Jennifer Garner was snubbed for an Oscar Nod

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2014)

Dallas Buyers Club is not my kind of film. It's very hard to watch in some places, but what makes it so good are the performances. This has probably been said time and time again about this film and no doubt since two of the actors have won Oscars AND Golden Globes. McConaughey is almost unrecognizable, and a revelation as Woodroof. The hunky charismatic RomCom leading man is nowhere to be found here. Instead he is a hard drinking, smoking,womanizing slime-ball, who quite honestly deserves what he gets, AIDS. What the film does that I am not sure really happened is attempts to humanize Woodroof by giving him a companion in his drug buying business, a transvestite named Rayon, played by Jared Leto. Leto is also a revelation is this role. He plays Rayon with conviction and sensitivity, and at some points had me choked up. The relationship between Woodroof and Rayon becomes the main relationship of the film, and these two people really do come to care for each other. Jennifer Garner, as a sympathetic doctor who befriends Woodroof and Rayon is the other standout in this film, and personally i feel like she was snubbed for an Oscar nod. She has several standout scenes in the film, and holds her own with both Leto and McConaughey who are both playing at 100% at all times. Denis O'Hare and Michael O'Neill round out the cast as essentially villains of the piece, and each play their roles well too. O'Hare's character, a doctor, is only acting out of the fear and prejudice of the times, not knowing what AIDS is and what it can do. McConaughey's Woodroof is acting out of desperation, also for the same reasons, so obviously these two characters clash. O'Neill is an FDA agent who is determined to keep Woodroof down, but amazingly he perseveres. What this script does is take an unlikable man and humanizes him to make him likable and it succeeds. Somebody should have just given Garner an Oscar Nod!