ShangLuda Admirable film.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

siderite With a ridiculous title as this, I thought the movie would be about alien black people high-fiving each other. Maybe something akin to Blackula or Black Dynamite. Boy, was I wrong. You can see something is off with expectations like these when you see the cast. None of the actors are high rollers in Hollywood, but you know most of them for their work throughout, as support characters.Joe Morton is the main character in the movie, along an African American cast that is too long to list here, but I know most of them. John Sayles, the director, is one of the "immigration agents", while the other is David Strathairn. You've got Fisher Stevens and Giancarlo Esposito in small roles. It just goes on and on. Of course, in 1984 they were not known actors, but they proved in time that they are good ones.The plot is simple, an alien running on Earth from two enforcers, but the script is filled with complexity, tackling in a subtle way things like racism, social status, societal satire. And they are part of the story, while this quiet (Joe Morton doesn't say a word all movie) timid alien is discovering Earth with its good and bad points, starting from Harlem.Bottom line: highly underrated film, it is low budget, but it has class. I am not surprised it has become a cult classic and I am glad I had the chance to see it. And it's free! You can watch it online royalty free.

ccthemovieman-1 Can you say "different?" Have often do you see a movie in which the lead character never utters one word?That's the case here, a unique story of an alien who crashes near Harlem, a famous black neighborhood in New York City. The alien is a black man, so he fits in despite not being able to speak! He's just looked upon as another "brother," as the title indicates.Two aliens come after him - white guys, naturally. In the Liberal world of films, white people are bad and black people are good 99 percent of the time.....at least when there is a contrast between the two. Writer-director John Sayles is a prime example of this type of racist thinking. But he wrote a fun film here, I have to give him that.Even though some of the scenes make absolutely no sense, it's an entertaining movie start- to-finish. Joe Morton plays the sympathetic alien with three toes and strange nails. You have to root for him because he's portrayed as such an innocent, harmless creature.The best part of the film is the humor, some subtle, some not-so-subtle. The guys in the neighborhood bar where the alien hangs out brought the biggest laughs.I find this a lot of fun to watch every three or four years.

ferbs54 Although many unusual immigrants have passed through the gates of Ellis Island, none perhaps has been more so than the one who crashlands his spaceship in NY Harbor and fetches up on that storied entryway in John Sayles' "The Brother From Another Planet" (1984). The nameless black Brother looks a lot like other illegal aliens--except for his taloned, three-toed feet, of course--and although mute, does have some compensating abilities. He can fix mechanical devices such as video games and TVs with a mere touch, like some kind of techno pinball wizard, and heal a child's booboos with a laying on of hands. He can also get vibes from objects by touching them, can regrow a limb overnight, and can pop an eyeball out of his head to plant like a secret spying device. Anyway, this charming and often very funny film shows us what happens when this Brother winds up in Harlem and meets an assortment of neighborhood characters--barflies, a single mother, a lounge singer, a social worker, junkies--and tries to do something about the heroin scourge afflicting the city, all while being pursued by a pair of Men In Black-type bounty hunters. This sweet movie makes some poignant observations about Harlem in the mid-'80s, and Joe Morton, seven years pre-"T2," uses all the nonverbal tricks of the actor's trade to make us see through the Brother's eye(s). His is a fascinating character, so I was a bit disappointed that we never get to learn anything about his background, or why he is on the run. Sayles tells us in an interview that his film cost only $400 K to make, but even without elaborate FX, it works just fine. And I just loved the reference to my favorite movie, 1948's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," that Sayles manages to work into his script. One other thing: Watch this film with the DVD's English subtitles on; you'll need them for a lot of the background talk, not to mention that Rasta guy!

John R I really enjoyed this film. It is a good example of dialogue over action within a story. The main character does not have any dialogue, but the film is carried so well by the supporting cast that we begin to learn about the main character as much as the supporting cast. Sayles did a great job on this film for a respectable low budget film (some might even say a B film). A good film to watch...It is also a good film for most any screenwriter to study. Screenplays are essentially dialogue and action. That is to say that a reading (or spec) screenplay is set up that way. Dialogue is the vehicle that drives the story, and this film demonstrates that point very well. The idea that the main character has no dialogue is complemented by the dialogue of the supporting cast in intelligent ways.