Kajillionaire
**** In the new film by legendary former Portland polymath Miranda July, a miserable con artist called Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) could use space from her parents (Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger). For one thing, she literally bends over backward for their nickel-and-dime schemes, limboing beneath security cameras to shoplift. For another, they had the gall to name her Old Dolio. Whether in film (Me and You and Everyone We Know) or fiction (The First Bad Man), July's worlds typically hang on off-kilter drabness. In Kajillionaire, the family lives in an office building where soap seeps through the walls each afternoon, and a barely recognizable Wood dresses in Biff Tannen tracksuits and talks a bit like Napoleon Dynamite. Yet the truth of the hyperbole is that the Dyne family is just trying to make the rent. When a captivatingly bubbly stranger (Gina Roriguez) questions the family's methods, July's film poses a clear and timeless question: Can parents ever change? Crushing, hilarious and hopeful, the central conflict becomes Old Dolio vs. attachment theory. Will her first relationships on this earth shape all future ones, like a heartless developmental cookie cutter? Don't be scared of the final answer. By the end, you'll want to call a parent. Or you won't. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.
The Doorman
** Another take on the ever more familiar tale of a dispossessed paladin single-handedly battling foreign thieves acting as a late-stage capitalism metaphor, The Doorman is hardly the first ill-conceived variant of Die Hard. However, this latest iteration might well be the laziest. Leave aside the improbability that PTSD-beset combat soldier Ali (Ruby Rose) has embraced the glorified greeter duties in the titular role, overseeing the lobby of a ritzy Manhattan co-op. The building also just happens to house the family of her widowed brother-in-law and former crush. And what are the odds that a squad of murderous art thieves (led by a sleepwalking Jean Reno) hid stolen Rembrandts in the walls of the very same structure? It's a ridiculous scenario fueled by absurd circumstances driving forward a protagonist who would never actually exist, though Rose's manic deathbot heroine seems no less unlikely than the actress-model-living anime herself. If nothing else, she knows how to throw a punch following tours of duty in Batwoman and John Wick: Chapter 2. Director Ryûhei Kitamura knows how to frame her weaponized flexibility to best sell the daft premise. Nothing about this awkwardly constructed dreck bears even the slightest resemblance to life as lived by real people, but the sheer shimmering strangeness of its star captivates nonetheless. R. JAY HORTON. On Demand.