Lifestyle
The River Runs Free
For the first time in more than a century, the Klamath River began flowing unobstructed on Aug. 28 from the river’s mouth to Keno Dam, just below Upper Klamath Lake, opening hundreds of miles of salmon habitat and bringing a generational effort to the brink of completion.
The moment an excavator broke open the last coffer dam holding the river back at what used to be Iron Gate Dam, letting the Klamath River spill into its natural path, it was met with cheers and tears by more than 100 tribal members, environmentalists and officials watching, many of whom had spent years — if not decades — working to free the river from the dams that had choked it for decades.
“It was kind of a magic moment,” says Craig Tucker, a consultant with the Karuk Tribe who has worked for removal of the four dams on the lower Klamath River for more than 20 years. “You know how you have those milestone moments — like when you graduate from college and walk across the stage, and you don’t really feel different? This felt different. It was like something monumental just happened, like the river is now a river, and there were a flood of emotions that went along with that. Lots of hugs.”
But while the sun has nearly set on the largest dam removal effort in United States history, the work is not done and the sun is just rising on what is hoped to be one of the largest restoration efforts on record, a years-long effort to restore the lower Klamath River and its surrounding ecosystem to its natural state.
Work will continue through October to remove the last remnants of the four dams and their ancillary structures, as a team of biologists and ecologists work to manage a significant remaining threat to the adult salmon just entering the river’s mouth. Meanwhile, work is underway to continue replanting and reseeding thousands of acres of land that sat for decades covered by man-made reservoirs, and to open up hundreds of miles of salmon-bearing tributaries and restore them to health.
If you happen by just about any section of the lower Klamath River these days, you’ll likely notice it resembles chocolate milk, turbid and muddy, filled with sediment that had been trapped for generations behind the dams.
“Removing dams is like open heart surgery, it’s traumatic to the patient,” Tucker says. “But you do things to mitigate the impacts.”
Since the earliest stages of planning to remove the four dams — Iron Gate, Copco 1, Copco 2 and J.C. Boyle — there have been concerns about the impact of releasing the estimated 15 million cubic yards of sediment trapped behind them. Crews drew down the reservoirs behind the dams in the winter months, so naturally high-river flows would flush the sediment out to sea.
- Photo courtesy of Swiftwater Films
- A tribal ecologist plants native starts in the newly exposed mudflat of a former reservoir.
That was successful, Tucker says, but now the concern is that as the last temporary coffer dams are removed, it will release another flush of sediment — a very fine particulate resulting from years of decomposing, dead algae. The substance is anoxic, meaning it will suck oxygen from the surrounding water when released, and is too fine and liquid to scoop out with a backhoe and put in a truck. Releasing it all at once — or waiting for a rain event that would do the same — could “nuke the river,” Tucker says, killing all those adult salmon just returning to spawn. As such, he says crews are currently releasing 5,000 cubic yards at a time while biologists monitor oxygen levels down river.
“We want to get all this stuff out before the adults would reach Iron Gate, but we can’t evacuate it too quickly or we’ll affect the oxygen levels,” Tucker says, conceding it’s a tricky balance that will continue until those fish reach what used to be Iron Gate Dam, which is expected to happen Sept. 20.
The good news, Tucker says, is that salmon are resilient and can deal with some turbidity, and that no matter what happens, this year will be a singular impact that will pale in comparison to the annual impacts of blocked fish passage and poor water quality the dams created.
“This is temporary,” he says. “It’s not going to look like this forever.”
Meanwhile, work to restore the Klamath River Valley is ramping up. While seeding and planting efforts began in concert with the reservoir draw downs — with ecologists wanting to get native seed mixes on the freshly exposed reservoir floors while they were still saturated and wet — they are entering a new stage.
Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), a subcontractor leading the restoration effort, says teams have spent years planning the restoration effort — amassing a bank of more than 17 billion native seeds and 300,000 tree and shrub plugs — the full reality of the job is just coming into focus.
