The book In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is a book about a true story about a very large white whale that destroyed a whaling ship in 1821 and is the story that lead to the novel Moby Dick, which was a fictional accounting of this incident that was released in 1850 and written by Herman Melville.  Many people who are going to see this new Ron Howard movie are probably going to think that this is a movie about the novel Moby Dick and they will be disappointed because this story is completely different the original Moby Dick novel and 1956 movie starring Gregory Peck.

At times I found parts of this movie rather boring, especially when the remaining crew was stranded at sea for over 90 days and I thought that there was no need to drag on this part of the story for about 2 thirds of the entire movie to watch the crew slowly dying of starvation and exposure.  The special effects were good but did not do a great job showing the whale destroying the boat and some of the smaller boats and killing many of the men in the crew. I actually thought that the original movie Moby Dick with Gregory Peck was a much better movie and had better special effects even though this movie was made in 1956 and fictional Moby Dick story is more interesting than this depressing true story.

Additional thoughts concerning this movie include several of the actors, especially the lead actor Chris Hemsworth, who lost over 30 pounds, living on 500 calories a day to make their survival at sea more believable. Clearly the fact that this is only a movie never occurred to these actors who risked their long term health for a long period of time just to make a movie. I have never understood why actors in Hollywood take risks like this just to make a movie.

In conclusion I expected a great movie here and only got a marginally good one. If you are fan of movies at sea this the movie for you, otherwise this one can be missed.

In the heart of the sea

Ron Howard Credits IMDB

In 1998 the Academy Awards gave best picture to “Shakespeare In Love” when it was up against arguably the greatest movie about the realities of war ever made, “Saving Private Ryan”.  Without a doubt this is the biggest injustice I have ever seen in any award show. Last years “The Birdman” winning for best picture was something that most people did not understand as this movie was at its best just strange and definitely not a good movie.   Since that time, I have witnessed a lot of insanity in Hollywood and in the many award shows that are televised this year, but I would have to say that this time around, with the Golden Globe nominations this year could be the most insane ever.

First of all, the movie “The Martian” is not a comedy or musical.  The movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” was a bad movie.    How could this movie be nominated and “The Danish Girl” not be nominated?   The movie “Spy” was at best a very average and forgettable movie and I was very surprised to see this movie nominated. Why was Tom Hanks not nominated for “Bridge of Spys”, or Johnny Depp for “Black Mass”? Hopefully the Academy Awards will have a return to some kind of normalcy and we will see the some nominations that at least make some sense.

This is the last movie in the Hunger Game Series and the fourth installment; the first movie “The Hunger Games” came out in March 2012 with the main premise being a reality game show where young children were in an outdoor death match that was televised to the world. One thing that stood out the most for me in that first movie was the murder of a young 6 year old child by a 19 year old young man during one of the episodes of this game show.  In the second Hunger Games movie there was another televised death match, but this time with older young adults in their late teens and 20’s, perhaps due to the backlash from the first movie.  How an idea like this spawned 3 books and 4 movies that have been so popular I have no idea, mainly because the fundamental idea behind this story is so gruesome.

Perhaps the author Suzanne Collins was trying to point out the potential disaster ahead for the world because of the prevalence and popularity of reality shows; but to suggest that something as horrific as children killing other children on television becoming popular in any futuristic reality is ridiculous.

During the entire 8 hours of these 4 movies and most especially the last two I found myself continuously confused by the many names thrown around and several scenes that didn’t make sense and were not explained well. This movie series seemed to count on most people reading the books first before seeing the movies and for those who did not read the books, they were going to be out of luck trying to figure out who was who and what was going on a large percentage of the time.

The fourth and last installment in this series had scenes of mass murder and death that even involved children which I thought was extremely misplaced and inappropriate for any movie; even a movie that was trying to be true to the books that the movie was based on.  I for one am glad that this movie series is now over and I am still amazed that these movies have made so much money and the books were so popular.

This movie should be seen by fans of the book series, but for the rest of us,  this last installment should be avoided.

IMDB: The Hunger Games MockingJay Part 2

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