Streaming: The Last Showgirl and the best Las Vegas films

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Gia Coppola’s drama starring Pamela Anderson peers behind the glamour of ‘the fun capital of the world’, but sin city has long seduced film-makers from Scorsese and Soderbergh to Sean Baker and Baz Luhrmann (There’s a reason why film-makers are routinely drawn to the glaring, garish lights of Las Vegas: in its spangliest strips, it feels more movie set than city, the kind of place it’s hard to imagine people living everyday lives 24/7. Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl – streaming on Mubi from 18 April – is quite rare in its focus on one such person: Shelly, a dancer in a long-running revue on the Vegas strip, now pushing 60 and at a crossroads when said revue announces its imminent closure. Short and light on plot, it’s a character study built on a poignant night-and-day contrast, as Shelly literally performs a glitzy Vegas dream that all looks a bit shabby by daylight in her modest bungalow in the desert suburbs. Pamela Anderson affectingly brings her own career baggage to the role o...
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All the Mountains Give review – gripping portrait of smugglers on the Iran-Iraq border

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Arash Rakhsha’s documentary follows two Kurdish friends just about getting by smuggling goods across the mountains

In an immersive and sweeping debut feature, Kurdish film-maker Arash Rakhsha portrays the plight of his people with sheer cinematic poetry. Shot over six years, the film closely follows Hamid and Yasser, two Kurdish friends who work side by side as kolbars, smugglers of untaxed household goods across the Iran-Iraq border. Coloured in icy shades of blue, their lives are filled with terrifying dangers, yet there’s also space for warmth and camaraderie amid the fog of precariousness.

Getting paid per kilogram, the pair haul heavy loads on their backs through treacherous terrain. One moment they are wading upstream, the next they are hiking through the steep, snowbound ranges of the Zagros mountains. The kolbars also rely on mules for transport, though this means they are easier to detect by the border patrols. Landmines – active souvenirs from the Iran-Iraq war – are also hazards on the winding paths; every year, about 200 kolbars die en route.

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