“We spent five years planning a restoration project that we just now have access to,” he says, explaining that only after the reservoirs were drawn down, allowing the river to find its path through former beds, could crews collect soil samples and test composition. “We are drinking from a fire hose when it comes to learning about our site.”
Currently, he says, crews are hard at work using farming equipment to break up the dry, cracked, clay-like substance that covers the newly exposed reservoir floors, preparing them for another seeding effort. Meanwhile, he says, boulders and rocks — some taken from the earthen fill dams themselves — will be placed on the newly exposed bedrock that once supported the dams, providing important habitat that can provide respite for migrating adult salmon and protection for vulnerable fry. Then there’s all those tributaries, some which have themselves been choked with sediment from decades of flowing into stagnant reservoirs. Coffman says crews will take a case-by-case approach, using equipment to excavate sediment from some, nudging others to their historic footprints, removing fish passage barriers in some and adding fallen trees to create shelter in others.
Joshua Chenoweth, a senior riparian ecologist for the Yurok Tribe, who says he’s primarily responsible for reseeding the 2,000 acres of newly exposed reservoir floor, says crews will begin work in October to reseed areas that couldn’t be reached when the reservoirs were drained, adding they also have 116,000 shrub and tree plugs to plant this year. Chenoweth says the seed mixes are being tweaked — with some species added and others taken out — to fit conditions of each of the former reservoirs. Another round of seeding and planting is slated for 2025.
Tucker says one thing that dawned on him when he was standing at the foot of the valley that once held Iron Gate Reservoir is that the watershed will soon have two big valleys that will soon be restored to a natural state.
“I don’t know of any river valleys of this size on the West Coast that are undeveloped,” he says. “We can really make this a wild, naturally productive place again.”
And Tucker and others underscored that this moment would not have been possible without decades of activism from tribal nations, including the Karuk and Yurok tribes on the lower Klamath, whose culture and sustenance have been interwoven with the river for millennia.
North Coast Congressmember Jared Huffman, who joined the fight in 2012 after redistricting shifted congressional district boundaries and played an important role in the pressure campaign that ultimately brought PacifiCorp, the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary that owned the dams, back to the negotiating table, spent some time on the river last week.
- Photo by Matt Mais/Yurok Tribe
- A recently planted blossoming Menzie’s fiddleneck attracts a painted lady butterfly as a part of an effort to add small flowering plants to the landscape that will aid pollinators.
“Being part of this journey is just magic, so much so that I didn’t mind at all that the river water looked like the Mississippi,” he says, adding that the magnitude of the moment is palpable. “It’s huge. There’s no way to overstate it. This has been so long in coming, and it embodies so many hopes and dreams and long-standing grievances and injustices. It’s very emotional for the tribal leaders who I work with, who have been in the trenches for decades in some cases. You can just sense a new hope and sense of satisfaction. They’re practically beaming with it.”
In a statement issued after the last coffer dam was breached late last month, Yurok Vice Chair Frankie Myers noted the effort was never a choice for tribal members.
“The dams that have divided the basin are now gone and the river is free,” he said. “Our sacred duty to our children, our ancestors, and for ourselves, is to take care of the river, and today’s events represent a fulfillment of that obligation.”
But restoration will continue, and Coffman says RES’ obligation remains, noting that work and monitoring efforts will continue for a minimum of five years. Ultimately, however, he says the company is bound not by time but a performance guarantee, having promised to meet certain benchmarks — like vegetative cover, trees per acre, species diversity — before the job is done.
“Nobody has ever done something like this before,” he says. “We’re here to see this landscape recover, here to steward it through to recovery alongside our tribal partners, the folks who have been stewarding these landscapes for millennia.”
Thadeus Greenson (he/him) is the Journal’s news editor. Reach him at (707) 442-1400, extension 321, or [email protected]
Copco 2 Dam
Build: Copco 2, a 33-foot-tall concrete dam that stretches 278 feet wide and sits between the much larger Copco 1 and Iron Gate dams, was constructed in 1925 as a diversion dam, running water from the river through a nearby powerhouse to generate electricity.
