Win Win [2011]

I love how Thomas McCarthy captures what on the surface seems to be a bleak experience and makes it into heartwarming hopeful film. A down on his luck lawyer decides to take advantage (ever so gently) of one of his elderly clients in order to make ends meet – and when his client’s teenage grandson comes into the picture – he brings him under his wing. Just like with THE STATION AGENT and THE VISITOR he takes his lead character’s want for one thing and flips it on its ear in order to show that they actually need something completely different. I really love how the high school wrestling element of the story is just a glue for binding the characters together stronger – much like trains in THE STATION AGENT and music in THE VISITOR. Great performances by the entire cast and great story – make WIN WIN a wonderful movie.

V is for... [part 2]

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. (synopsis provided by Amazon.com)

released 2007

directed by Thomas McCarthy