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The Brother from Another Planet
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Wikipedia article
'The Brother from Another Planet' is a 1984 American science fiction film, written and directed by John Sayles. The low-budget film stars Joe Morton as an extraterrestrial trapped on Earth.
Plot
A mute space alien crash-lands his ship on Ellis Island. Other than his three-toed feet which he keeps covered, he resembles a black human man. He manages to blend in with the people he encounters and engages in one-sided conversations with various denizens of New York City. He secures housing through a new acquaintance at a Harlem bar. Able to heal wounds and fix machines by holding his hand over them, he repairs an arcade cabinet there, leading to him gaining a job as a technician. Two men in black, keen on the mute alien's whereabouts, begin to track him and interrogate the people he has encountered. They seek to return him to the planet from which he escaped.
Cast
* Joe Morton as The Brother
* Rosanna Carter as West Indian Woman
* Ray Ramirez as Hispanic Man
* Yves Rene as Haitian Man
* Peter Richardson as Islamic Man
* Ginny Yang as Korean Shopkeeper
* Daryl Edwards as Fly
* Steve James as Odell
* Leonard Jackson as Smokey
* Ishmael Houston-Jones as Dancer
* Caroline Aaron as Randy Sue Carter
* Bill Cobbs as Walter
* Maggie Renzi as Noreen
* Olga Merediz as Noreen's Client
* Tom Wright as Sam
* Minnie Gentry as Mrs. Brown
* Ren Woods as Bernice
* Reggie Rock Bythewood as Rickey
* John Sayles and David Strathairn as Men In Black
* Fisher Stevens as Card Trickster
* Dee Dee Bridgewater as Malverne Davis
* Giancarlo Esposito as Man Being Arrested (uncredited)
Production
Director John Sayles has described 'The Brother from Another Planet' as being about the immigrant experience of assimilation. Extras from the film described it as "The Black E.T. movie."
Sayles spent part of his MacArthur Fellows "genius" grant on the film, which cost $350,000 to produce.
Critical reception
'Variety' called 'The Brother from Another Planet' a "vastly amusing but progressively erratic" film structured as a "series of behavioral vignettes, [many of which] are genuinely delightful and inventive"; as it continues, the film "takes a rather unpleasant and, ultimately, confusing turn." Vincent Canby called it a "nice, unsurprising shaggy-dog story that goes on far too long" but singled out "Joe Morton's sweet, wise, unaggressive performance." Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "the movie finds countless opportunities for humorous scenes, most of them with a quiet little bite, a way of causing us to look at our society", noting that "by using a central character who cannot talk, [Sayles] is sometimes able to explore the kinds of scenes that haven't been possible since the death of silent film."
The A.V. Club, in a 2003 review of the film's DVD release, said the film's superhero scenes are "often unintentionally silly, but again, Sayles shapes a catchy premise into a subtler piece, using Morton's 'alien' status as a way of asking who deserves to be called an outsider in a country born of outsiders"; commenting on the DVD, they noted its "marvelous" audio commentary track by Sayles, "who moves fluidly from behind-the-scenes anecdotes to useful technical tips to unpretentious dissections of his own themes."
Paul Attanasio wrote: "Sayles is no storyteller; despite the verve of its language, 'The Brother From Another Planet' eventually sags of its own weight. And all his movies are hampered by an almost shocking ignorance of filmmaking fundamentals -- he just doesn't know where to put his camera. The movie would have benefited from more attention to the bounty hunters, whose difficulties with Harlem culture would have balanced the Brother's strange ease of assimilation. Instead, the plot takes a centrifugal turn as the Brother roots out a scag baron whose drugs are poisoning the community."Attanasio, P. (1984, November 16) Listen to 'Brother'. 'The Washington Post.' Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/11/16/listen-to-brother/500adab6-e900-4442-8471-f86ee9842552/
See also
*Afrofuturism in film
References
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