Removal: The first dam removed, Copco 2 was demolished in July of 2023 when the Klamath River Renewal Corporation brought heavy equipment into the area to prep Copco 1 for the drawing down of its reservoir in January. Contractors drilled holes 12 to 15 feet into the concrete of Copco 2, filled them with explosives and detonated them, then used hydraulic picks and other machinery to break down the rubble until it was manageable and could be hauled away.
Restoration: Due to the small footprint of Copco 2 and its proximity to Copco 1, it was not considered a primary restoration focus. Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), says because Copco 2 was built in a narrow bedrock canyon with steep slopes, its infeasible to do much restoration planting around it. As such, he says the plan is to essentially let nature run its course, hoping native plants growing above it will drop seed that will catch in the canyon walls.
Iron Gate Dam
Build: Constructed in 1962, Iron Gate Dam is the lowest of the dams that comprise the Klamath River Hydroelectric Project, creating an artificial lake that can hold up to 58,000 acre feet of water. Standing 173 feet tall and stretching 740 feet wide, the earthen embankment dam was constructed of compacted earth under a waterproof surface.
Removal: Iron Gate Dam was removed from the top down, with excavators removing the approximately 1 million cubic yards of soil and earthen materials. Most of that earthen material was hauled away, though some was used on site to fill a spillway and a massive erosion hole it had created. Work continues to dismantle the last vestiges of the dam, as well as its ancillary structures.
Restoration: The primary restoration areas around the former Iron Gate Reservoir are the reservoir bed itself, which crews began seeding and replanting with native species as the reservoir was drawn down, and its main tributaries, including Jenny Creek, the Camp Creek Complex and Scotch Creek. Approximately 388,000 cubic yards of sediment were mechanically removed. Joshua Chenoweth, a senior riparian ecologist with the Yurok Tribe, says crews are utilizing a different seeding and planting strategy in the Iron Gate Reservoir than those upstream because it’s at a lower elevation with a different climate. As such, he says they’re using a customized native seed mix and planting tress like oaks and junipers, which aren’t found upriver around J.C. Boyle, as well as scrub shrubs. And even within the reservoir itself, there’s variation, according to Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), who says crews are tailoring vegetation different for the valley’s north- and south-facing slopes. “Even within the Iron Gate Reservoir itself, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to vegetation restoration,” Coffman says.
J.C. Boyle Dam
Build: Built in 1958, the John C. Boyle Dam — commonly referred to J.C. Boyle — stood 68 feet tall and 693 feet wide, creating its namesake reservoir that held 4,200 acre feet of water. The farthest upriver of the four lower Klamath dams, it was comprised of concrete and earthfill embankment.
Removal: Existing culverts were used to draw down the J.C. Boyle reservoir, after which crews demolished its spillway portion with hydraulic hammers mounted to a large excavator, progressively breaking the concrete into pieces that could be removed and hauled. Excavators and trucks then removed the earthen portion of the dam.
Restoration: The primary restoration focus around J.C. Boyle Dam is the former reservoir site, which was seeded and planted starting when drawdown began, as well as Spencer Creek and several unnamed tributaries that have reconnected with the river’s main stem. An estimated 40,000 cubic yards of sediment was also mechanically removed. Because the J.C. Boyle Reservoir sees moisture before those downriver, Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), says his crews have started there, using pasture remediators — a kind of farming equipment — to break up the dried clay-like reservoir beds, which Yurok Senior Riparian Ecologist Joshua Chenoweth says have cracks running 2-feet deep in some places. After the soil is broken up, crews will hand plant a custom seed mix, with Chenoweth noting, “Seed germination is all about the seed-to-soil contact,” so the soil preparation work is crucial. Additionally, whereas downriver plantings will see a mix of oaks and junipers, Coffman says the J.C. Boyle area will see more ponderosa pines.
Copco 1 Dam
Build: Built in 1918, Copco 1 is a gravity dam that stands 125 feet tall and stretches 415 feet wide, creating a reservoir capacity of 46,900 acre feet in Copco Lake, which sits in Siskiyou County near the Oregon border.
