Cumpsty, Michael

The Visitor

A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of homeless, illegal aliens living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vital Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek's drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally arrived. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued interest in courtship. But the wheels of injustice in immigration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes his unexpected capacity for anger over Tarek's plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna, might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal, and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come. --Tom Keogh

A college professor becomes embroiled in the lives of a young immigrant couple living in New York City and stumbles into an unexpected romance as a result. As these strangers struggle to deal with their individual lives in a changed world, their shared humanity is revealed in awkward, humorus and dramatic ways.

State of Grace

Overshadowed by GoodFellas when it was released in 1990, State of Grace gradually emerged as one of the best New York gangster films of its decade. It was also the first to feature the Irish American mob known as the Westies. Here, their territory west of Times Square is being gentrified by an unwelcome infusion of yuppie cash, squeezing them into a reluctant alliance with Mafia kingpins. Frankie (Ed Harris) is the boss; little brother Jackie (Gary Oldman) is his volatile muscle; their friend Terry (Sean Penn) has returned from an extended absence, harboring a dangerous secret while rekindling his love for Frankie and Jackie's sister Kathleen (Robin Wright, Penn's future wife). Giving one of his scariest, most violent performances, Oldman offers stark, brutal contrast to Harris's pent-up fury, while Penn breathes life into his character's standard-issue dilemma. A former protégé of Steven Spielberg's, director Phil Joanou handles this gritty potboiler with confident, unobtrusive style, ramping up the tension of divided loyalties, even as the plot grows increasingly familiar. --Jeff Shannon

New York City s Hell s Kitchen is a pressure cooker of pent-up anger and it s about to explode! Sean Penn Ed Harris Gary Oldman Robin Wright John Turturro and John C. Reilly deliver exceptional performances (The Hollywood Reporter) in this finely drawn tale of betrayal redemption and guilt (Los Angeles) that ll put you on the edge of your seat (Newsweek)! Terry Noonan (Penn) returns to his old neighborhood with a score to settle. He s now an undercover cop dead-set on taking down an Irish mob family headed by Frankie Flannery (Harris) and his hot-headed brother Jackie (Oldman). But when Noonan infiltrates the family his old feelings for the Flannerys sister (Wright) further heighten the stakes as he enters a violent showdown with them duringSystem Requirements: Running Time 134 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 027616881434 Manufacturer No: 1004036

Starting Out in the Evening

It's a familiar story: Pretty young thing shakes up silver-haired recluse. With the recent exception of Venus, however, most such efforts fall flat. In adapting Brian Morton's novel, Andrew Wagner treads well-worn ground, but avoids most pitfalls of the genre. It helps that his theatrically trained cast sidesteps cliché in their finely calibrated performances (including Jessica Hecht as a savvy magazine editor). He also refuses to exploit his female protagonist. Heather Wolfe (Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose) is confident and intelligent, but she's neither sociopath nor muse. The grad student approaches New York novelist Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella in a deceptively subtle turn) about interviewing him for her thesis, but he declines. He's working on his fifth book--the first four are out-of-print--and doesn't have time to spare. She flirts and cajoles until Leonard starts to yield. It's an open question whether the author is charmed more by her admiration or her good looks. There's shading in Heather's methods, too, since she has difficulty distinguishing the man from the myth. Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), is concerned their relationship is unhealthy, while he feels the same about her rekindled romance with former flame Casey (Adrian Lester). She wants to have children, he doesn't, and Leonard doesn't want to see her get hurt again. In the end, each charts their own course, resulting in a hopeful--if hard-won--conclusion. Written over two years and shot in 18 days, Starting Out in the Evening puts most big-budget literary dramas to shame. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Battling illness and unable to finish a novel that has taken him ten years to write aging novelist Leonard Schiller is slipping into literary obscurity. Formerly a famous author Schiller has been all but forgotten by the readers colleagues and critics who once praised him. But when Heather Wolfe an ambitious graduate student convinces Schiller that her thesis could reintroduce his writing to the world the reclusive writer is forced to confront his past regrets. Frank Langella delivers a career-capping performance as a man who must redefine his work - and his perceptions - in the twilight of his life.System Requirements:Running Time: 111 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/COMING OF AGE Rating: PG-13 UPC: 031398228714 Manufacturer No: 22871

The Ice Storm

Asian American director Ang Lee sums up America in the early 1970s by focusing on the arrival of the sexual revolution in the 'burbs. Isolationism within a family, consumerism, and selfishness are personified by a cast that captures the self-obsession within two New England families. As the children struggle awkwardly with adolescence, t