Dallas Buyers Club (2013 Nominee)

Blue-collar man Ron Woodruff lives a life of hard work and harder partying, including drug use and casual sex. This lifestyle catches up with him in the worst way when he is diagnosed with HIV and only given thirty days to live. Ron’s research into a cure leads him to discover that AZT, the drug most commonly used to treat his symptoms, is in fact still in the clinical trial stages in the US and does more harm than good. With the help of an uneasy partnership with Rayon, a transvestite with better contacts with AIDS patients due to his ties in the gay community, Ron imports and distributes more effective drugs that are not approved by the FDA.

This movie was an excellent tool for Matthew McConaughey to flex his acting muscles.  But I'll let Tim elaborate on that.  Dallas Buyers Club showed the struggle with AIDS patients trying to get drugs that were actually going to help instead of the (at the time) experimental doses of AZT.  The movie begins with some pretty gruesome sex scenes and you think it's going to be another Philadelphia but it's more about healthcare.  I find this to be an extremely relevant film with all the growing changes (not all for the better) with our current healthcare system.  It's about getting the people the medicine and the care they deserve.  The hoops that McConaughey jumps through just to stay alive are unbelievable, flying to foreign countries and dressing up in costumes.  He starts the Dallas Buyers Club selling memberships, not drugs.  Part of the membership is access to the drugs HIV and AIDS patients can actually use to delay the course of their disease.  This movie was a hard pill to swallow but it is worth it.  It's amazing that so many true stories are out there and how many have yet to be told. 

I recently got into a Facebook debate with a friend of a friend because he basically claimed that Matthew McConaughey was an illegitimate actor and I defended the hell out of him. Just a handful of years ago, with the exception of great turns in the criminally underrated Frailty and Tropic Thunder, I probably would have agreed with him. Good news for us, he finally seems to have gotten tired of starring in *ahem* “films” like Failure to Launch and Sahara. Since 2011’s The Lincoln Lawyer, virtually every performance and film he’s been a part of has been fantastic and it now seems that McConaughey is not only on a trajectory to win his first Oscar this year but also to be one of the best and bravest actors out there today. Dallas Buyers Club seems like a latecomer to the Oscar party that slipped under a lot of radars but it has a well-deserved place in this year’s race. The Best Actor category is filled with stiff competition, but McConaughey’s nuanced performance conveys an incredibly believable desperation to live as he faces misplaced homophobia, frustrating red tape and physical deterioration. His performance is not the only one that drives Dallas Buyers Club; Jared Leto’s gender-bending role which tops McConaughey’s in the realm of scary real-life weight loss is a lock for Best Supporting Actor. While I’m a bit disappointed that another McConaughey film Mud was not nominated for Best Picture this year, this film tells a compelling and important story with a surprising relevance as millions still struggle to get the medicine and healthcare that they need. McConaughey will likely be catapulted into a new stratosphere quite literally as he stars next in the untouchable Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi film Interstellar, and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.

Matthew McConaughey lost 47 pounds in assuming his role as an AIDS patient. Newspapers reported his new looks as "terribly gaunt" and "wasting away to skin and bones".

Rog: Who the hell's Rock Hudson?

Clint: He's an actor, dumbass. Haven't you seen North By Northwest?