Removal: Work to deconstruct Copco 1 Dam began with the installation of a “work pad” at its downstream base to allow a stable work area for heavy equipment. Crews then used a drill-and-shoot method to bore a 10-foot-wide tunnel through the dams base, meaning they repeatedly drilled into the dam, packed the hole with explosives, detonated them and excavated the rubble until they’d dug a 150-foot-long tunnel, leaving just a final plug of concrete to keep the water from escaping. In January, crews then blasted this plug, opening the tunnel to begin drawing down the reservoir. The dam was then removed much the same as Copco 2, just on a much larger scale, with crews drilling and blasting it apart, reducing it to rubble that can be hauled from the site by truck. Work continues to remove the last pieces of the dam, as well as the dam house.
Restoration: The primary focus of restoration efforts at the former site of Copco 1 have been Beaver Creek Complex, Deer Creek and the spring-fed floodplain. An estimated 346,000 cubic yards of sediment was mechanically removed from the area. While the Copco Lake area is somewhat similar to Iron Gate downriver, Dave Coffman, a geoscientist for Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), points out that they’re still separated by 30 miles, noting that it’s not uncommon to see snow at Copco 1 after temperatures have warmed significantly at Iron Gate. As such, while the seed mixes are generally the same, Coffman says crews are taking a customized approach to the reservoir. Coffman notes that a lava flow once blocked the Klamath River there, creating a flat, lacustrine valley that persisted for thousands of years before the river eroded it and broke through. After reservoir draw down, Coffman says it was discovered there are natural springs in the valley nobody thought would be there, saying restoration is now being tailored to include more wetland areas to accommodate “pretty significant spring flows that come from the north side of the valley.”
Marty Reisman practicing in New York in 1951.
Ed Ford/AP
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Ed Ford/AP
In the 1940s and ’50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence’s, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.
His game was electric. “Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him,” someone identified only as “the shirt king” told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.
The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet’s character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.
Nicknamed “The Needle” for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.
Like Chalamet’s Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it “involved anatomy and chemistry and physics.”
One of the game’s “bad boys”
Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. “His personality made him legendary,” said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. “The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man.”
He was also one of the game’s “bad boys,” just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn’t show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated — but later fined the players $200 and suspended them “indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis” worldwide for breaking the sport’s “courtesy code.”
Marty Reisman demonstrates an under-the-leg trick shot in 1955.
Jacobsen/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
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Ping pong offered quick cash — and an outlet
Reisman grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. “It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine,” Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in a garment factory. When he was 14, Marty went to live with his father at the Broadway Central Hotel.
Hustling was “just baked into his DNA,” said Leo Leigh, director of a documentary about Reisman called Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler.
“I remember [Reisman] telling me that when he wanted to eat, he would wait until there was a wedding in the hotel, put on his best suit and just slip in and just sit and eat these massive, amazing meals,” said Leigh, “And then he’d be ready for the night to go and hustle table tennis.”
Reisman suffered panic attacks as early as nine years old. Playing ping pong helped with his anxiety. “The game so engrossed me, so filled my days, that I did not have time to worry,” he wrote.
“Finding this game of table tennis — and finding that he had this amazing ability — became almost like an escape, a meditation,” said Leigh.
Marty Reisman shows a behind-the-back trick shot in 1955.
Jacobsen/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
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Jacobsen/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
“Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one”
Reisman wanted to be the best ping pong player in the world. “To be an Einstein in your field, or a Hemingway, or a Joe Louis — there could be nothing, I imagined, more noble,” Reisman wrote. “And table tennis champions were to me Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one.”
The game was respected throughout Europe and Asia, turning ping pong stars into big names: In Marty Supreme, one who was imprisoned at Auschwitz tells the story of being spared by Nazi guards who recognize him. (Reisman’s memoir tells a similar true story of the Polish table tennis champion Alojzy “Alex” Ehrlich.)
But in the U.S., ping pong was considered a pastime people played in their basements. New York City was an exception: “Large sums of money were bet on a sport that had no standing at all in this country,” wrote Reisman.
