The film “Eddington” opens at night as Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) sits in his Chevy Tahoe on the edge of a New Mexico desert. On duty, he’s bathed in blue light, watching YouTube: a video on how to convince your spouse to want a child. More cops pull up, tribal police from the fictional Santa Lupe Pueblo, and tell him a mask mandate is active on their land. Joe pulls his mask up over his nose until they leave, then immediately yanks it down.

Set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, “Eddington,” directed by Ari Aster, blends elements of horror, Westerns, and satire that explore how we process such an earth-shattering event half a decade later. But its subplot about the development of a massive data center nearby explores just how this volatile landscape became profi

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