buckethead? He played on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack; see what you miss if you throw away the little trivia cards that come inside Cracker Jacks without reading them?) introduces himself to strangers thusly: "I don't have a job, and I smoke cigarettes." It's difficult to tell if his permanent haze is entirely drug-induced or at least partly natural, but he's an otherwise likable guy capable of spinning a convoluted narrative that's all the more engaging for his proclivity to lose track, double back, and bounce around in time a lot (and no, I don't use heroin too, so give me a break; I did drink a whole bottle of sweet cherry-flavored codeine cough syrup when I was four, but they pumped my stomach, so most of the effects weren't pernament).
Buckhead supports his habit by doing odd jobs, such as helping his junkie friend Wayne (Denis Leary) tear up Wayne's own house to get the pipes and wiring for scrap copper. Despite calling him Buckhead, Buckhead's friends seem to like him enough. But even his pleasant junkie girlfriend Michelle (Samantha Morton, who was Oscar-nominated for playing a mute in Sweet and Lowdown; it's good to hear her talking) realizes that everyone and everything he touches eventually meets with disaster. When Michelle gets pregnant and he lands a real job as a midnight ER orderly, he almost settles down like a normal person but his whacked-out gonzo coworker Georgie (Jack Black) makes it tough, what with Georgie's talent for breaking into the pharmacy. (Warning: if your tolerance for shocking scenes, however goofy, doesn't rate at least five on a scale of 10, you might want to keep your eyes closed for all of Black's appearances. A couple things happen when he's around that you just wouldn't believe. But another sequence he's in is startlingly beautiful -- a snowstorm at an abandoned drive-in theater -- so...forget I said anything.) Naturally he screws up that gig too.
I don't want to give away the curiously uplifting ending. Suffice it to say Jesus' Son is also like Trainspotting in that odd characters continually show up, some die and the rest don't, but they're all memorable (Will Patton and Dennis Hopper have brief walk-ons, and Holly Hunter does a more substantial turn that's still stuck in my head). The whole thing is summed up by an old gospel standard that turns up at a pivotal juncture: "Farther along we'll know more about it; farther along we'll understand why." It's a nice thought, anyway. B+