POPULATED with heroism, survival and cannibalism, this true maritime yarn will surely appeal to anyone with a yen to expand their seafaring insights. 

Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea (12A), which is adapted from Nathan Philbrick’s award-winning book of the same name, opens in Nantucket in 1850, with the young novelist Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) interviewing retired sailor Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) about the dramatic events that befell the whale ship Essex some three decades previously.