Reisman dazzled spectators with his flair on the table.
“If you look at footage of Marty in the ’50s and ’60s, you could almost compare it to the footage of Houdini,” said Leigh. “He would blow the ball into the air and then he would, you know, knock it under his leg or just do some acrobats. It was almost like putting on a show.”
One of his gimmick shots was breaking a cigarette in two with a slam.
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Marty Reisman after winning the final men’s singles game at the English Open in 1949.
AP
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Chasing a dream “that no one respected”
Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. “I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful,” he told NPR. “It’s a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision.” Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence’s and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman’s friend and competitor Dick Miles.
It was Safdie’s wife who found Reisman’s book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. “Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face,” said Safdie, “And very few believers in that project.”
Safdie likened the experience to Reisman’s obsession with becoming a table tennis champion “who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected.”
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A new racket changes the game
In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men’s Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball “to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering.”
“Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat,” said Asgarali, “When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn’t competitive anymore. He totally fell out of the game.”
Leigh said Reisman would tell just about anyone who would listen how Hiroji Satoh destroyed his game.
He was “constantly analyzing and reanalyzing his personality, who he is, where he’s going,” said Leigh. He would “sit with all these academics and these writers and these almost philosophers and just talk for hours” about how the rubber bat “completely” ruined his game. “He was always searching for something.”
In 1958, Reisman bought the Riverside Table Tennis Club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a popular spot frequented by celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Dustin Hoffman. In 1997, at age 67, he won the United States Hardbat Championship.
Marty Reisman died in 2012 at age 82. A The New York Times profile of him less than a year prior started with the headline, “A Throwback Player, With a Wardrobe to Match.”
Beloved Dog Influencer Raffie
Dead from Heart Attack …
Published
Beloved dog influencer Raffie – from the famed TikTok account “bundleofbullies” – has suddenly passed away from a heart attack … according to his owner who was on vacation at the time of his passing.
The account’s owner Maren announced the news on TikTok, saying she is away in Austria and got the call from the doggie daycare Raffie and his siblings were staying at … and they told her in the midst of a fight with another dog, Raffie dropped dead from a heart attack.
TikTok/@bundleofbullies
Maren struggles to catch her breath as she says, “I never imagined that I would have to make this video” and says her other dog Pickles wanted to “attack Raffie” … leading to Raffie’s death.
She shares that the owner of the daycare immediately started CPR on Raffie, but Pickles wanted to “attack further” so Raffie’s best friend Oden stepped in to protect him – almost dying himself, but luckily was rushed to the vet and survived the incident.
Incidentally, Maren says they eventually managed to get Pickles away, but Raffie was already dead. Full of tears, Maren calls Raffie her “best friend” saying she misses him so much and “cannot live without him.”
She goes on to say, “Let’s be clear, they never do anything like that when they’re with me” and reveals that she will be on the next flight home to be with Raffie – who is currently waiting for her at a funeral home.
RIP
Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.
A24
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A24
A ping pong hustler for the ages, a Neil Diamond interpreter for the ’80s, choral music both comic and spiritual, plus tormented teens, twisted families, and a giant snake on the loose. It’s quite the jolly holiday at your local cineplex.
They join a new Avatar sequel, a Bradley Cooper-directed drama, and more in theaters.
Marty Supreme
In theaters Thursday
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I feel as if I should tell you to speed-read this review, preferably with Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” blaring in your ear. Josh Safdie’s adrenaline-fueled, screwball comedy about a table tennis hustler who dreams of world domination — in a sport that hasn’t registered yet with the American public — is a mesmerizing cinematic tour de force. Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser (loosely based on real-life 1940s and ’50s U.S. ping pong champ and petty criminal Marty Reisman), graduating from determined kid-with-a-passion to aggrieved also-ran-in-full-melt-down mode, attracting and then alienating everyone he comes across. We meet him as a New York shoe salesman having storeroom trysts with his married childhood sweetheart (Odessa A’zion) and prepping for a bout in England for which he can’t even afford plane fare.
