Oh My God You So Totally Have To See This Movie

Any sane person with a headache would stay the bloody hell away from a computer screen and rest for a bit.

I have a headache.

So aside from my lack of sanity, why am I here, now, with a computer screen before my eyes?

The blame principally goes to actor Richard Jenkins and writer/director Thomas McCarthy. You see, I just finished watching The Visitor on On Demand (yes I "missed it" in theaters).

What a terrific film. Jenkins plays Walter, an old has been economics professor bereft of all emotion. We may assume that this condition stems from his status as a widower.

Walter reluctantly journeys from his Connecticut home to stay in his seldom-used New York apartment. He must present a paper he didn't even write at a conference in the Big Apple. What's this? There's a naked Senegalese woman in the bathtub and her Syrian boyfriend lurking about?

Welcome to the first day of the rest of Walter's life.

Jenkins's performance ranks right up there with Sean Penn's in Milk as one of the very best of the year. Here's the word you want for it: nuanced. Great actors can express so much with so little physical exertion that its astounding. Jenkins face is a like a straight white line. When he raises the corner of his mouth we learn volumes about his character. When he at last lets loose it's all the more powerful.

There's a lot to learn about Walter and the transformation he undergoes in the new world he enters through his two friends and one of their mothers. It would be criminal to give away the slightest bit of this story -- it must be experienced first hand -- except to say he goes from failed piano player to talented bongo drummer.

No seriously.

But more importantly he goes from dead outside to alive in and out.

This is a film about music, rhythm, love, immigration, bureaucracy, intimacy without sex and with the redemptive powers of the human soul. Amid all the Spidermen, Hulks, Hellboys and other garbage, thank goodness films like The Visitor are still around to nourish the soul. Needless to say McCarthy deserves the lion's share of the credit. This is his first film since his directorial debut with The Station Agent (2003) some five years ago. For God's sakes McCarthy, don't make us wait another five years.

And you out there. If you haven't seen The Visitor do yourself a favor and rent it or watch it on On Demand. It was worth me dashing over to the computer despite a pounding brain.

Between thinking about The Visitor and listening to a Sidney Bechet CD I got in Paris, I feel like telling the headache to go screw.