Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

Playing a very unlikable chracter with a drastically thinned body, Matthew McConaughey captures the Academy Award.  He has shed his bubble gum romantic comedy persona and become downright gritty.  I found him annoying before and unlikable now--but in the former role you were suposed to love him and now that is not the case, so he is on the right track as far as I am concerned.

The movie is based on the real-life story of Ron Woodroof,  a homophobic redneck who was diagnosed HIV-positive in the mid-80s, and responding badly to AZT (at that time, the only officially approved medication), Woodroof circumvented FDA regulations by importing unlicensed drugs that he distributed through a club, which charged an "admission fee" but distributed medication without an additional cost. The operation was a scam, but the results were impressive, as David France's Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague powerfully points out; people with HIV/AIDS often knew what was good for them, self-medication playing a key role in the fight against the disease. While the FDA was methodical in responding to new treatments, it was those with no time to lose who were at the cutting edge of research and buyers clubs played a significant (if controversial) part in that process.

McConaughey's Ron has a business partnership with pre-op transgendered AIDS patient Rayon (Jared Leto); a committed bigot, Woodroof needs a way into the gay community and Rayon is his passport to monetary reward. Only later, when business is booming, does something approaching friendship emerge – in the beginning, it's strictly business.  In the end, there is real sadness when Rayon doesn't make it.  The movie is a wonderful retelling of the networks and strange bedfellows that the early days of the AIDS epidemic fostered before HIV became a chronic illness rather than a death sentence.