One Category at a Time: Original Screenplay

This category seems pretty up in the air if you ask me. With neither of the two strongest Best Picture nominees in contention here, it feels as though this prize could go a few different ways. A similar situation arose last year when Django Unchained, Amour, and Zero Dark Thirty all seemed to have an angle in this race because none of them had a hope of actually winning Best Picture (whose highest contenders were adaptations). I can also envision three of this year's nominees as potential winners, so let's start with the one I am picking (with trepidation) for the win.

Review - Dallas Buyers Club

The year is 1985, and Texan electrician Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) sits frozen on a hospital bed, paralyzed for a moment in stubborn disbelief at the life-changing news he's just received: He's not going to live to see 1986. He's not even going to live to see the end of the month, as the calendar on the wall of his trailer reminds him with a sting. He's contracted HIV, and at a time when the virus is so misunderstood and under-researched that odds of surviving the next 30 days are slim.

Forced to confront his own misconceptions about the disease and the prejudices of his so-called “friends”, Ron remarkably manages to turn his darkest hour into the most meaningful seven years of his life, as he uses his considerable wiles to acquire all manner of unapproved but effective treatments to keep himself – along with hundreds of other AIDS patients – alive to fight another day. He founds the Dallas Buyers Club, also the title of this terrific new film that chronicles his true story, so that sufferers can circumvent the FDA's corrupt regulations and receive symptom-relieving drugs directly from Ron's makeshift office/motel room.