Marty establishes with a series of heists and scams that he’s got no problem cheating or stealing to get there, then regales the press with a pugnacious racist routine that lands him on front pages before his first serve. Chalamet’s live-wire approach is neatly countered by a serenely sensual turn by Gwyneth Paltrow as an aging movie star who finds Marty amusing and alarming in about equal measure. And the film’s just getting started at that point, careening towards a championship in Japan with the propulsive, harrowing, rush-to-judgment feel of Safdie’s Uncut Gems mixed up with dizzying comedy. It’s a thrill ride, pure and simple. — Bob Mondello
Song Sung Blue
In theaters Thursday
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Mike and Claire Sardina, the real-life, blue-collar Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act in the 1980s, get the sequin-and-spangle treatment in this Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson love-fest. Writer and director Craig Brewer keeps the music central and the sentiment tolerable as the couple meets cute, bonds quick, and forms a musical act known professionally as Lightning and Thunder. The stars are well-matched and appealing — Hudson does a winning Patsy Cline impersonation, and Jackman completely nails Neil Diamond’s sound and bearing. The couple’s story, which has more downs than ups, doesn’t quite match the mood of a movie determined to be ever-and-always-up. Still, the stars are engaging, the supporting cast great fun, and the music rousing. — Bob Mondello
Anaconda
In theaters Thursday
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The original Anaconda movie came out almost 30 years ago, sending an assortment of ’90s movie stars down the Amazon, where they were menaced and occasionally crushed and/or devoured by giant deadly snakes. That film, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, was a hit that spawned a handful of lightly regarded sequels.
Heavy on meta references to the original film, the new Anaconda is not quite a reboot, it’s not quite a sequel, and it’s played for laughs. Jack Black and Paul Rudd star as lifelong friends who grew up wanting to be filmmakers. But they’ve followed different career paths — Paul Rudd’s character is a struggling actor whose biggest role was a bit part on the TV show S.W.A.T., while Jack Black’s character makes wedding videos while yearning to shoot something more creative. They gather their old friends and collaborators — played by Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn — and head to the Amazon to shoot a meta reimagining of Anaconda. As you can imagine, this proves harder than it sounds. — Stephen Thompson
The Plague
In limited theaters Wednesday
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The first image is an eerie, underwater shot — sun-dappled blues, greens, and greys — its peace suddenly exploded as bodies plunge into the pool. Middle school boys, limbs all akimbo, almost literally at sea, as they struggle for equilibrium. It’s an apt beginning for the story of a youngster trying to figure out where he fits in among the cliques at a summer water polo camp. Ben (Everett Blunck) is the camp newbie, Jake (Kayo Martin) its smirking cool kid who picks up on his fellow campers’ idiosyncrasies and exploits them.
He tells Ben that Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a withdrawn boy with a rash, has the “plague” and must be avoided. Ben, seeing the obvious pain the outcast is in, can’t square that with his own sense of decency, but also doesn’t want to be ostracized, and his attempt to split the difference leads the film into Lord of the Flies territory. Charlie Polinger’s directorial debut looks breathtaking, feels unnerving, and traffics cleverly in body-horror tropes as it basically establishes that 12-year-old boys are savages who should never be without adult supervision. — Bob Mondello
Father Mother Sister Brother
In limited theaters Wednesday
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You might expect Jim Jarmusch to look at family relationships with a certain eccentricity, but not necessarily in the elegantly framed way he does in this triptych about adult children and the parents they don’t begin to understand. The Father segment casts Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik as siblings who are stiff with each other, and even less comfortable with their garrulous con man of a dad (Tom Waits). Driver’s come with provisions and cash, Bialik’s come armed with an arched eyebrow, and Waits is ready for them both.
