TWELVE "Maybe you know how it is. Maybe you don't," gravely intones Kiefer Sutherland, the narrator of Joel Schumacher's silly, tone-deaf adaptation of Nick McDonell's 2002 book about entitled Upper East Side teenage twerps. Famously published when its author was only 18, Twelve the book briskly moves along with the Didionesque disdain of an insider — material that first-time screenwriter Jordan Melamed transforms into a hand-wringing cautionary tale with a tacked-on moral lesson and visions of a dead, beatific mother. Gossip Girl's Chace Crawford stars as White Mike, a Camus-quoting prep-school dropout who refrains from using any of the substances he sells to his former classmates, narcissists who are hurting deeply because their parents go on vacation without them, reachable only by satellite phone. Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch). But White Mike is not the psychopath of the story — that would be Claude (Billy Magnussen), who has left rehab and does something very bad at a party after Mom prefers talking with his younger brother, Chris (Rory Culkin). Filthy-rich parents, remember: Your adolescent children really want to Skype with you when you're in St. Barts. (Melissa Anderson) (Citywide)
THE WILDEST DREAM: CONQUEST OF EVEREST Everest looks suitably majestic in this IMAX documentary, though five different expeditions on the peak are awkwardly cobbled into one dubious narrative. At issue is whether, in 1924, George Mallory and his rope mate reached the summit 50 years before credited first-timer Edmund Hillary. Mallory's body was discovered in 1999 by American climber Conrad Anker, which prompted much media speculation and several new books on the subject. In 2007, Anker went back to test the hypothesis — i.e., sell more books and make this movie with director Anthony Geffen — that Mallory might've been able to free-climb the "Second Step" on Everest's north side (a section today scaled using an aluminum ladder). In addition to the many stills, old newsreels and passages read from Mallory's loving correspondence with his wife, Anker and his English rope-mate briefly don (re-created) '20s climbing attire to ponder if Mallory could've survived in the Death Zone without plastic boots and down parkas. But this becomes a somewhat ridiculous costume show, with two trudging figures in tweed, filmed in sepia tones, set to the epistolary drama. "There's no dream that mustn't be dared," says Mallory, through the voice of Ralph Fiennes. Liam Neeson narrates, and in an unintentionally morbid, mournful touch, Neeson's late wife, Natasha Richardson, reads the letters from Ruth Mallory. The photography is stunning, of course, but the historical conjecture and CSI: Everest vibe are less impressive. (Brian Miller) (Arclight Sherman Oaks, Landmark)
