★★★★½ (4.5/5) Where to watch: Available for rent on most major VOD platforms (as of original release; check current streaming availability).
If you come expecting the slick, high-stakes cons of Ocean’s 8 , you will be delightfully disoriented. The “crimes” of the Dynes family are painfully mundane: cheating a dry cleaner out of $12, returning expired products to a grocery store for store credit, or, in their most ambitious scheme, stealing postage from a shipping center. The true drama isn’t the heist—it’s the emotional repression. The film introduces us to Theresa (Debra Winger) and Robert (Richard Jenkins), two middle-aged grifters who have turned parenting into a long-term scam. They have raised their 26-year-old daughter, Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood), not as a child, but as a third accomplice. Old Dolio has never been hugged, has never heard the words “I love you,” and sleeps on a yoga mat on the floor of their leaky, debt-ridden office space. She is a ghost in a bowl cut, wearing baggy men’s clothes and speaking in a flat, robotic monotone. Kajillionaire 2020
In the landscape of modern independent cinema, few voices are as distinctively off-kilter and deeply human as Miranda July’s. With her fourth feature film, Kajillionaire (2020), July delivers a heist movie where the loot isn’t money, but genuine human connection. It’s a film about a family of small-time grifters living on the fringes of Los Angeles, and it is as bizarre, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly beautiful as anything July has ever created. ★★★★½ (4