Jesus' Son

Set in the '70s Midwest, in the down-and-out backwaters of anomie, bad drugs, and petty crime, Alison Maclean's adaptation of Denis Johnson's spare, spooky short-story collection relates elliptical events in the life of the narrator known only as "Fuckhead" (Billy Crudup), a drug-addled drifter drawn to Michelle (Samantha Morton), a fellow casualty of ennui and chaos. Despite Morton's visceral performance, she's less of a presence than the sometimes heavy-handed messianic iconography. Crudup and director Maclean come close to re-creating Johnson's epiphanies, but it's the hyperkinetic Jack Black as Georgie, Fuckhead's co-worker in a hospital ER, who brings the film to life; his moments involving a man admitted with a hunting knife protruding from his eye, or featuring a litter of baby bunnies and a mystical drive-in theater, capture the poetry and the dark hilarity of Johnson's original. At the Avon.
-- Peter Keough