5 Indie Movies This Week: The Isolate Thief, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Assault on Precinct 13 & More

This week on Indie Film Weekly, Glen Reynolds highlights five indie films worth knowing about: three in theaters, one on demand, and one classic.

🎥 Indie Film Reviews:
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026)
The Isolate Thief (2026)
Reading Lolita in Tehran (2026)
My Old Ass (2024)
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

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Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of July 10th, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a very silly Hollywood comedy about the dangerous idea that a celebrity sex pass with John Hamm can fix your relationship problems. We've got a Western about a young woman guarding a remote outpost when stolen gold turns her home into a target. And we've got a drama about an Iranian professor secretly gathering students to read banned books. Quick ask before we move on if you can see one of these in a theater this weekend. Indie films are not built for I'll get to it eventually. They need people showing up early while the showtimes are still breathing. On demand, I've got a coming of age comedy where an 18-year-old meets her older self during a mushroom trip. And for our classic, we're celebrating a 50th anniversary siege thriller back when low budget meant you wrote it, directed it, edited it, scored it, and somehow made it cool. Want the written version of these picks each week? I also published the indie film weekly newsletter. It's the same five films and a quick read. Sign up at newsletter.circusroadfilms.com. Let's dive in. Our first indie film in theaters this week is Gail Dawtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, directed by David Wayne. This comedy stars Zoe Deutsch as Gail, a sunny Kansas hairdresser whose engagement takes a sudden detour when her fiance uses their celebrity sex pass. His choice is Jennifer Aniston. Gail's response is to head to Los Angeles and pursue her own pass, John Hamm. That is the plot. And honestly, it's nice when a movie's not afraid to put the whole bad idea right on the table. Wayne co-wrote the script with Ken Marino, so the tone is loose, absurd, and built for people who like their Hollywood satire with zero interest and good judgment. Gail's trip becomes a strange little quest through fame, culture, cameos, handlers, wannabes, and the special LA math where everyone is one introduction away from either salvation or humiliation. Deutsch is a great fit because she can play sweetness without making Gail seem clueless. She's not just chasing a celebrity, she's trying to take back her dignity in the dumbest way possible, which is very human. The movie premiered at Sundance, and it's the kind of crowd comedy where the premise does half the lifting, then the cast sprints after it. Our second indie film in theaters this week is The Isolate Thief. Directed by John Suits, this Civil War era Western thriller starts in a remote Union Army outpost during a bitter winter. A young woman becomes the lone caretaker of the place, which already sounds like a job where the benefits package better be incredible. Then stolen gold falls into her hands, and suddenly the outpost is not remote enough. A gang of violent outlaws comes looking for it, and she has to turn the place she is guarding into the place she can survive. Mackenzie Foy plays the woman at the center, and Sean Bean is part of the cast, which is always useful when a movie needs someone who looks like he has seen bad weather, worse men, and at least three terrible plans. The clean genre pleasure here is geography. One isolated location, limited help, a valuable object, bad people closing in. The film has that stripped-down survival math that Westerns do well, where every door, window, weapon, and mistake matters. It's not about armies moving across maps. It's about one person trying to stay ahead of people who think fear will do most of the work for them. If you like lean siege stories with snow, gold, and no comfortable exits, this is your lane. Our last film in theaters this week is Reading Lolita in Tehran. Directed by Aaron Rickles, it adapts Azar Nafisi's memoir about teaching literature in post-revolutionary Iran. Nafisi is a professor who leaves the university after the pressure, censorship, and daily humiliations become impossible to absorb. Then she does something quietly radical. She invites seven of her former female students into her home for private classes, where they read forbidden Western novels and talk about the lives they are not allowed to fully live outside that room. The books matter, but the film is really about the room. A private space becomes a refuge, a classroom, and a small act of resistance. The women read Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Austin, and others, but they are also reading themselves, their marriages, their fears, their compromises, and the walls closing in around them. Golshta Farhani plays Nefisi, and she brings a calm force to the role, a kind of teacher who understands that literature can be dangerous because it gives people a private language. The film is serious, but it's not just about repression. It's also about the joy of connection, the charge of being understood, and the stubborn pleasure of thinking freely when someone has told you not to. So in theaters this week, that's Gail Daughtery and The Celebrity Sex Pass, The Isolate Thief, and Reading Lolita in Tehran. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is My Old Ass. Written and directed by Megan Park, this coming of age comedy follows Elliot, an 18-year-old, spending one last summer at home before college. She takes mushrooms with friends, as one does when making excellent long-term decisions, and ends up face to face with her 39-year-old self. Older Elliot is played by Aubrey Plaza, which immediately makes the warning feel both credible and suspicious. She gives younger Elliot advice, including a very specific warning to avoid a boy named Chad. Of course, once someone from the future tells you not to fall for somebody, that person instantly becomes the most interesting human alive. Maisie Stella plays younger Elliot with a great mix of confidence and panic. She thinks she knows who she is. Then time, family, desire, and one very inconvenient future self start poking holes in the plan. What makes the film work is that it's funny without being flimsy. It understands the ache of leaving home and the strange grief of realizing your childhood is ending while you're still inside it. If you want something warm, sharp, and emotionally sneakier than it first appears, this is a great rental. You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, or Fandango at home. Our indie film classic this week is Assault on Precinct 13, celebrating its 50th anniversary. Written, directed, edited, and scored by John Carpenter. This is low budget filmmaking with no wasted motion. The setup is brutally simple. A nearly abandoned Los Angeles police station is about to close for good. A small skeleton crew is on duty. A prisoner transport stops there. Then the building comes under siege from a heavily armed street gang, and suddenly cops, criminals, and civilians have to survive the night together. Austin Stoker plays Lieutenant Bishop, the steady center of the film. Darwin Johnston plays Napoleon Wilson, a death row inmate, with a ridiculous amount of cool for a man in handcuffs. Carpenter builds attention with clean geography and that pulsing score, so you always know where people are, where the threat is, and how little room is left. This is not a polished studio thriller trying to impress you with scale. It's a pressure cooker. The budget is small, the attitude is enormous. You can feel Carpenter figuring out the landscape he would keep using, widescreen frames, hard shadows, dry humor, and ordinary people trapped in extraordinary danger. If you want to see an indie genre film that still moves like a machine, this one holds up beautifully. You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, or Fandango at home. And that wraps it for the July 10, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly. If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff. Subscribe so you don't miss next week. Share it with one friend who likes being early. Rate it because it helps the apps take the show seriously. Then leave a quick review. Even one sentence helps. Until next week, keep it alert, keep it unruly, and keep it indie.