This is a tour de force for the ever-evolving Matthew McConaughey as a 1980s AIDS patient working the system to survive. Jared Leto is also terrific as his cross-dressing cohort. McConaughey (last in Mud) gives us the complete transformation of the based-on-real-life Ron Woodroof, starting with the actor's loss of almost 40 pounds to play the emaciated part, and his character's maturing from a womanizing homophobic SOB to one who cares for others with his shared disease. Leto (what I've seen of his work is unforgettable: Winona Ryder's boyfriend in Girl, Interrupted (1999), the lead Harry Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream (2000), and one of the scary guys in Panic Room (2000)) lost 30 pounds himself and dons big-hair wigs, eyeshadow, platforms, miniskirts, and other garb of the fashion-backward 1980s to inhabit the desperate Rayon.
French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée (The Young Victoria) ably helms from a script by Craig Borten (his first) and Melisa Wallack (her third but she's new to me). No composer is listed, but the album (including a song from Leto's band Thirty Seconds to Mars) will benefit AIDS research.
Jack and I are thinking this is Oscar bait for McConaughey. Don't just listen to us--reviewers on rottentomatoes average 95% and audiences 93!
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