Let's be honest, adapting Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize winner into a movie was going to be a tough job. The novel is a subtle piece of literature that looks through the eyes of a child at a world that doesn't make sense and contradicts itself, picking at the layers of wickedness that lie underneath what appears to be a nice, peaceful town, where people help each other and the neighbourhood is safe for children to play in. But there is always at least one bad apple, and sometimes there are several you don't see until you shine a light on them. So the movie had to deal with trying to present a young child's view of the world, seeing as ...  Read the complete review

From the opening sequence of "To Kill a Mockingbird" you can tell that you are in for something special. A box is opened showing a child's treasures accompanied by a simple and haunting tune. This is very much a film about childhood, but it is also about a great deal more. It is about prejudice, pride, integrity and the realisations that the world isn't the way we want it to be. Adapted from Harper Lee's critically acclaimed novel of the same name, it is the story of a significant time in the Finch family's life told through the eyes of its children. Jem (Phillip Alford) and Scout (Mary Badham) live in depression-era Alabama with ...  Read the complete review

RELEASED: 1962, Cert.12 RUNNING TIME: Approx. 129 mins DIRECTOR: Robert Mulligan PRODUCERS: Robert Mulligan & Alan J Pakula MUSIC: Elmer Bernstein SCREENPLAY: Horton Foote MAIN CAST:- Gregory Peck as Atticus Mary Badham as Scout Phillip Alford as Jem Brock Peters as Tom Robinson ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FILM ONLY REVIEW Based on Harper Lee's 1960 novel of the same name, To Kill A Mockingbird is set in 1932 in Alabama. Atticus is a successful, liberal-thinking lawyer who is a widower with two young children, Scout ...  Read the complete review

Rumour has it that when Gregory Peck was offered the role of Atticus Finch, the lawyer defending a black man accused of rape in a 1930s small backwater Alabama town, he jumped at the chance to fill the shoes of Harper Lee's literary hero. The film deals with the issues of group mentality, racism and hatred and also emotions such as fear and the balance between love and hate. It's very powerful to watch, although I have heard there are a number of significant differences from the child's narrative that Lee's book presents. Initially, the town is presented as a safe place, one where the families all sit outside on their porches and everyone knows each other. The ...  Read the complete review

I studied Harper Lee's 1930s novel about racism in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb for my English GCSE, and this involved both reading the book and watching the film. Although I prefer the book (probably THE best I have ever read), this is nonetheless a marvellous film. So you can understand my extreme disappointment when the rest of my class promptly fell asleep during the film, or at least afterwards complained about how boring they found it. However, I was not really surprised, since this is the kind of film that modern teenagers have been brought up to despise: it has no action to speak of, has strong moral messages, and, woe betide, it is in black and ...  Read the complete review