There’s a lot to love about John Sayles’ early-1980s movie Brother from Another Planet. Joe Morton (Terminator 2, Eureka) plays an escaped slave from another planet who winds up in New York fixing video games with his super-powered hands. As a mute alien looking for his escaped comrades in Harlem, he turns in an incredible performance without ever saying a word — and in this scene, where he soups up a video game for a local game junkie, you can see why.
He conveys an awful lot just with a look or smile. Even though he’s being stalked by two alien cops, Morton manages take on a local drug lord who is killing kids with bad heroin — and find love. Director Sayles brought you the award-winning Lone Star, as well as at least a dozen other great indie flicks. But Brother from Another Planet is one of my favorites — especially because Sayles turns the usual Jar Jar Binks crap on its head with an alien who really is alien, even though he looks like a black guy.
