Movies You May Have Missed - #5 The Cure (1995)

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This little forgotten film from 1995 stars Joseph Mazzello (Jurassic Park) and the late Brad Renfro (The Client, Sleepers) as two young boys who set off down the Mississippi River to find a cure for AIDS, a disease which the Mazzello character suffers from. This story could have been ripe fodder for a bad TV movie, but instead becomes much more.
Peter Horton, a frequent TV director of shows like thirtysomething and The Wonder Years, made his first and only theatrical feature with this film, and it's a shame that he's yet to make another. His direction is confident and assured, and he shows a particular strength for directing the young actors in the film. The screenplay by Robert Kuhn thankfully sidesteps melodrama and theatrics, and remains simple, nuanced, and deeply moving. So it's similarly puzzling that Kuhn has also disappeared from features, having co-written only one film since this.
Mazzello and Renfro are terrifically cast, and are able to lift already good scenes off the page and turn them into sensational, heartbreaking moments.
This movie was barely a blip on the radar back in 1995, barely making back its minuscule $3 million budget. But today it stands, in my opinion, right up alongside Stand By Me as one of the best films about childhood - and friendship - ever made.