Screening Room: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’

One big whale: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ (Warner Bros.)

In 1820, the Nantucket whaling shipEssex met a disastrous fate in the Pacific; only a few men survived. Later, the story that the ship had run afoul of a massive whale became the kernel ofMoby-Dick and was more recentlydissected in Nathaniel Philbrick’sIn the Heart of the Sea.

Ron Howard’s 3D adaptation of Philbrick’s book is opening this week, and hoping very much for some Oscar attention. My review is atFilm Journal International:

…It...