LA Weekly

THE BABYSITTERS Used to be that babysitters only solved mysteries or got caught in the middle of Mafia deals. Now, they’re charging $200 to eat a cock-meat sandwich. How did we get here? So wonders a comatose Shirley (Katherine Waterston), pert brown nipples trying to break on through to the other side of a wafer-thin white top, and as The Babysitters leaves the Ecstasy-laden party that the teenage madam organizes for her clients and backtracks to the fateful day when Michael (John Leguizamo) sowed her groove thang, the obsessive-compulsive high-schooler asserts: “Sometimes I do stupid things. I don’t know why.” Like her, David Ross’ film parses the rise and fall of a babysitters’-club-cum-prostitution-ring with a near-unwillingness to bust a brain cell, though nuts get a considerable workout. As Shirley introduces her posse of Junos and Heathers to the townies, the occasional social commentary rises to the surface — Ross repeatedly acknowledges the way middle-aged pervs appeal to the insecurities of young girls — but these glints of insight are as colorlessly sketched as the $20 bills that Shirls stuffs under her mattress. Ultimately, the film’s view of female self-loathing and girl-on-girl exploitation is as woefully reductive and painful as the it’s-all-fun-and-games-until-your-dad-gets-in-on-the-action capper and the propensity for Desperate Housewives–style summarizing. (Broadway 4; Culver Plaza; Grande 4-Plex; Regency Academy) (Ed Gonzalez)

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Mister Lonely

BEFORE THE RAINS British plantation owner and colonialist extraordinaire Henry Moores (Linus Roache) fancies himself a cowboy of Kerala, cavorting around the jungle with his Indian mistress, Sajani (Nandita Das) as he makes plans to expand his operations by branching out into spices. “Today tea, tomorrow ... cinnamon!” Coyly placed portents (a crushed robin’s nest, a prominently displayed pistol) assure us that something is destined to go awry, and indeed, Henry’s life begins to unravel almost immediately: Labor unrest thwarts his plan to build a transport road even as his sharp-eyed wife (the wonderfully headstrong Jennifer Ehle) joins him in India and Sajani’s brutal husband starts to suspect she’s been unfaithful. Henry is less a character than a metaphor for imperialism; despite his buttoned-up bravado, he can’t face the consequences of his carelessness with both Sajani and Kerala itself. As you might expect from a Merchant Ivory production, Before the Rains is saddled with a predictable lushness — even a streak of blood on a dirty window is aestheticized until it looks like stained glass — and the sensuality here can crowd out the sense. Still, director Santosh Sivan (The Terrorist) imparts a sense of wonder and vastness to the film, qualities reminiscent of a Thomas Cole painting; it reminds you of why anyone thought conquering India was a good idea in the first place. (Fallbrook 7; The Landmark; Playhouse 7; Sunset 5) (Julia Wallace)

THE DHAMMA BROTHERS What happens when you put maximum-security prison inmates through the rigors of a 10-day Buddhism boot camp? This is the intriguing premise of The Dhamma Brothers, a slow-moving documentary that follows a group of hard-boiled but thoughtful Alabama prisoners — most of them serving life for murder — as they learn to meditate and follow Buddha’s Five Precepts in the “monastic setting” of a linoleum-floored jailhouse gym. The movie is at its best when the inmates are simply set in front of the camera and allowed to talk about their crimes, and their hopes for sorting out their lives, even from behind bars; they’re far more eloquent than the superintendents and counselors who keep watch over them. But the film’s flabby, rambling narrative structure, which introduces too many bit players without giving enough background on either prison or meditation, prevents us from getting a good sense of who these men are, how they change over the course of the film, or what effect Buddhism really has on them. First-time filmmaker Jenny Phillips — a psychotherapist — made the questionable decision to shoot cheesy, half-assed re-enactments of the inmates’ crimes, and the unquestionably poor choice to undergird the much-vaunted “noble silence” of meditation with voice-overs and mood music. There’s no doubt that the brothers are a compelling bunch, but their story isn’t well-served here. (Sunset 5) (Julia Wallace)

GO  THE FALL Something like a pain-fueled, R-rated Princess Bride, The Fall straddles the intertwined worlds of storytelling and story. One half is a child’s-eye-view tour of the convalescent wing of a Los Angeles hospital, set during the infancy of the film industry. Stuntman Roy (Lee Pace), heartbroken to the brink of suicide, finds himself fabricating a tale about a band of brethren brigands to entertain a recuperating 9-year-old girl (Catinca Untaru, so adorable that I vacillated between feeling saccharine-sick and wanting to adopt her). The other half of the film involves the girl’s visualization of this improvised bedtime story, as the multinational, one-dimensional bandits sally forth in billowing slo-mo on an epic journey to topple a tyrannical governor. As Roy’s depression deepens, the story darkens accordingly. Director Tarsem Singh, a commercial-shoot hired gun whose first and only feature until now was 2000’s The Cell, grabbed vistas for his bloviated pictorialist fantasia on cross-continental on-location shoots, pulling together a supersaturated, border-blurring National Geographic travelogue of steppes, deserts and Ottoman extravagance (the director’s Indian origins give the movie’s references to Orientalism an interesting twist). If the human details are often problematic, the IMAX-grade bombast, ceremonial camera and Jodorowsky-esque eclecticism still combine for a singular spectacle. (Broadway 4; Burbank Town Center 8; The Landmark; Playhouse 7) (Nick Pinkerton)

FRONTIER(S) Ah, the triumph of globalization: Give the French a taste of neofascism, race riots and paramilitary crackdowns, and they seek solace in the American cinema’s current favorite pastime — vigorously art-directed torture porn. Coming after the arterial geysers of Haute Tension,Sheitan and the reigning gusher of Gallic gore, Inside, this grisly 2007 debut of writer-director Xavier Gens (making a brief appearance in U.S. theaters four days ahead of its DVD release) takes the most bluntly political tack yet, stranding a quartet of banlieue outlaws at a remote motel staffed by — deep breath — the cannibal/mutant/alcoholic/nymphomaniacal spawn of an unrepentant Nazi. As a satire of France’s recent turn to the right, Frontier(s) is both hysterical and muddled; as straight-up splatter — a Grand Guignol concerto of scalding steam, slashed tendons and table saw, with a solo for exploding head — it’s as relentless as it is hateful, hammily directed and derivative of the dreariest slop in contemporary American horror cinema. But it’s sure to please anyone (anyone?) who thinks the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake is better than the original. (Bridge) (Jim Ridley)