Logan's Run & The Visitor

Logan’s Run
I watched Logan’s Run last night. It’s a classic movie that is about humans in the future. Everyone lives in an enclosed bubble ecosystem. Society is well off and everyone is happy, but no one is allowed to live past 30 years old. Sometimes people try to run away instead of getting killed, but they are caught by “sandmen,” which are kind of like policemen. The main character, Logan (who is a sandman) runs away, and tries to escape the bubble society (I don’t think I’m giving too much away, since the title of the movie is Logan’s Run…). The movie was ok, and had some awesome futurey-computer sounds randomly interspersed. It also had cool future technology, like the ability to wirelessly send messages to each other on large phone-like machines (though the screens showing the messages were black with green type). This movie is spoofed fairly often, so it was entertaining to see the original.

The Visitor
While we were in Arizona, we watched the movie “The Visitor”. It’s about a college professor, generally unhappy with his life and work, who goes back to his NYC apartment (after many months of being away) to find that it’s inhabited by illegal immigrants. He be-friends the people living there (which I expected to be really odd in the movie, but was actually done well). Then one of the immigrants runs into trouble (with immigration control), and I guess that’s all I’ll say so I don’t give away too much. The movie was cute and pretty good, but not great. I wasn’t particularly invested in the characters, and there were a few situations I found implausible. Also, when I read other reviews, I kept hearing that it dealt with serious current issues regarding immigration. I’d say that’s false. In fact, I’d say it dealt with no actual issues, and provides no actual information, other than maybe the face that it sucks to be an illegal immigrant. It doesn’t talk about why some people are allowed into the U.S. and some aren’t. It doesn’t deal with what people can do if they aren’t let it. It doesn’t deal with the numbers of illegal immigrants and the large variety of reasons they come. It doesn’t talk about how they deal with work, taxes, or any other issues. That’s fine – it’s a movie, not a report, but it’s good to know what to expect.