When it comes to the contentious social and political conflicts surrounding the immigration issues between Mexico and the United States, it’s very easy to create “us vs. them” measurements and scenarios. On many occasions, each side has called out opposing irregularities and hostilities to declare themselves in the right while labeling the other the enemy. The Absence of Eden, the debut directorial effort from Marco Perego, attempts to address this balance while carrying a burdensome “us vs. them” dual narrative.

2 STARS, 2024, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanApril 11, 2024The Absence of Eden, Zoe Saldana, Garrett Hedlund, Marco PeregoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

There are commendable allegories bottled somewhere inside both Ben Fountain’s 2012 award-winning novel and Ang Lee’s adaptation of “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.” However, knowing what we know now about “paid patriotism” since 2015, those morals, and any patriotic pride the fictional story’s grand setting can muster, have lost too much of their high ground to inspire. It is difficult to invest in a reflective film wrestling with disillusionment when too many current audiences already enter with the same feelings about the War on Terror. Disillusionment of disillusionment is a tough sell if the goal is the change minds.