Return of the Secaucus Seven
Lianna
Baby, It's You
The Brother from Another Planet
Matewan
Eight Men Out
City of Hope
Passion Fish
The Secret of Roan Inish
Lone Star
Men with Guns (Hombres Armados)
Limbo
Sunshine State
Casa de los Babys
Silver City
Honeydripper

In the middle of a pitch-black New York night, a terrified space pilot (Joe Morton) is forced to ditch his rickety-looking UFO in the Hudson River. The stranded alien clambers ashore, badly injured, within hailing distance of the Statue of Liberty. He has some powers that may come in handy on this strange new planet: can heal his physical wounds with a glowing touch of his hands, and when he seeks refuge in the abandoned immigration center at Ellis Island his heightened senses pick up sound traces from the many immigrants who were warehoused there in the past, sounds that seem to be embedded in the walls.

Dawn breaks over the twin towers of the World Trade Center as The Brother begins to explore his new surroundings. On the streets of Harlem, surrounded by people who look like him but could scarcely be more different, even ordinary sights and sounds are fascinating-and at times terrifying.

The Brother finds a haven in the friendly neighborhood bar run by Odell (Steve James), where the regulars are puzzled by The Brother's mute, inquisitive presence. The fastidious Walter (Bill Cobbs) worries about germs and dirt and mourns the passing of Harlem's glory days. Hard-drinking Smokey (Leonard Jackson) conducts a few experiments with a shot of whiskey and a handy paper bag, determining that while The Brother is not "deef," he is unable to speak. And Fly (Daryl Edwards), a video-game fanatic, discovers another of The Brother's special talents: he can fix any machine with a touch of his hand.

Stopping off at the bar on his way home, social worker Sam Prescott (Tom Wright) learns that The Brother can understand what is said to him, in any human language. When asked where he hails from, however, The Brother offers only an enigmatic response: a thumb pointed straight up.

Although Odell asks Sam to conceal his generosity from his businesslike wife, Bernice (Ren Woods), he donates a few dollars so that The Brother can rent a room from Randy Sue Carter (Caroline Aaron), a talkative single mom whose young son, Little Earl (Herbert Newsome), gets on the alien's spacey wavelength right away.

But now a dangerous new force appears on the scene, two additional visitors from Somewhere Else. Armed with a set of mug shots and an ESL textbook, these ungainly Men in Black (John Sayles and David Strathairn) claim to be hunting an "illegal alien."

Sam introduces The Brother to Mr. Lowe (Michael Albert Mandel), who runs a video arcade. With the help of a co-worker, Hector (Jaime Tirelli), The Brother proves that he doesn't need tools or even spare parts to repair an entire room full of broken machines. He also brings a fresh challenge into the life of a jaded patron (Liane Curtis), accelerating her favorite space-war game to warp speed.

The Men in Black visit Odell's bar and make a decidedly strange impression. Meanwhile, The Brother is taking his first subway ride and encountering a new life form: a card sharp (Fisher Stevens) who can tell a story with aces, jacks, and diamonds.

Returning to Odell's, The Brother encounters a pair of clueless earthlings who are so out of place there that they might as well be from outer space: clean cut white kids from the mid-west (Chip Mitchell and David Babcock) who took a wrong turn on the way to a "self-actualization conference."

With media images of beautiful women plastered on every available surface, The Brother can't help feeling the long absence of female companionship. He is especially taken with the image of a beautiful singer, Malvern Davis (Dee Dee Bridgewater), on her concert posters and album covers. He tries to enter the nightclub where Davis is performing, but is turned away because he can't afford the $15.00 cover charge.

The Brother is mugged in the hallway of his apartment building, and notices dark track marks on the arms of his assailants. He sees those marks again on the body of a dead junkie sprawled in a vacant lot, the syringe still dangling from a vein. The Brother, as insatiably curious as ever, wants to find out what draws human beings to this killer substance that they will kill to obtain. After devouring the junkie's leftovers, he wanders through the surreal night world of upper Manhattan, meeting a visionary Rasta, Virgil (Sidney Sheriff, Jr.), who offers him a chance to "take the ship back home." The experience opens his eyes to some harsh facts of life in Harlem.

Awakening in a daze the next morning, The Brother recognizes, in an apparently meaningless graffito scrawled on a wall, a message written in the language of his home planet. Using his own blood for ink he hastily scrawls a reply.

In an appliance store, The Brother fixes enough machines to provide a few dollars pay. With his newfound nest egg, he takes Little Earl on a tour of an historical exhibit about Harriet Tubman and the underground railway, using gestures to explain that he, too, is a runaway slave, pursued by bounty hunters.

That night, The Brother re-visits the nightclub, and strikes up a conversation with Malverne Davis, finding an unexpected rival in the smarmy club owner, Mr. Price (Carl Gordon). He finds the female consolation he has been missing.

But the Men in Black are getting closer all the time, visiting first the welfare office, then Randy Sue's apartment building, and finally Odell's bar, where the bounty hunters and their prey finally come face to face. A dust-up ensues, with Odell, Walter, Smokey, and Fly getting in a few licks. They help The Brother evade capture and flee into the night.

With the intergalactic posse nipping at his heels, The Brother uses one of his detachable eyeballs as a surveillance camera to track to their source the drugs that are laying waste to Harlem. In doing so, he leaves himself open to capture by the Men in Black. But the resourceful Brother has a few more tricks up his sleeve-and a few unexpected homies hiding out on planet earth, waiting for just the right moment to lend a (glowing) hand...