Kajillionaire

I did enjoy this movie although I'm still not sure what it was about or what its point was.

Evan Rachel Ward painted an interesting character and delivered one of the best sight gag I've seen in a while. The one where they bending low under the fence so the land lord won't see them and she bends backwards. I don't know how she did it but it was pure 3 stooges comedy without the slapping. Loved it.

As mentioned by others the hand to mouth existence was a good and enlightening one. Each day required to get them to the next and so on.

I didn't think I was going to like Gina Rodriguez's character but she totally won me over. She made sense and earned her place and her ray of sunshine delivery and burdened with beauty world weariness was interesting too.

What a great role for Rachel Evan Woods ... of course the supporting actors do their jobs. But it is sort of her role ... and her movie overall. I did not know what to expect and the family she is in, is quite the interesting oddity! And her performance ... just awesome! You can tell from the start.

And it is not the easiest job. She has to walk quite the fine line. Her character is not really likeable! But she is quirky and weird ... and while she (but her parents even more so) does things that could be described as despicable ... we know it is her situation that motivates her. For that, she still seems to have a moral compass ... of sorts. Again very weird and crazy character.

She will clash with a "newcomer", which we can predict ... and also were this will lead to ... still the drama is well played and well acted (no pun intended).

Don't bother with the negative reviews for this one on here. That is if you're not too picky and can enjoy a movie without the urge of being too critical all the time. Kajillionaire is certainly not a bad movie, it's different and sometimes a bit weird, but it's definitely entertaining. The plot is about a disfunctional (or not) family that tries to get by using inventive scams to gather some money. Nothing they will get rich of, just a bunch of lowlife scams that are funny to watch. The family is played by Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger (which I didn't recognize) and Evan Rachel Wood. The whole crew did a good job. Kajillionaire might not be an award winning movie but it's good enough for a good movie night.

I confess the main reason I looked forward to this quirky movie is Evan Rachel Wood, I have been a big fan, she is good in everything and especially good in quirky roles (as she was in "Whatever Works"). She is really good here as the 26-yr-old daughter living as a 3-member team with her parents. They named her Old Dolio and the story explains that quite interestingly.

Just as a family of deer or elephants spend most of their waking hours foraging for food, this 3-some does just that, food and money just to meet expenses, with no regard for where it comes from. Running any number of scams. And Old Dolio, who seems to be played as a high-functioning autistic, accepts her lot in life.

Until another young lady comes into their lives, after getting to know Old Dolio seems bent on breaking her out of the emotional chains and towards a more normal life.

This is NOT a mainstream movie, and the very skewed IMDb reviews indicate that. In fact my wife gave up after about one-third of the movie, the quirkiness did not appeal to her at all. I stuck with it, things eventually come to a decent resolution of sorts, but it is not the kind of movie that I prefer. But I must give credit to the actors, all do a very good job.

Watched it at home on DVD from my public library. No "making of" extras.

A delightfully weird movie directed by --- no surprises there! --- Miranda July.

This is the kind of movie that could never succeed without actors who know how to play the material just right, so let's start with Richard Jenkins and the unrecognizable Debra Winger, shall we? Could these two be any better? They play a married couple (or at least a couple) who try to live off the grid but in the middle of Los Angeles, a tricky business. They have all sorts of conspiracies about how the government, big business, etc. is trying to mind control people, so they don't do things like shop in stores, have an online presence, bathe, things like that. Instead, they spend every waking moment coming up with cockamamie schemes to steal and rob whatever they can. They're raising their daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) in this environment, and things seem to be going ok, or as ok as such a situation could ever be, when the family dynamic is upset by the addition of a normal person from the actual world (Gina Rodriguez) who wakes Wood up to all the ways her parents have failed to show her love or even affection.

If you are the kind of viewer who demands realism from your movies, this one will try your patience. There are at least a couple of events in this film (like what happens to Rodriguez's apartment, and those of you who've seen it know what I'm talking about) that not just strain credibility but try mighty hard to entirely break it. But the thing is, they don't. They feel credible within the world July creates in her movie, a world that's just a hair out of kilter with the world as we actually know it. And for me, everything worked.

Well, almost everything. I didn't love the lesbian themes that become increasingly prominent as the movie progresses, not because I have a problem with lesbian themes in general, but rather because they didn't feel well integrated into this particular story. But the movie is about loving and being loved in return, and there are all kinds of love, so in the end that too mostly worked for me.

Evan Rachel Wood is sensational, but this movie is stolen by, of all people, Gina Rodriguez. Who would ever have thought?

One of 2020's standout movies.

Grade: A