With Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto winning best actor and best supporting actor from numerous awards groups, they are the unquestioned frontrunners in the Oscar race. McConaughey famously lost more than 40 pounds to portray real-life AIDS victim Ron Woodruff. The Dallas resident refused to see his disease as a death sentence and began smuggling experimental medications into the U.S., then selling them to others with HIV. Leto plays a transgender woman who was created by screenwriters as a composite of numerous people in Woodruff’s life. 

Director Paul Greengrass offered a remarkable look at the 9/11 terrorist attacks in his 2006 film “United 93,” and he tackles another real-life event with “Captain Phillips.” The movie, which is terrific in every sense, focuses on the 2009 Indian Ocean hijacking of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama. During that incident, Somali pirates boarded the vessel and then took Captain Richard Phillips hostage.