If you come expecting the slick, high-stakes cons of Oceanâs 8 , you will be delightfully disoriented. The âcrimesâ 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 isnât the heistâitâs 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 âI love you,â 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 menâs clothes and speaking in a flat, robotic monotone.
â â â â Âœ (4.5/5) Where to watch: Available for rent on most major VOD platforms (as of original release; check current streaming availability). Kajillionaire 2020
Kajillionaire is not a crowd-pleaser in the traditional sense. It is too weird, too slow, and too sad for that. But for those who click with its frequency, it is a masterpiece. It is a film that argues that the greatest heist of all isnât stealing moneyâitâs stealing back your own capacity to feel. If you come expecting the slick, high-stakes cons
Gina Rodriguez is the filmâs secret weapon. Her Melanie is a live wire of chaotic good, and her chemistry with Evan Rachel Wood is astonishing. Where Old Dolio is a closed fist, Melanie is an open palm. Through a series of increasingly strange set piecesâincluding a memorable scene involving a massage table and a leaky ceilingâMelanie introduces Old Dolio to the terrifying, addictive sensation of being seen . The central metaphor of Kajillionaire is a brilliant, absurdist stroke. The familyâs latest con involves renting a post office box next to a company that receives barrels of a mysterious, pink, viscous goo. When the building vibrates at a specific frequency, the goo drips through the walls into their office. The goal? To catch the goo in buckets and sell it back to the company for a reward. The film introduces us to Theresa (Debra Winger)
In the landscape of modern independent cinema, few voices are as distinctively off-kilter and deeply human as Miranda Julyâs. With her fourth feature film, Kajillionaire (2020), July delivers a heist movie where the loot isnât money, but genuine human connection. Itâs 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.