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.

You might need to lie down for a bit after “Eddington.” Preferably in a dark room with no screens and no talking. “Eddington,” Ari Aster’s latest nightmare vision, is sure to divide (along which lines,

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.

"Eddington," co-starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Luke Grimes and Micheal Ward, opens in theaters nationwide Friday, July 18.

Ari Aster, the man behind some of Hollywood’s most unsettling films, takes his own anxiety and puts it onscreen.