I was determined to walk to and from the cinema this evening, since Dallas Buyers Club, which opened today, is showing practically everywhere. I originally thought to go to the Odeon Kensington, which is the closest to work, but then thought - why don't I go to the Vue Fulham instead, since I've discovered it's the closest to home? I can then use my Vue gift card - my Secret Santa present.
The irony - that the day the Tube strike is suspended is the day I don't take public transport at all - was not lost on me. But it was a lovely evening, despite storms elsewhere and rain in London earlier in the day - and a good chance to check out Fulham Broadway. I had checked my route on Google Maps, and despite being in unfamiliar territory, didn't get lost. And goodness, so many bars and restaurants! It's always good to know what facilities are near you.
The Vue Fulham is in a shopping centre, which was to prove handy afterwards for eating and getting cash, but for the moment, once I arrived, I headed straight for the cinema. Just as well I didn't dawdle - I had to queue, and the person at the till took forever to process my card. And promptly forgot to take for the sweeties I'd bought as well, to use the full value of the card. So the program had started by the time I got in, but never mind. One thing that did annoy me was that the whole centre of the cinema was given over to VIP seats. Really, do they ever sell so many? The other thing that annoyed me was the couple behind me, who brought lots of rustly things with them, and slurpy drinks, and he insisted on putting his feet in such a position that if I leaned to the left, I'd get kicked. (We were both on the aisle.) Anyway, the slurping and rustling didn't go on for too long, and I kept out of the way of his feet!
This film is based on the true story of a fellow from Dallas - played by a haggard Matthew McConaughey - who contracts AIDS in 1985, and, unable to get the medication he needs, sets about finding a way to procure it for himself and others. Selling unapproved drugs is illegal, but he hears about a scheme hatched elsewhere, where people set up a club to which sufferers can pay membership, and then get the drugs for free. And that is what he does! Jennifer Garner plays his sympathetic doctor (my, it's been so long since I saw her in anything, I actually couldn't remember her name until I saw it in the credits). Denis O' Hare is her unsympathetic boss (a far cry from when I last saw him, as a vampire in True Blood!) A practically unrecognisable Jared Leto, in drag, plays the gay AIDS patient who helps Matthew McConaughey to set up his business. Steve Zahn plays Matthew McConaughey's pal, who goes right off him when he finds out he has AIDS.
I was shaken, coming out of this. I'd forgotten what it was like in the 80s, as I was growing up, when AIDS was new and nobody knew how to fight it. All these desperate people getting sick, no way to help them, protests, new drugs being rushed through, skeletal figures with huge blotches on their skin. Hollow eyes. Support groups with shrines to deceased members. "The gay plague", they used to call it.
This film is really, really good. It's funny, it's moving. It's very true to the time. We're rooting for him the whole way, of course. And it's amazing, afterwards, to think just how good the acting had to be to pull this off. A stunner of a film. It'd probably be a shoe-in for Best Picture at the Oscars, if not for 12 Years a Slave.
Had a bite to eat in the Nando's in the centre, afterwards, which was excellent, except that the mash was a bit burnt around the edges. Tomorrow, a film again, is looking like Lift to the Scaffold, or Ascenseur pour l' Échafaud, in the BFI. Louis Malle's first film, it made a star of Jeanne Moreau, and has been claimed as "the birth of cool". We shall see, eh?
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