The Brother from Another Planet

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) is an American sci-fi comedy-drama written and directed by John Sayles that you can watch online on iFILM. A mute alien slave crash-lands on Ellis Island: three toes, dark skin, no English. New Yorkers take him for a homeless man and treat him accordingly.

He drifts uptown to Harlem and finds a seat at a local bar. The regulars decide he's odd but harmless — until word gets out that he can fix arcade machines with a touch of his hand. Joe Morton carries the entire role without a single line of dialogue, reading every room through wide, careful eyes. Two white alien bounty hunters in black suits are closing in on him. The film's joke is that nobody in Harlem finds a silent stranger particularly unusual.

Sayles shot the film on a shoestring budget and kept it out of the studio system entirely. The outsider-sees-America structure does what a dozen earnest social dramas of the decade couldn't: it makes the familiar look strange again. Watch The Brother from Another Planet (1984) online on iFILM.