Editor's note: Supa Hot Fire is a guest reviewer who likes to provide his take on films. He is a "hater" at his core and will often find only the flaws in films. His reviews may contain mature content and/or language intended only for mature aduiences; reader discretion is advised. His reviews and opinions do not reflect the views and opinions of the owner of this blog.
Rating: Hilarious/5
I was originally tricked into watching this film because I thought it was about an awesome new superhero. To prevent this from happening again, the movie should be renamed "Dumb Dude Gets Eaten by a Bear". It would have been a way better title, and some of you uncultured people would have seen it by now. Who should watch "Grizzly Man", you ask?
People who hate hippies
People who love the outdoors and hate hippies
People who enjoy great narrators and hate hippies
People who like seeing somebody get their comeuppance
People who think Timothy Treadwell was a jackass (Warning: This will be you within 10 minutes of the film)
Bear enthusiasts
Since that list has covered just about everybody, I'm going to assume you stopped reading and watched "Grizzly Man". If you haven't, I know a guy who will lend you his copy (Mike Harrington). So, now that everybody has seen the film, wasn't it awesome? More appropriate titles would have been "Nature Kills Hippie" or maybe "Werner Herzog Makes Dead Guy's Friends Relive His Death". What gets a little lost in the fixation on Treadwell's ludicrous assertion that the bears love him, is the love story of a 46-year-old moron and 37-year-old physician assistant/moron, Amie Huguenard. It's the story of a man that believes wild bears know who he is and the woman who loved him so much she knowingly put herself in harm's path for that love. Isn't that what we're all searching for, the kind of love that lets you get eaten by a bear together? People may call me insensitive, but this is nature's ultimate triumph, removing two imbeciles from the gene pool before they could pollute it. Bravo to nature for reminding us not to screw with it in the most hilariously appropriate way possible. This all boils down to what makes this movie so enjoyable: Schadenfreude delivered by a man who's country created it.
Having won Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, and having been released yesterday, I decided to give "Dallas Buyers Club" my attention for two hours last night. Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey) is a rodeo cowboy and oil rig electrician in Texas who finds out he's not only HIV positive, but that it has progressed to AIDS. Now, in 1985, for a rough and tough Texas cowboy to find out he has a disease largely associated with the homosexual community, it's probably a bit like being a blind white-supremacist and then finding out you're black. Woodruff is given 30 days to live and told there are no drugs he can take to get better. Upset with his doctors and his situation, Woodruff decides to take matters into his own hands; he begins importing drugs and then giving them away to members who pay to be part of his club. He runs the Dallas Buyers Club with the help of Rayon, a transgender woman played by Jared Leto. Rayon and Woodruff met while getting treatment from Dr. Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) at Dallas Mercy Hospital. Leto, McConaughey, and Garner all do a wonderful job portraying their characters; which is nice because character study films are only enjoyable when the people playing the characters are believable. When I think about who should win Best Actor, I'm picking between McConaughey and Chiwetel Ejiofor from "12 Years a Slave". They both deserve recognition for driving the action in their films. I'd compare McConauhey to Peyton Manning and Ejiofor to Tom Brady: McConaughey delivers a stunning performance with a phenomenal supporting cast, but Ejiofor gets overlooked while doing more-with-less than most could. I'm not saying the supporting cast of "12 Years a Slave" is poor, far from it, what I'm saying is that Ejiofor brings the rest of the cast up to his level in his performance. Leto is believable as the drug-addled trans woman, but he wasn't the best supporting actor of the year; Barkhad Abdi was in "Captain Phillips". I don't know what the message is when playing a transgender woman pretty much gets you the award, but I know the same thing occurs when you play somebody with a mental illness. Regardless, Leto is superb, just not more essential to the film or its cast than Abdi's pirate, Muse. People I've talked to say they have little interest in "Dallas Buyers Club" because it's depressing. Truth be told, the movie isn't depressing, it's empowering. It's the tale of a man who decided to take life by the horns and ride it out on his own terms.
