To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Title: 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (1962)
Genre: It's a book!... No,wait... It's a movie!... Four words...
Rating: 8.5/10

Atticus is a swell dude. Hypothetical: 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975), if Pacino was chanting 'Atticus... Atticus...' instead of 'Attica', I still think that crowd would have gone apeshit.

I'm gonna do the rest of this review as Robert Evans (with back to camera, sitting in directors chair, looking back over shoulder at camera):
Ahem. Yeah, man, Gregory Peck. That cat was wild. I don't know if they knew what they had while they were making that film. Crazy. There's no way around it, baby, that film is a cultural phenomena, an icon of Americana. But what people don't know, see, is the madness that went down on that set, dig? There were fistfulls of coke trading hands, the air was thick with it. 'Scout' was sent home a number of times for grabbing 'Jem's' tiddlybits. And Greg Peck was just gone, see? A lot of people don't know we used live rounds in the scene where Atticus puts down that mangy mutt, baby. We went thought almost two dozen of those little fuckers in just as many takes. God damn. Are you getting all this? This is Hollywood legend, man. And Tom Robinson was going through handfuls of powder every day. Nobody would notice till we went through the dailies, that cat was ashy from the tip-top of his head to the pads of his boots. We'd have to reshoot everything the following day. It was madness, baby. 1962. Can you believe it? Crazy.

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Mmmm. That got old. This was a sweet flick that I was super overdue to see. Gregory Peck rocks this one home. The kid actors feel like a group of kids, not kid actors. Awesome. Although the kid who played Dill had to be like, the producers grandson or something. That's the kid who shoulda been locked in a basement for 6 years.

And Robert Duvall was a little bit of strawberry jelly in the middle of this glazed donut. Sealed deal. Classic movie. Gregory Peck plays 'Atticus' perfectly. Like, if he was president of the United States everybody would wear t-shirts with his face on it, and all the people of Earth would migrate to America just to get a taste. He's just about the most likeable character in the history of everything. Say you rolled with a pack of mad-dog, razor-wire, Nihilists. And you showed up wearing an 'I hate Atticus' t-shirt, your ass would get rolled, like, into a hospital.

The sets almost feel like a diorama popping up out of the book. And that totally works in the movie's favor. Geez, what can you say doesn't work in this movies favor? Um, It would have been neat if a young Crispin Glover played an extra as one of the roaming pack of lynchers. And maybe if the whole movie was a hologram. But other than that. Well done.

Recommended.

Also, Robert Evans had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. Baby.