The second part, Mother, finds a sublimely chilly Charlotte Rampling hosting an awkward once-a-year tea for her daughters, one primly nervous (Cate Blanchett), the other pink-haired and boisterous (Vicky Krieps). And the final third, Sister Brother, finds Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat bonding in their recently deceased parents’ now-empty Paris apartment. This segment seems less about estrangement, until you realize how little they actually know about their dear departed folks. There are running jokes about Rolexes, the expression “Bob’s your uncle,” and toasts to tie things together, along with a sweet, reflective tone that makes this one of the year’s most compassionate films. — Bob Mondello
The Choral
In limited theaters Thursday
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Director Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett, who previously teamed up on The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and The Lady in the Van, are plumbing shallower depths in this gentle dramedy about an amateur chorus in 1916. When their choirmaster leaves to fight in World War I, grieving mill owner Roger Allam, who funds the chorus, reluctantly hires Dr. Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes), a gifted choirmaster but a divisive choice in this intensely nationalistic moment — because he’s spent the last few years in Germany. He also exhibits “peculiarities” (code for being gay) but this seems less important to the locals.
Fiennes is briskly dismissive of local traditions, snippy about English appreciation for the arts, and celebrated enough in music circles to persuade composer Edward Elgar (Simon Russell Beale) to let them perform his oratorio “The Dream of Gerontius.” Elgar is less thrilled when he discovers the chorus is turning the oratorio into a story about the war, casting its elderly hero as a young soldier and generally making it what later generations would call “relevant.” It’s all sweet and sentimental, and though it’s being released during awards seasons, feels as if it really wants to be considered for best picture of 1933. — Bob Mondello
No Other Choice
In select theaters Thursday
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“I’ve got it all,” says paper factory supervisor Man-su as he hugs his family at a barbecue in the backyard of his elegant Korean home. He’s grilling some eels given to him by the paper company’s new American owners, secure in the knowledge that this must mean they value him. This being a social satire by director Park Chan-wook, it’s reasonable to expect he will shortly be dealt a blow, and one day later, he’s been axed. (The film is based on Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 horror-thriller novel The Ax). He’s distraught but can’t express, or even really understand, that he feels he has lost his manhood, his mojo, and his reason for being.
On top of that, his industry is consolidating, so finding another job before his severance pay runs out and he loses his house (his childhood home) will be tricky. Asked if he’d consider a job outside the paper industry, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) says that for him there is “no other choice,” echoing the words his American bosses uttered about bringing down costs as they did layoffs. But with the end of severance payments looming, he hatches a plan to knock off his job market competition one by one. Isn’t this mass murder? Well, he has “no other choice.”
At first it seems as if we’re in serial-killer comedy territory, but the filmmaker widens the frame to include narrative side trips — a stepson who’s stealing cellphones, a daughter who’s a cello prodigy, a wife who’s working for a dentist that Man-su suspects has designs on her. Oh, and pig-farm trauma from his youth, and a passion for greenhouse gardening. Director Park has a lot going on, and a final paper-plant-mechanization sequence suggests that all these stabs at human agency may just have been humanity’s last gasp. — Bob Mondello
The Testament of Ann Lee
In limited theaters Thursday
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Ambitious, stylized, intense, and thoroughly unorthodox, Mona Fastvold’s religious biopic tells the story of Shakers founder Ann Lee (a wild-eyed, fiercely committed Amanda Seyfried) as a full-scale musical drama. That’s not to say there are finger-snapping tunes. The score adapts 18th century Shaker spirituals, and the choreography involves the thrusting limbs and clawing fingers of the seizure-like dancing that earned this puritan sect of “Shaking” Quakers their nickname.
We meet Ann as a pious youngster more interested in spiritual matters than matters of the flesh. Marriage to a man who enjoys inflicting pain during sex, and the deaths of her four children in infancy lead Ann to the conclusion that lifelong celibacy is among the keys to salvation. With the help of her younger brother (Lewis Pullman), she finds adherents to a religious philosophy that also emphasizes gender equality and simple living, and leads them to found a utopian, crafts-based community in America. Director Fastvold and her co-writer Brady Corbet (the couple flipped roles from last year’s The Brutalist) serve up Ann’s spiritual journey in ecstatically musical terms, which is at once distancing and … well, ecstatic, though it pales a bit over the course of two-and-a-quarter hours. — Bob Mondello
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