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Pretty Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

This is a movie that I may have missed had Richard Jenkins not received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. One is use to seeing Jenkins as a character actor (as in Burn After Reading, for example) but in this movie, director Tom McCarthy gives him the leading role. Here, we see him as Professor Walter Valer, a man who is visibly depressed, apathetic, and curt with others. His wife has recently died and he lives alone. He wants to learn to play the piano but seems to have no aptitude for music. When he is asked to present a paper at a conference in NYC, he begs off, claiming that he has to stay in Connecticut to teach his class and work on his book. But, his excuses don't work and he reluctantly goes to the conference.When he enters his own New York City apartment, he finds two foreigners living there: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), an Arab from Syria, and his girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Jekesai Gurira),a black African from Senegal. (They had been tricked into renting the apartment by one of Tarek's friends who, obviously, had no right to rent it.) Walter tells them that they can stay the night there even though they are all a bit distrustful of each other. The relationship between Tarek and Walter slowly thaws due to Tarek's warm personality and Walter's interest in watching Tarek play the African drum. Walter's interest in the drum increases when he is invited to see Tarek play at a local jazz club and even join he and his friends as they play their drums in the park. (Though we barely see depression lifting from Walter's face, it is evident that he has found something uplifting with his 'visitor's presence and something important in playing the drum.) One day as Walter and Tarek are boarding the subway with their drums, Tarek is suddenly arrested and imprisoned for no apparent reason. Walter is helpless in trying to help Tarek, but soon learns that both of his 'visitors' are in the country illegally. After Tarek is imprisoned, Zainab leaves the apartment to live with a girlfriend. Walter calls Tarek's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), in Detroit. When she arrives, Walter invites her to stay until she can find a hotel. They soon develop a warm relationship as they attempt to help Tarek with his problems. But, the help is to no avail as Tarek is deported and Mouna must return to mascus. This is a good story and Richard Jenkins's acting is impressive as a man who overcomes his isolation from life with the help of 'the visitor' that briefly enter his life, needs his help, and leaves him with the rhythmic gift of the drum.

"The Visitor" is a movie which has to do with a man who has a house in New York but he does not leave there and he had a long time to return to it. When he returns due to a conference he find a couple living into it and we watch what is going on and what will happen next. Also we observe how this will affect the relationship between those people and how this will happen when they decide to move in together.I liked this movie because it shows us how three different people affect one to each other and how this relationship works with the passage of time. I also liked this movie because of the interpretation of Richard Jenkins who plays as Walter the man who wants to attend a conference and I also liked the interpretation of Haaz Sleiman who plays as Tarek one person of the couple who moved in the apartment of Walter.Finally I have to say that "The Visitor" is a really nice movie and I believe that it had to give us many things about the relationships between people and how these affect the personalities of them.

Every time I saw a movie with Richard Jenkins, I asked myself why on earth a wonderfully talented actor like him never plays leading roles. He is one of my favorite actors and this film proves why.The Visitor is a well made film that covers a disturbing but very important subject, which is a sad reality in many countries, specially in the U.S. and Europe. Yes, it made me cry. But it also made me happy because it shows what I believe, i.e. that there some Walters (played by Richard Jenkins) out there that are not indifferent and, without knowing it, are willing to be moved inside and by opening themselves to a different reality experience a broadening of their horizons. It's also a film about solitude, a man in search of a meaning for his life and the apparent impossibility to get what one wants, which makes us reflect about what things are the most important and what we actually should live for.Despite being "simple", it's one of the best films I have seen in the last years.

Sensitive or condescending, depending on your point of view, Thomas McCarthy's "The Visitor" stars Richard Jenkins as a grumpy, white, elderly American who cuts himself off from other human beings and begins to fester in his own morbid isolation.Underlit, obvious and poorly shot, the film then watches as Jenkins connects with a series of ethnic minorities, all of whom are denied the privileges afforded to white power, and all of whom face unfair persecution in the wake of both 9/11 and George Bush's subsequent roll out of liberty-squashing, executive measures. Much of the film watches as Jenkins tentatively dips his toes in foreign cultures, learns to appreciate the simple joys of other human beings and learns to love Islamic immigrants.Jenkins' forced isolation, a kind of self persecution which he applies to himself due to the passing of his wife, is then mirrored to the "actual" isolation/persecution suffered by ethnic minorities at the hands of white power.While the film does well to humanize Palestinians, Syrians and Senegalese, there's something patronizing about framing this tale as a white man's journey. And for all its heavy handed symbolism, it's a simple line of dialogue in the film which touches us the most: "Don't forget about me in here," a Palestinian-Syrian man pleads, as he's locked away in a windowless detention centre. Though he spends his life writing about global conflict, Jenkins, a university professor, has never before come face to face with something so shocking: a vast power with the ability to render anyone invisible.6/10 – Worth one viewing.