The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Interview
July 18, 2025/ 120 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins, with critic Adam Naiman, break down Ari Aster's COVID-era Western 'Eddington,' pair it with Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Cloud,' then Sean talks with Aster on his fifth visit to the show.
7 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The newstrailers and fall-festival slates
The new Luca Guadagnino movie, whose trailer dropped this week. Sean and Amanda saw it in April and bid it up in the auction; it's a campus sexual-assault/cancel-culture drama starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri, out October 10 then wide October 17, and they peg it as a likely Venice/Telluride premiere.
‘Eddington’with Adam Naiman
Ari Aster's fourth feature, an A24 modern Western set in a small New Mexico town in May 2020, where a standoff between sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) becomes a COVID- and social-media-poisoned powder keg. With Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O'Connell, Michael Ward, and Clifton Collins Jr., shot by Darius Khondji. It premiered to cool Cannes reviews; Amanda calls it the funniest movie of 2025, Naiman lands on 'mixed feelings but I like it,' Sean thinks it may be Aster's best. They defend it against charges of opportunism, read Antifa 'crisis actors' as Aster's usual hiding-in-plain-sight cult, and tie the homeless character Lodge, the Young Mr. Lincoln finale, and a first-person-shooter climax to a movie about a country that can no longer feel for anyone. Tracking around $5 million opening weekend.
Aster's debut, invoked to argue Eddington is 'about the same thing as the other movies': buried family history erupting outward. Naiman half-jokes you could call the new film Hereditary too.
Cited for the cult-in-plain-sight structure and its paralyzed-witness ending, which Eddington echoes with Emma Stone's character drifting into her own pregnancy cult.
The three-hour prior feature, treated as the 'blank check' benchmark. They call Eddington more grounded and approachable by comparison, and note Phoenix made more sense to them as Beau's mama's-boy figure.
‘Cloud’Adam Naiman on Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 27th feature, his biggest US release (via Sideshow), about an internet reseller/counterfeiter (nickname Ratel, also a word for honey badger) whose ruthless schemes bring the rage of the web literally to his door. Naiman, who rates Kurosawa among the ten greatest living filmmakers, frames it as a companion to Eddington (life lived through screens) that curdles from a Kurosawa-esque thriller into a violent, funny near-apocalypse; Sean calls it 'heat for dumb fucks.' Naiman recommends the non-horror Tokyo Sonata as an entry point.
Ari Aster
Aster (his fifth appearance) says he wrote a fast first draft in June 2020, 'the movie that Twitter built,' then went back and interviewed New Mexico sheriffs, mayors, and Pueblo officials. Joe Cross is modeled on a real sheriff whose wardrobe Joaquin copied. He wanted a film about living where nobody agrees on what's happening, empathic in oppositional directions, staged as a dark-comedy Western with characters each living in a different movie (High Noon for Joe, Call of Duty for the kid). On JFK's conspiracy fever as a touchstone, Chayefsky's sermonizing as a thing to avoid, having 'a lot of hope but very little confidence,' and a not-quite-sequel with returning characters.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Around the news and festival slates ChallengersSupermanJay KellyRoofmanPoolmanThe Lost BusNews of the WorldRental FamilyWake Up Dead ManGlass OnionKnives OutHamnet
Around ‘Eddington’ Lone StarCivil WarYoung Mr. LincolnThe Man Who Shot Liberty ValanceCarrieMelancholiaJokerHerThe MasterTo Die ForLincolnAll the President's MenThe Big ShortMargin CallApocalypse NowAll Quiet on the Western FrontRoboCopJFKHigh NoonMy Darling Clementine
Around ‘Cloud’ and Kurosawa CurePulseChimeTokyo SonataDaguerreotypeCharismaBright FutureTime OutHeatFargoLady VengeanceSympathy for Mr. Vengeance
In the Ari Aster interview MartyNetworkThe HospitalDream ScenarioBugonia
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The CurseShiftyTraumaZoneCan't Get You Out of My Head
Video games Call of Duty
Ads StarbucksT-Mobile Home Run DerbyGoogle AI Professional CertificateColgate Optic WhiteWhite Claw