The two face off in Ari Aster's 'Eddington'—a heightened black comedy neo-western that finds them re-living 2020, battling anxiety, and Pascal "smacking the sh*t out of" Phoenix.

If you look up and revisit the list of names mentioned in the first paragraph, I think it’s fair to say that he is regularly successful in looking for filmmakers with unique vision. There are a lot of auteurs who have successfully made movies that are instantly identifiable via their special signatures and flairs.

There are very few actors in Hollywood today as dedicated to their craft as Joaquin Phoenix. In heavy roles such as Commodus in Gladiator, the tortured Batman villain in Joker, and possibly the most anxious man alive in Beau Is Afraid,

In Ari Aster’s dark comedy, Joaquin Phoenix plays the sheriff of a New Mexico town riven by political clashes and pandemic anxieties.

A24 is known for its prestige arthouse films, but in its early days as a distributor, it made most of its money from elevated horror films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar. Over a decade in, the ambitions of A24 and Aster have expanded beyond genre film. But for both, the more recent results have been mixed.

Joaquin Phoenix says he regrets his infamous interview with David Letterman, in which he remained in character for the entire, awkward conversation.

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

Hereditary” and “Midsommar” director Ari Aster takes on contemporary America in “Eddington.” Joaquin Phoenix stars as a local sheriff in a fictional New Mexico town in May 2020, a time