Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal face off in "Eddington." Credit: A24 Comedy is tragedy plus time. There may be a day when critics look back on Ari Aster's COVID-19 comedy Eddington with kinder eyes.

Writer and director Ari Aster joins Morning Joe to discuss the new film 'Eddington' which examines the mood in America during the Covid lockdowns.

Joaquin Phoenix couldn't figure out his Eddington character, Joe Cross, until director Ari Aster did something that inadvertently unlocked the role for him.

The first and maybe only true jump scare in Ari Aster’s “Eddington” comes right at the start. A barefoot old man trudges down the center of a road running through an empty Western town. He’s ranting and incoherently raving as he climbs a craggy hill silhouetted against a twilight sky. He gazes, or maybe glares, out at the town below.

He's collaborated with everyone from David Fincher to the Safdies, but the Iranian-born cinematographer, most recently of "Eddington," wants them all to feel like family.

Writer-director Ari Aster's fiendishly funny film stars Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as a sheriff and mayor on politically opposing sides in a well-off community during the summer of 2020. "'Eddington' has something to offend (or annoy) just about everybody,

Aster shot the film, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, in New Mexico but is coming to Texas in the fall for a new project aimed at lifting up emerging filmmakers.

A sheriff, a mayor and a virus walk into a bar in Ari Aster’s bleak and brain-sick satire that stars a dueling Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone.