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Last night, in anticipation of my interview on Friday with actor Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under), I re-watched my screener of The Visitor (Overture, trailer) and came away much more impressed than I did the first time around. The quiet little indie, which cost $5 million to make, has earned about $3.5 million over the 5 weeks it has been in theaters (it's still going strong and will do well on DVD), as well as excellent reviews for its 61 year old star, who spent nearly 35 years in the business as a working character actor before being offered the plum leading role of Prof. Walter Vale in this film by writer-director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent). What I like most about The Visitor is the way it conveys complex ideas—ideas about coping with the death of a spouse, losing interest in one's occupation after doing it too long, post 9/11 immigration policy, etc.—without ever seeming preachy or condescending, just like some of the best movies of the past decade... About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), and The Squid and the Whale (2005) come to mind immediately.

Also, since good work deserves to be recognized as much as bad, I want to point out that this film was bankrolled by Participant Productions, a small American studio established by eBay founding president Jeff Skoll that has probably had the most consistent track record of releasing excellent films since 2004, when it came on the scene. Among their other excellent films primarily targeted at intelligent adult audiences: Good Night and Good Luck (2005), Murderball (2005), North Country (2005), Syriana (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Chicago 10 (2007), Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains (2007), The Kite Runner (2007), and Standard Operating Procedure (2008). Their next, The Informant (3/9/09), a crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, looks likely to continue the streak.