{"id":160653,"date":"2025-08-20T08:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T08:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/160653\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T08:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T08:43:11","slug":"stream-it-or-skip-it-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/160653\/","title":{"rendered":"Stream It Or Skip It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was with equal parts anticipation and dread that I sat down to watch Eddington (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video<\/a>). It\u2019s a satire\/drama\/comedy about the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic starring Joaquin Phoenix and written and directed by Ari Aster, and this very sentence is the precise source of my aforementioned mixed feelings. Aster, of course, is the filmmaker behind Hereditary<\/a>, Midsommar<\/a> and Beau is Afraid<\/a>, and considering eight years have gone by without a new movie from Michael Haneke, Aster has therefore become the new master of Miserable Shit. To be more precise, he\u2019s produced varying degrees of Miserable Shit, and Eddington might be his most Miserable yet, considering we\u2019re still feeling wounded by the year 2020, which I\u2019m convinced is still happening despite what your calendar may say. Now let\u2019s see if the film is cathartic or just a wallow.<\/p>\n

EDDINGTON<\/a>: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?<\/p>\n

The Gist:<\/strong> We begin with a homeless gent (an unrecognizable Clifton Collins Jr.) wandering into Eddington, New Mexico, crazy-talking to himself \u2013 and did he just cough? I think he might be a symbol of the Outside World, because upon his arrival, the shit in this mostly peaceful small town starts hitting the fan. It\u2019s late May, 2020. Sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) ain\u2019t so sure about this wearing-a-mask thing. The mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, who barely registers here), is all about wearing a mask \u2013 and he\u2019s also supporting the construction of a moisture-sucking cryptocurrency data center on the neighboring Pueblo, selling it as an opportunity for growth and development and all that yada. Now waitacottonpickinminute \u2013 you\u2019re telling me the liberal guy is exploiting American Indian land to support a rich-getting-richer development, and the conservative guy opposes it on the grounds that the mayor is in bed with Big Tech? Don\u2019t they (and Aster) realize there\u2019s no room for complexity or nuance in American politics today? Idiots. Either way, they dislike each other, so Joe impulsively decides to run against Ted. Joe\u2019s platform can be distilled down to two simple words: F\u2014 Ted. That\u2019ll make everything better!<\/p>\n

Joe goes home to his wife Louise (Emma Stone) wiling away lockdown by sewing creepy dolls and selling them on Etsy, and his mother-in-law Dawn (Dierdre O\u2019Connell) wiling away lockdown by listening endlessly to conspiratorial rants on the internet, and printing them out for her daughter and son-in-law to read. While Joe plasters his police truck with campaign signs (\u201cYOUR BEING MANIPULATED\u201d reads one of his anti-Ted placards, and yes, (sic)) Louise and Dawn get drawn into a wholly expendable and frustratingly underdeveloped subplot about a weird cult led by a charismatic creepo named Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler). Meanwhile, everyone uses social media like it\u2019s a utility, since it\u2019s a grossly addictive and exponentially spreading cancerous disease of putridity disguised as a connection to the rest of the world for people who feel increasingly isolated.<\/p>\n

Things only get worse, of course. George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police, and Eddington\u2019s young people get to protesting, which in this movie consists of shouting high-minded conceptual assertions about intersectionality and whatnot that they read on the internet, at people confused by such rhetoric because it hasn\u2019t popped up on their own social media feeds. At this point the plot tangles in Joe\u2019s deputies, Guy (Luke Grimes) and Mike (Micheal Ward), the latter of whom is notable because he\u2019s a Black policeman. Same for a kid named Brian (Cameron Mann), who\u2019s protesting only because he has the hots for Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), who\u2019s like wayyyyy into social justice; Brian is also pals with Mayor Ted\u2019s son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka). To say everything escalates is gross understatement. This is a powder keg that\u2019s about to explode and test our empathetic mettle because we\u2019re being forced to ruminate on whether Eddington \u2013 very much so a microcosm of America \u2013 being turned into an empty crater is a good thing or not.<\/p>\n

