HOLY ROLLERS Samantha Morton and Billy Crudup in Jesus' Son.

Salvation comes in the strangest places. This was especially true in the 1970s, a decade of strange places. The drug-addict hero of Jesus' Son. played by Billy Crudup. is so literally and spiritually anesthetized that it takes something as piercing as a grieving woman's screams to jolt him into the world outside his overly medicated cerebellum. “What a pair of lungs,” he tells us. “It felt great to be alive to hear it.” Well, that’s a start. Director Alison Maclean has managed the rare feat of turning literary conceits Jesus’ Son is based on the collection of linked short stories by Denis Johnson into film poetry. Samantha Morton. Jack Black, and Denis Leary are superb in supporting roles, while Crudup's performance suggests what Keanu Reeves might be like if he could act. But I've done the movie a disservice by not yet mentioning how funny most of it is. (Rating: ★★★'/)