Featuring: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner, Denis O’Hare
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack
Movie website: www.focusfeatures.com/dallas_buyers_club
Australian release date: Thursday 13 Feb, 2014

Reviewers’ verdicts:
rolanstein: An absorbing biopic, elevated by superb lead and support performances from Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto respectively.
Karen: Quite good.

Story:
Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) is a hard-livin’ Texan cowboy who contracts HIV/AIDS from an intravenous drug-using rodeo groupie, and is given 30 days to live. Refusing to accept the prognosis and rejecting approved drug treatments, he seeks more effective alternative medicines from outside the US. With his health improving under self-treatment, he forms an unlikely but pragmatically necessary business alliance with transvestite Rayon, distributing unapproved drugs to other HIV/AIDS sufferers via a lucrative Dallas-based ‘buyers club’.

Review 1: (rolanstein)
As depicted prior to his HIV/AIDS diagnosis, Ron Woodroof is a bronco-ridin’ hard-drinkin’ foul-cussin’ coke-sniffin’ rodeo-groupie-ruttin’ hell-raisin’ devil-may-care Southern boy. A blockhead macho arsehole, in other words, complete with all the attitudes that attend that condition, including rampant homophobia. The movie is set in the 80s, a time when HIV/AIDS is widely perceived to be a “gay disease”, and of no concern, therefore, to assertively hetero anti-faggot crew like Ron and his mates. Continue reading Dallas Buyers Club Movie Review →

Featuring: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey
Director: Richard Linklater
Writers: Richard Linklater, Skip Hollandsworth
Australian release date: August 16, 2012
Website: www.madman.com.au/catalogue/view/18413/bernie
Reviewer: rolanstein

Story:
In the small rural Texan town of Carthage, affable local mortician, Sunday school teacher, church choir member and all-round sweet-tempered popular guy Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) strikes up an unlikely friendship with wealthy, irascible, reclusive elderly widow Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). Bernie moves in with the widder as full-time companion, and soon finds himself at her beck and call. Continue reading Bernie Movie Review →