Jean-Marc Vallée: Dallas Buyers Club

Jean-Marc Vallée's Dallas Buyers Club (2013) feels like a certain type of late 1960s or 1970s film, anywhere between Midnight Cowboy (1969), Mean Streets (1973) and Wise Blood (1979). It's compelling, with a mix of seedy backdrops and driven characters trying to find a cure, or at least ways to contain, AIDS and its deadly effects. This would make a good second film in a double feature with David France's 2012 documentary How to Survive a Plague. Starts in and around Dallas, Texas, in 1985. Excellent period details -- including a key library scene featuring a microfiche reader. R-rated due, no doubt, to glimpses of drug use, raw sex and colorful Texas-style language, with some violence. The actors: all in high form. 

Today's Rune: Defense.