Summer movie season sometimes feels like being trapped inside a discount toy store, where everything's loud, targeted at children and devoid of any social value -- like a mechanical yapping dog perpetually doing backflips.

How unexpected and refreshing it was to find “The Visitor” amidst the din. It's sort of an anti-blockbuster -- small-scale, character-driven, smart.

Back in 2003, writer/director (and actor, though not here) Thomas McCarthy gave us “The Station Agent,” a droll, heartfelt little dramedy.

”The Visitor,” just his second film behind the camera, is easily one of the best movies of the year so far. Richard Jenkins, who may as well have “veteran character actor” added to his legal name (he's best known as the dead dad on “Six Feet Under”), gives a masterful performance as Walter Vale, a Connecticut college professor and widower lost in a fog of depression.

An early scene speaks volumes about his character. In the large, lonely house he used to share with his wife, Walter struggles through a piano lesson -- his eyes blank, his face dispassionate. When the lesson is over, he dismisses the instructor, saying she needn't come back.

His wife loved classical music, and this scene shows -- without coming out and saying it -- how the lessons are just his half-hearted attempt to keep her around. Everything in it rings true, even the instructor's response to getting canned. The whole film resonates with this kind of acuity.

Walter's stupor receives a jolt when he reluctantly returns to a Manhattan apartment he rents but hasn't been to in years. In his absence, an opportunistic shyster has double-rented the place to Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a Syrian drummer, and Zainab (Danai Guirira) his Senegalese girlfriend.

They're all equally shocked to find a stranger (or two) in the home they thought was their own. But once Walter's blood pressure returns to normal, he graciously allows Tarek and Zainab to stay for a few days while they look for a new place.

The forced human contact coaxes Walter out of his shell. He's drawn to the rhythms of Tarek's drumming, and as he begins tapping out a few rhythms of his own, Walter slowly reawakens from the doldrums.

Then comes the second major shock: When Tarek and Walter push through a turnstile in a subway station, Tarek gets arrested by some thuggish NYPD officers. Turns out he and Zainab are in the U.S. illegally, and from here, the film into deeper territory.

McCarthy takes on such thorny subjects as racial profiling, immigration and the post-9/11 erosion of human rights. He does so with passion and no small amount of anger, and because the film stays rooted in its well-drawn characters, it never feels didactic or preachy.

Israeli actress Hiam Abbass, as Tarek's heartbroken mom, is excellent, as is Guirira as his girlfriend, Zainab. But Jenkins really carries the film, proving he's more than just a “character actor.” Whether or not it receives any, this is award-worthy filmmaking.

I've been informed by a trusty colleague that “The Visitor” will be staying an extra week, so if you're hungry for something with more substance than the typical cotton-candy summer blockbusters, this is it.

There have been some notable winners released on DVD of late, too.

”In Bruges,” starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen in hiding, and Ralph Fiennes as their sadistic, nutso boss, perfectly balances dark comedy, thrills and drama. Plus it's got those great Irish accents.

The French animated film “Persepolis” follows a young Iranian girl's coming of age with deceptively simple hand-drawn animation, based on the graphic novel by the same name. I loved it.

And though I have yet to see it, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or winner, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” has gotten nothin' but rave reviews. It's about a young woman whose friend and roommate attempts to help her get a late-term abortion in Communist Romania. You may have to be in a certain mood for this one.

Ryan Burns may have been too hard on blockbusters this week, but that's just part of his snobby critic shtick. Give him a piece of your mind at rburns@times-standard.com.