Advanced Archive Search >>
  • Voracious Menu Guide
  • 2008 Winter Guide
  • Green Card
  • Seattle Weekly Contests
  • Seattle Weekly Online Career Fair
  • Seattle Weekly Happy Hour
Backpage.com
Free Classifieds Seattle, WA
  • Genre: Drama
  • Release Date: 04/25/2008
  • Running Time: 108 mins
  • Director: Tom McCarthy
  • Cast: Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira
  • Producer: Mary Jane Skalski, Michael London
  • Writer: Tom McCarthy
  • Distributor: Overture Films
  • Offical Site: Click Here
  • Buy Tickets

Box Office

  1. Quantum of Solace, 67.5 million, 67.5 million
  2. The Dark Knight, 26.1 million, 441.6 million
  3. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, 35.0 million, 116.9 million
  4. Pineapple Express, 23.2 million, 41.3 million
  5. Role Models, 11.2 million, 37.6 million
  6. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, 16.5 million, 71.0 million
  7. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, 10.7 million, 19.6 million
  8. High School Musical 3: Senior Year, 5.7 million, 84.2 million
  9. Step Brothers, 9.1 million, 81.1 million
  10. Changeling, 4.3 million, 27.6 million
  11. Mamma Mia!, 8.2 million, 104.1 million
  12. Zack and Miri Make a Porno, 3.1 million, 26.5 million
  13. Journey to the Center of the Earth, 4.9 million, 81.8 million
  14. Soul Men, 2.4 million, 9.4 million
  15. The Secret Life of Bees, 2.3 million, 33.6 million
  16. Hancock, 3.3 million, 221.7 million
  17. Saw V, 1.8 million, 55.4 million
  18. WALL-E, 3.1 million, 210.2 million
  19. Beverly Hills Chihuahua, 1.6 million, 90.9 million
  20. Swing Vote, 3.1 million, 12.0 million
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

The Visitor

The Station Agent's writer-director, Tom McCarthy, follows up that surprise success with another self-consciously whimsical tale of an unlikely threesome—except this time he decides to get political, making a liberal-guilt-trip movie about first-world ignorance of third-world culture. When recently widowed Connecticut economics professor Walter Vale (the excellent character actor Richard Jenkins, in an unfortunately fussy, mannered performance) returns to his long-untended Manhattan apartment, he finds it occupied by a young Syrian emigre, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira), who've been swindled into thinking that the place is theirs. In the first of several dastardly turns toward the pious, Walter lets his unexpected houseguests stay on, in return for which Tarek teaches him how to play the African drum, and the grieving Walter starts to get his groove back. Then the ugly face of post-9/11 racial profiling comes along, landing the undocumented Tarek in a government detention center and spurring Walter's outrage that such things can happen in the supposed Land of the Free. (Who knew?) Nothing if not an equal-opportunity patronizer, McCarthy loads up the rest of the film with examples of Muslim-on-Muslim discrimination and self-consciously ironic flashes of pro-liberty propaganda. He undoubtedly means well, but he's made one of those incredibly naive movies that give liberals a bad name, and does more to regress the sociopolitical discourse than advance it. — Scott Foundas

Seattle Weekly Insiders

  • Local food, music and news blasts
  • Free Stuff
Seattle Weekly: About Us | Store | Print Edition | Privacy Policy | Jobs at Seattle Weekly | Advertise | Free Seattle Classifieds | National Advertising | RSS
Village Voice Media: Village Voice | LA Weekly | OC Weekly | SF Weekly | Dallas Observer | Houston Press | Phoenix New Times | Minneapolis City Pages | Miami New Times | Westword | Riverfront Times | Nashville Scene | The Pitch | New Times Broward-Palm Beach
Copyright © 1998-2008 by Village Voice Media. All rights reserved.