Best movie of this year hands down!

How sad is this?

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Especially as current events unfold, the exposition of multi-million dollar companies is becoming more and more popular. Blackfish is a commentary on the abuse and corruption involved with corporations involving animals and performance. The torture of these animals is sure to captivate your heart and shake you to your core. The story of Tilikum is especially horrifying, as the film tells you the story of his life, being corralled by boats and ripped from his family, suffering abuse by other whales, and being kept captive in small pools his entire life. When you see the shows where he performs, the shouting and happy smiles in the audience's faces is almost haunting. It's the chilling reality of what these sort of companies do just for money and to make people entertained. 5 years after, and this is still accurate and an important depiction of what really goes on behind the scenes of seemingly harmless performance. The interviews with past trainers, and the editing between them is very effective in that they are often cut with videos or graphics detailing the horrific conditions and treatment they put up with. Blackfish is a raw, chilling masterpiece.

I will just mention one instance from the documentary and you think about it. There is a short mentioning of how a trainer used to train Orcas that were new to the park by putting them together with older, trained Orcas and asking them to perform the same tasks. When they, inevitably, failed, both animals were punished by being deprived of food. So the older, trained Orca, took it out on the younger, untrained one. Now, sit back and think about the same tactic being employed by human parents against their children. "I don't know who did it, but you are both grounded". There you go – a documentary about whales in captivity that taught you something about your own wrong methods of parenting.Aside from that, when you are done watching this, you will probably and justifiably never want to go to a marine park show with Orcas ever again. The documentary just works as a wake-up slap. We separate a baby whale calf from its mother and social structure, keep it as grown, 5 ton, apex predator in a pool for its entire life and milk it for its semen. If you ask me, Orcas must be the most mellow creatures on earth, for them to have only killed this few people in captivity…You want to see Orcas? Fly to Alaska or Iceland and get on a boat, to see them as they are meant to be: Swimming free and with erected dorsal fins.

Never have I seen a documentary on nature and animals that has made me cry. This was the first one. It is horrifying to see how badly we as man have treated our relations who live on this planet with us. To know that young Orca whales are herded like cattle into traps and torn away from their crying, begging mothers. It is also infuriating that Sea World would use such petty arguments in the following court cases to make themselves not seem at fault. This documentary sheds some much needed light on the illegal, unethical, and sickening practices of whale catchers, and Sea World themselves. I do not feel that such enormous, agile creatures should have to live in any type of enclosure. They were born of mother Ocean, and that is where they should be free to live their lives. These Orcas will suffer physical and psychological abuse from each other, and from the management of their establishments when placed together with non-family members in such small enclosures.

Black fish was quite an eye-opening documentary. This documentary shows the black eye of what most people would consider a place far from sinister ways; Sea World. The documentary goes back to 1980s and gives details in sequential order of everything that sea world had done, both positive and negative. From giving trainers an outlet and letting them experience the beautiful bond between man and animal, to showing how killer whales are taken from their families as babies. Personally, the documentary taught me a lot both about Sea World as well as just how evil, and immoral it is to take these killer whales from their natural habitat and put them on display for billions in revenue. Moreover, once an accident happened that resulted in the death of a trainer; she was blamed, not the animal that had killed her. Although this whale, Tilikum, had quite the past of aggression.I really enjoyed the interviews they did with all of the past trainers who had worked at sea world. I felt that this really allowed the audience to connect with them and show how they were deceived into believing that SeaWorld was a great place. Most of the old orca whale trainers seemed to be very depressed when speaking on what goes on at SeaWorld, and how the orca whale's were treated. The thing most all of them had in common was that they felt so naive and blind as to what was going on behind the scenes. By the directors showing these emotion filled interviews it really showed that the old trainers believed what was going on at sea world was wrong and immoral. Though it was not with a trainer, the most emotional scene was an interview along withfootage from a man who helped take a baby orca whale away from it's family. He spoke of when they had finally gotten the baby orca whale by its self and the cries it made to it's mother and the cries the mother made back. "I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I couldn't help but cry." He began tearing up in the interview reliving the old memory.All of these SeaWorld's try to keep orca whale on trainer deaths on the down low, and if the public does make a big deal of it, they will blame the person it happened to. I feel that the movie did an excellent job displaying this with the death of Dawn Brancheau. After Tilikum did not preform a correct actions she withheld his food, this frustrated Tilikum. She then go into the water with him and began to pet him unaware that he would soon kill her. He bit her arm and drug her to the bottom of the pool and drown her. He then dismembered her arm and at it. SeaWolrd officials said that she was drug by her ponytail not by her arm, and that Tilikum did this in a playful manner not as an act of aggression. This is just one of three people that Tilikum has killed.Overall Blackfish is an excellent documentary, and I would recommend it to anyone who cares about the treatment of animals, or enjoyed or still enjoys going there. I would also recommend it to anyone who feels that they are treated poorly at their workplace, since these trainers weren't told they are risking their lives with such unpredictable animals. It is nice to know what really goes on behind the acts, and that the truth is these animals are not easy to control. These animals are highly intelligent, and should not be placed in captivity. Before I had seen this documentary I had no opinion on weather or not SeaWorld was a bad place, but now that I've seen it I would defiantly say this doesn't seem like such a great place to work.