\"EDDINGTON Photo: Everett Collection<\/p>\n

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?:<\/strong> Where Beau is Afraid went inward, Eddington goes outward. I think Aster is better at the inward stuff.<\/p>\n

Performance Worth Watching:<\/strong> Phoenix is the modern master of playing characters who try to navigate situations that are well above their intellectual capacities (Beau is Afraid and Inherent Vice<\/a> are the other big ones), and he\u2019s as engaging and committed as ever \u2013 although the material is so scattered, it doesn\u2019t allow him to dig in, focus and deliver the intense comedy and drama he\u2019s capable of.<\/p>\n

Memorable Dialogue:<\/strong> Joe records a batshit stump speech accusing Mayor Ted of some\u2026 things\u2026 and instructs his deputy-slash-videographer thusly: \u201cDon\u2019t make me think. Post it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sex and Skin:<\/strong> Full frontal Phoenix.<\/p>\n

\"EDDINGTON, Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Our Take:<\/strong> I\u2019ll be damned if I can pull a sense of purpose from Aster\u2019s film, and that\u2019s probably the point. The \u201cdamned\u201d bit, I mean. We Americans are currently in an untenable situation and Eddington depicts little hope for change for the better. You have to admire the director for not giving a f\u2014 thematically, aiming to make a love-it-or-hate-it movie that is itself about divisiveness. There are no kumbaya or redemptive moments here. There is no buying the world a Coke to achieve unity. The film just slogs through an endless mire that keeps thickening with every step. It will soon suck you and me and all of us down into darkness, misery and death. Have a nice day!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, Aster is still a vital filmmaker despite Eddington being such a transparently contrived mess. I\u2019ll admit to two biases: One, I love Aster\u2019s other films, with Beau is Afraid treading similar territory, but with enough subtextual fury to grossly differentiate it from the loud howl of Eddington. And two, I don\u2019t want to see a movie that\u2019s about the mask debate and the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines and gun control issues and cults and White privilege and the difference between protests and riots and politics and quarantine and social media and bad spelling by people in power and hypocrisy and dumpster fires and Antifa and all the stuff that crashed down on us in 2020. Pick one or two, and I\u2019m game. Pick them all and I want to kick Aster\u2019s ass. Oh, and it\u2019s also a Western. Sort of.<\/p>\n

I might feel less\u2026 violent\u2026 theoretically, mind you\u2026 if Aster wasn\u2019t such a subtly wily visual stylist with a propensity for ramping up intensity until prickly goosebumps lift us off our chairs. The deeper struggle with Eddington is its inability to lean into either absurdist comedy or sincerity. The former would work nicely, and it does when he has his characters say shit like \u201cdenying denial\u201d or when he frames the action of someone clicking \u201clike\u201d on a social media post like it\u2019s a moment of ominous dread from a horror movie. The sincerity rears its head when Sheriff Joe insists that Covid is \u201cnot a \u2018here\u2019 problem,\u201d a clueless refusal to accept that an infected internet unites us all. The film is A BIT MUCH, all caps necessary. And Aster\u2019s dogged insistence that every character be ridiculous on one level or another means we remain at arm\u2019s length throughout \u2013 that is, if the subject matter didn\u2019t already have us pushing Eddington away from its very first moment.<\/p>\n

Our Call:<\/strong> Eddington isn\u2019t enlightening, focused or, frankly, thoughtful. Not in the least. So what\u2019s the point? I haven\u2019t the foggiest. SKIP IT.<\/p>\n

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was with equal parts anticipation and dread that I sat down to watch Eddington (now streaming on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":160654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3028,29983,8759,62410,4140,83398,171,47408,48847,53,7702,3298,67,132,68,93156],"class_list":{"0":"post-160653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-a24","9":"tag-ari-aster","10":"tag-austin-butler","11":"tag-comedies","12":"tag-covid-19","13":"tag-emma-stone","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-joaquin-phoenix","16":"tag-movie-reviews","17":"tag-movies","18":"tag-pedro-pascal","19":"tag-satire","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-westerns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115060212296052683","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}