A24’s timely thriller “Eddington” will be available to stream on HBO Max starting November 14th.
Directed by Ari Aster, director of Hereditary, Midsommar, and 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix as a small-town sheriff running for office during the coronavirus pandemic and 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. The current mayor’s opponent is Pedro Pascal, who believes in more left-leaning politics and appeals to the citizens of Edington for communism. New Mexico, wear a mask. Phoenix’s character is an anti-mask conservative whose life is quickly turned upside down by the chaos of the pandemic, a contested election, and escalating violence.
The cast of “Eddington” also includes Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Michael Ward, Amelie Hoefahl, Clifton Collins Jr., William Bellow, Austin Butler and Emma Stone.
Although the film was a critical hit, its box office gross after its release was sluggish, finishing in 6th place with $4.3 million. It grossed $13 million worldwide.
“Just when you think you’ve established ‘Eddington’ as a coherent, run-of-the-mill suspense story, the film wriggles out from under you and into the realm of the bizarre,” Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in a review. “It doesn’t get lost in the grim entertainment of its own conceits like in Beau Is Afred, but it gets a little abstract. Ari Aster has an indulgent side, and here it’s more controlled. But it’s also inseparable from what makes him such an exciting filmmaker in Eddington: he’s trying to show us the real picture. “Eddington” isn’t a horror film, but the film does focus on a kind of madness that you can tell by the shivers. ”