Let's Go for a Walk

Film: Wild
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are a few movies in my Oscar list that I’ve come close to watching several times and have just never gotten to. Wild is one of those movies; I’ve checked it out of the library on several occasions and always returned it unwatched. In fact, that almost happened this time, too. I had to renew this to avoid either paying a fine or having to check it out again in the future.

It’s also worth noting that my immediate association to this film was not the expected Into the Wild, but with my internet buddy Kevin, who once thought to walk across the U.S. and made it through the state of Washington before being sidelined by medical issues. The difference is that Kevin wasn’t walking as some sort of redemption for having his life devolve into meaningless sex and heroin.

Aid for AIDS

Film: Dallas Buyers Club
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

So let’s get one thing straight right off the start: I am not a major believer in Matthew McConaughey. I feel about him about the same way I do Clive Owen or Colin Farrell. I’m suspicious of anything he’s in until I have a good reason not to be. So when McConaughey won the Best Actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, I had hopes that I might like him in this, but I didn’t know for sure.

This is the allegedly true story of Ron Woodroof (McConaughey), who was diagnosed with HIV and eventually AIDS in the mid-1980s, back when the disease was still considered both a gay disease and was almost completely misunderstood. Woodroof is given 30 days to live by Dr. Sevard (Dennis O’Hare) and Dr. Saks (Jennifer Garner). Convinced at first that he has been misdiagnosed, Ron eventually comes to understand that his condition almost certainly came through unprotected sex with an intravenous drug using prostitute. Determined to outlive his 30 day death sentence, Ron learns of experimental trials of AIDS drug AZT and bribes a hospital worker to give him the real drugs.