Not that anyone needs reminding but Dallas Buyer’s Club has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating. That makes it required viewing this weekend if you live in New York or Los Angeles, where the Focus Features release is now playing. I’ve seen it twice and I’m actually thinking about going a third time tomorrow or Sunday on my own dime. I’m figuring there’s a little more juice to be squeezed out of the rag. In terms of my own viewing excitement, I mean. The movie has obvious potential to be nominated in at least three or four categories — Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, etc.

“The Toronto response was that Buyers is a very good film containing two award-calibre performances — Matthew McConaughey‘s as Ron Woodruff, the real-life Texan who became a renegade supplier of unapproved AIDS-fighting medications after being diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1986, and Jared Leto‘s as Rayon, Woodruff’s drag-queen ally who helps him with distribution among the gay community,” I wrote on 10.18. “But I changed my mind after seeing it again last at the Academy. Because it sank in deeper and I teared up a bit.

“Jean-Marc Vallee‘s disciplined direction and Craig Borten and Melissa Wallack‘s tightly woven but natural-flowing screenplay deliver a compelling humanist current. I came away thinking that this has to be in the Best Picture arena. I was too whipped to absorb it fully in Toronto. Seeing it fresh and rested last night turned things around.”