Finally watched Dallas Buyer's Club.
I didn't see Leo in Wolf of Wall Street, but dayum, he woulda had to go for broke to beat what I saw Matt Mc do in DBC. He was good. He was really, really good. And it didn't feel like acting; he just seemed to melt into the character.
As far as Leto goes: I thought it a decent performance. I actually did see "Rayon" and not Leto, I thought of him as "her" throughout the movie without even thinking of him as a him... and it was jarring to see Rayon in a suit at one point as well as getting called "him" by the medical staff (as, thirty years ago, that was pretty much the state of things in terms of public trans understanding -- to much of the world you were still a "guy" with an odd identity, and legally you were male until surgery, and sometimes always legally male). Leto also had a great voice, something that you usually don't see with guys playing females; heck, even some trans females don't have as convincing voices.
My only big issue with Leto winning is that I didn't see the competition, and Rayon really doesn't appear much in the movie, nor has many scenes to really do something spectacular. There's a moment here, a moment there, where Rayon gets to shine; but it's all rather brief. I guess the strongest thing to say is that I saw Rayon as a real person and not as the actor playing her, it's hard for me afterwards to think that Rayon doesn't exist and was just a character in a movie.
Still not exactly sure why the trans community got its panties bunched in a wad over this, unless it is comments by Leto outside of the movie that people felt were not accurate about the trans community. {EDIT: Looking back, looks like maybe the Golden Globes speech?} I mean, watching it -- I got the impression that Rayon is one of those transsexuals who has a kind of "queen" presentation. She has some of the hallmarks of the drag queens, but not nearly as outlandish and crazy; she still seemed "female" to me rather than drag queen. Dil from "The Crying Game" is kind of in the same boat, just more refined, tbh; there's some flair normally associated with the queens, but the character is "normal feminine" in the overall scheme of things, so transsexual is still believable. When watching Rayon, I saw a woman with some exhibitionist/draggy tendencies, not a drag queen. But the mainstream non-performer crowd transsexuals usually just scan as cisgen women in their approach to femininity. The most touching moments in the movie were Rayon acting just like any other woman/person would and momentarily dropping any of her "queenie" bravado.
Anyway, I think the community really just flipped out over this and lost some ground publicly because of it. Leto gave a great performance, and the character was a just a character - it wasn't supposed to be representative of the entire community. But I'll have to go look up Leto's commentary elsewhere, to see if that was what ticked people off.
I also should say that Jennifer Garner did a really nice job too; she felt like your average, normal human being, and relaxed in a way I haven't always seen her. Nor was she cast as the beautiful lead / centerpiece.
