2020: Kajillionaire

★★★★½ (4.5/5) Where to watch: Available for rent on most major VOD platforms (as of original release; check current streaming availability).

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. Kajillionaire 2020

Richard Jenkins, known for his everyman warmth, is terrifyingly effective here as Robert. He speaks in a gentle, almost loving whisper while systematically robbing his daughter of her identity. He has named her “Old Dolio” to make her more memorable to the police (a fake name is harder to remember, he explains), and he treats her share of the loot as a business expense. Winger’s Theresa is a master of passive aggression, pouting when the con doesn’t go her way. Together, they form a closed loop of transactional cruelty. The film’s axis shifts with the arrival of Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), a cheerful, impulsive stranger who accidentally gets roped into the family’s biggest scheme. Melanie is everything the Dynes are not: she is tactile, spontaneous, and emotionally literate. When she sees Old Dolio flinch at the possibility of a hug, she doesn’t recoil—she pushes gently forward. ★★★★½ (4

Gina Rodriguez is the film’s 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 pieces—including a memorable scene involving a massage table and a leaky ceiling—Melanie introduces Old Dolio to the terrifying, addictive sensation of being seen . The central metaphor of Kajillionaire is a brilliant, absurdist stroke. The family’s 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. It’s a film about a family of small-time

Miranda July has always been interested in the awkward, lonely spaces between people, but here she turns her gaze to the ultimate loner: the child who was never allowed to be a child. Evan Rachel Wood delivers a career-best performance. She sheds the glamour of Westworld to become a trembling, awkward bird of a woman, learning to fly for the first time at 26. Watch her hands—the way they hover in the air, wanting to touch but terrified of the cost.