TheBrotherFromAnotherPlanet Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There's something a bit familiar about the premise of District 9 -- namely, the part where the human makes friends with the alien. Now, District 9 is a terrific movie, and director Neill Blomkamp delivered a lot of action, violence, pathos and kick-ass special effects on a relatively small budget.

But aliens? We've been friends with aliens before. In fact, this week marks the 25th anniversary DVD/Blu-ray release of The Last Starfighter, a low-budget fan favorite that sought to cash in on the popularity of both Star Wars and video games by sending an unsuspecting teen hero on a mission to save a distant galaxy. His recruiter-slash-buddy was Centauri, an intergalactic con man (played by Robert Preston, riffing on his Music Man persona in his last role).

Some of our other favorite aliens-as-friends movies:

1. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) -- Poor old Klaatu (Michael Rennie). He's just a middle manager sent to Earth to file a report on whether or not the galactic overlords should blow us to smithereens. His decision? To leave us be ... if we promise not to screw up.

2. The Brother From Another Planet (1984) -- John Sayles' underseen gem stars Joe Morton (currently of TV's Eureka) as an escaped slave from another world who crash-lands in Harlem. Unable to speak but a whiz with electronic gadgetry, he makes friends with the locals while eluding two men in black (Sayles and David Strathairn). If you've never seen this, you really should.

My imagination was caught by the title of the upcoming movie Monsters vs. Aliens. I've seen a lot of monster movies and films with aliens in them. I wondered how would some of these characters fare in battle against one another. How would the gentle aliens from Galaxy Quest be able to stand up to vampires? Could Superman defeat the monster from The Host? How would Ford Prefect deal with Noah Cross?

So I decided to stage a smackdown event featuring some of the best-known monsters and aliens in film in one-on-one combat. Instead of matching up characters with similar (or notably different) abilities, I paired them up the old-fashioned way: pulling names out of a hat. Two hats -- I filled one with the names of every alien creature I could think of from movies, and another with every conceivable monster. Here are the results. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

In the '80s and '90s, I fell for Joe Morton. I watched him rock the stage in New York City, and he became my favorite, smart, unbeatable action star in Executive Decision. (One of the most underrated actors out there, and worth a lot more than Eureka.) And then in 2002, I fell for the work of John Sayles, diving into Casa de los babys and soon after, Silver City. But one night, as my eyes scanned the old section of my local rental haunt, I spotted a title: The Brother from Another Planet. I pulled it off the shelf and was shocked that by sheer coincidence, I'd discovered one of Sayles' first films, starring my beloved Joe.

The film focuses on a mute, three-toed alien (Morton) who crashes into New York City, gets transplanted to Harlem, and tries to avoid the two alien Men in Black trying to bring him back (an insanely awesome and comedic Sayles and David Strathairn .. you can see a few clips of them after the jump). Since the scene I'd like to show with the alien hunters isn't floating around the net (mentioned here), here's another great moment, where Joe's alien meets a magical Fisher Stevens, who shows Brother both a card trick and a racial subway trick. It's a spot-on example of the film as a whole -- social commentary on race with the wonderful bite of humor. It's the one film where Sayles really let loose with both his humor and creativity, and it's all the better for it.

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After mentioning the wonderful Joe Morton in my DVD picks this week (for his stint in American Gangster), I started thinking about one of his early roles -- the lead in John Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet. (One I listed in my Sayles primer last year.) It's a great film, even in its cheesiness, but there's nothing quite like this absolutely terrible trailer, which you can check out above.

I wonder what Sayles thought when he saw that, because while it's endlessly amusing now, it's pretty embarrassing for such a solid film. Sporting tacky review quotes like: "It's Cheers goes to Harlem"and "it's E.T. rides the underground railroad," the trailer is just terrible and says pretty much nothing about the film. However, you can enjoy bits of Morton's alien, as glimpses of a very young Fisher Stevens, and both Sayles and David Strathairn as creepy aliens. And to think -- one day he'd bring down the world with Cyberdyne.

I came into the world of John Sayles late in the game -- the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival with Casa de los babys. I was intrigued by the story, but it wasn't until Silver City the next year that I became a fan. Danny Huston digging through the layers of a murder mystery with that wry style and nonchalance -- I was hooked. With each film that I saw, I became more impressed and more in love with Sayles' structure and aesthetic. He knows how to pull the depth out of each story, making it interesting no matter what your interests. I'm not a big fan of baseball, coal mining stories or many of the other facets of life he dips into, but you don't need to relate to the theme to enjoy and value his films.

As a pioneer of North American indie cinema, Sayles' technique is simple, and it allows strong, diverse characters to thrive. For the most part, his films play like an intricate spiderweb. You start at the outside, spinning around many points that seem disconnected. However, as you are introduced to the myriad of characters, layers of the plot are revealed and the web weaves, trailing inward until each step leads to the inevitable center and crescendo. You have to be patient and willing to take the journey, because he doesn't lay it all out in the first few blinks; you have to watch it unfold bit by bit. He comments on this in Men with Guns: "When people start into a story, they have to see the end, or they aren't happy."

Out of Sayles' 15 films (the upcoming Honeydripper will be his 16th) I've attempted to put together a chronological list that will help you explore the main branches of the writer/director/editor's work. They span themes, locales, technique and age -- and serve as a great springboard to the films that remain. Dip into the films of Sayles and see not only the worlds he skillfully brings to the screen, but the collection of strange characters he steps in front of the camera to play -- a minister, filmmaker, criminal, alien, journalist, blue collar dad and soap opera actor.