5 new movies critics are talking about this week

“The Last Showgirl”

Pamela Anderson stars as Shelley, a Las Vegas showgirl who makes her final curtain call.

From our review:

Directed by Gia Coppola (Palo Alto) from a screenplay by Kate Gersten, The Last Showgirl tells a familiar story of misfortune and seemingly questionable choices with a great deal of love for its characters. This is written with an obvious feeling of gratitude towards the main character. It affirms the elation and bitter undertones of age and beauty. Modest in scale and loosely plotted, the film is an unusually gentle one, an ideal vehicle for Coppola's talent for expressing the intangible and ephemeral.

At the theater. Read the full review.

Rough diamond heist.

“Den of Thieves 2: Panthera”

In this sequel, Big Nick (Gerard Butler) teams up with master thief Donnie Wilson (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) to rob the World Diamond Center.

From our review:

Nick and Donnie's sudden friendship gives writer-director Christian Gudegast's film the feel of a shaggy hangout movie akin to Fast and Furious (2009). Cops and robbers party together, share painful backstories and unoriginal jokes about French cuisine, and evade the local police squad known as the Panthera. …Den of Thieves 2: Pantera isn't groundbreaking, but it does deliver on the promise of lovable villains trading bullets and crossing borders.

At the theater. Read the full review.

Elite agent, second-rate thriller.

“Ad Vitam”

Frank (Guillaume Canet), a former elite investigator, must rescue his wife from a mysterious group of gunmen.

From our review:

Ad Vitam, directed by Rodolphe Lauga, is torn between loyalties. The film tries to emulate the lean, gritty formula of its brethren, but it can't resist sneaking into fascinating locations like Sacré-Coeur and Versailles. The minimalist plot encourages spartan storytelling, but after a promising start, the film detours into overlong flashbacks. This may be to give Frank some mental weight, but it only creates belly fat.

Watch it on Netflix. Read the full review.

Virtual connectivity, real world impact.

“Eat the night”

Apolline (Lila Gounod) and her brother Pablo (Theo Chorbi) bond by playing the same video game together every day. But the brothers' relationship is put to the test when the game servers shut down in the midst of Pablo's new romance and involvement in a drug-dealing turf war.

From our review:

Eat the Night, set in Le Havre and directed by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, teeters on the precipice of a fascinating production. The young actors are excellent, and their bland surroundings are coolly captured by Raphael Vandenbusche's easygoing camera. The central gay romance has a raw warmth to it, and the video game sequences are designed to emphasize Apolline's growing loneliness. But with no real life, or anything in sight other than an inexplicable hostility toward her father, Apolline remains as blank a canvas as her warrior avatar.

At the theater. Read the full review.

Cuban Musings.

From our review:

The much-hyped hybrid mode turns out to be more mystifying than enlightening this time around. “Oceans Are the Real Continents” is very similar to Roberto Minervini's more evocative “What Do You Do When the World Is on Fire?” — another case where Italian filmmakers found material from real life in North America. Both films are shot in black and white, and both unfold on parallel tracks.

At the theater. Read the full review.

Edited by Kelina Moore.