My Brother (2006)

good back-story, and good acting

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It was a very touching story. Thank you for making it. Both the young and the older actor did a lovely job. As a sister growing up I remember fighting to protect my brother from people who just aren't very nice. Luckily, we didn't grow up the 'hood' as these men did. Thanks for producing the movie. I thought all the performers did a excellent job in telling a difficult story. A single mom, raising two small boys under very hard conditions. I am grateful in our family we had a much better situation. I am glad the story was told. I found myself very sad at times when I saw what these young boys had to face. I can't imagine the heart ache their mother went thru knowing she wouldn't be able to care for them.

This movie is so bad in so many ways I don't know where to begin. It's barely over 90 minutes but it feels like hours.When I saw the movie, I was thinking: OK, this is really bad, but I can forgive it a little bit since it's the director working out some very personal family history. Then, after reading the reviews here, I realize the director is white. WTF?! It would still be bad, but I could understand the false dialog, the trite treatment of the disabled and the stupid non-plot if it was a bad writer/director who was too close to the material.But from an outsider, all that plus the offensive racial stereotypes are bad beyond words. It's hard to pick the worst. Is it Vanessa Williams "don't beat up women" speech? I think it's the drawn out "white woman in a black club" scene. Who has TB except drug addicts and inmates? I could go on for pages.It reminded me of a review of Spike Lee's "She Hate Me" that said something like "This movie is a complete failure, but it fails in a magnificent way, in a way that only a genius could fail". This movie was the opposite. It fails in a way that exposes the complete lack of talent of the director/writer.The leads, Vanessa Williams and NaShawn Kearse, deserve better material than this. By rights, they should have treated the script with contempt. I have to give them credit, they do the best they can with the crap they're given to work with. Likewise, Fredro Starr's performance is so much better than the script.

Quiet and subtle moments don't exist in this sloppy cliché riddled film that blatantly exploits the developmentally disabled. The subject matter of the developmentally disabled is developmentally disabled. It is never truly dealt with and explored and this is my reason for saying that it is exploited. We only get a scene of the developmentally disabled character James getting beat up by his peers when he's a kid, and one other scene with his mother (played by Vanessa Williams) telling his older brother, Isaiah "James is slow," with James right there in the room laying beside her. I guess the filmmaker forgot that James can hear! We never get a sense of what life is like for James at work or socially. I went to school with a guy who was developmentally disabled who had friends and was never beat up. Did James not have any friends? Does being developmentally disabled bar James from having friends? We would never know from watching this film. We never get to see why Isaiah and James get frustrated with each other, how they live together, etc. We do hear that James has a routine that he likes to follow, but not once do we get to see this routine. Instead the writer/director chooses to focus on a generic Sopranos like story that has many plot holes and is extremely unconvincing. SPOILERIn one scene Isaiah is getting beat up by these mobsters and then he is a witness to one of the mobsters killing an innocent man. Then we see Isaiah at the apartment packing a bag and telling James that he has to go away. Of course, when Isaiah leaves the mobsters come to the apartment and attack James, even smearing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his face (which I thought was over-the-top and ridiculous). Now, Isaiah witnessed one of these guys killing an innocent man. Would he really be that stupid to think that these guys (Who know where he lives) would not go after his brother? Give me a break! Also, another unconvincing and inconceivable sub-plot involves a character played awkwardly by Tatum O'Neal who meets Isaiah at a diplomats party. It seems that in the span of one day she has fallen for Isaiah so much that she has a scene where she must cry over him. Although I didn't buy it, I tried to give the film a benefit of the doubt that this woman in her 40's may be interested in Isaiah who is in his 20's. I even tried to give this film the benefit of the doubt when Isaiah takes the Tatum O'Neal character to a crowded club where people are bumping and grinding to loud rap music, but what ensues in the club's ladies restroom is so unbelievable and so sadly plays into a stereotype of the angry black woman is so appalling that I let out a gasp in the theater. One of the actresses in the scene was at the theater tonight when the film was shown, and she even expressed embarrassment with the scene. There was no reason for Tatum O'Neal's character to even be in the film. She served no purpose to the overall story. It's as if the director is a friend of hers and just wanted to put her in front of the camera. What a waste. Not only is the story awful, but the cinematography and sound is sloppy. The lead character Isaiah, who is played by a dark skin actor, never had a consistent skin tone throughout the film. I believe that this is due to the fact that the cinematographer did not light for him. A competent cinematographer would know that he should light for actors with darker skin tones, especially when he is the lead, because darker skin tones are going to absorb more light. This is basic cinematography. Unfortunately, in some of the most important scenes we couldn't see Isaiah's facial features as a result of sloppy visuals (lighting and camera work). On more than 4 occasions their was a problem with the sound not being synced to the visual. This is distracting and totally throws the viewer out of the story. The only compliment I can give this film is the smart choice of casting Vanessa Williams. She is a real presence on screen and gives her cliché role all of herself. Her eyes and body language are true to her character in every single frame she is in. However, it is a pity that her character is written as a one-dimensional preachy saint that has to deliver some of the worst dialogue that has ever been put on paper. I really, with all of my heart, wanted to like this movie, but the bad writing, horrible look and sound of this piece made it impossible to like. So far, this is the worst film I've seen this year. I dread the day when I see something worst.

This movie looks beautiful. The cinematography in this movie is stunning. For an independent film to look far and above the caliber of most studio films in a testament to the raw talent of the DP. I saw this film after sitting through a long day of independent movies. Some good, some bad, all looking sup-par. Then these images graced the screen. While i'm not a huge fan of this movie as a whole, I was captivated by the visuals on screen. Excellent job. While I understand the reality that is the new digital world of films, I feel we've lost something in the way of cinematic imagery. It's nice to see there's still some artists on the rise.