Brother

Highly acclaimed but limited release Canadian film.

This is a really depressing movie. I did feel sorry for Michael's character. He has an abusive selfish mother who dotes over Michael's older, muscular, popular, (but closeted gay) cooler brother. Michael has to endure his closeted gay brother being favored and is forced to care for his catatonic mother after said gay older bro is murdered. It is sad for Michael all the way downtown. The movie should be called "Poor lil bro Mike".

The acting is superb. I was engaged from the opening scene.

David Chariandy’s novel exists in a world of police violence that's irrefutable. In the book, through description and through tricks of language, we see the unspoken gestures of intimacy and the moments of joy etched out in ordinary circumstances. Book-to-film adaption is fraught with challenges, none of which are simple or straight-forward, but all of which warrant their own category for the Oscars. Each adaptation hinges on the relationship with the author to the source material. 27 years later, Virgo has bookended "Rude" with "Brother". Set in roughly the same time period, the thematic similarities are evident. Both films look at the relationships between two brothers, both are set in Toronto neighborhoods, and both deal with that moment in young black men's lives where they cease being a child and are perceived to be men, sometimes tragically at much too early an age. It's inevitable that anyone will see an overlap between the world and the feelings in "Rude" and in "Brother". This film is definitely going to appeal to people who embrace stories about families. And this one happens to be Jamaican. “Brother" looks at growing up with a certain gaze upon you and being made to feel uncomfortable in the city in which you've always lived. "Brother" remembers us of the The Godfather trilogy. The story of the first generation sacrificing and working for that second generation, and the tensions that could happen. Can you've too many? There's always a different angle, a different gaze on that story. We believe that the world of storytelling is changing. What's at the center, what stories occupy the center is changing. More than an earnest platitude, telling of the immigrant story, the creation of the source material, the adaptation to film, the multi-year process of development to fruition, this is an active affirmation. Written by Gregory Mann