This seventh installment is utterly fascinating, drawing heavily on footage from the previous movies to follow each child on the journey into middle age.

| Aug 14, 2012

Michael Apted's Up series remains one of the great imaginative leaps in film.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 3, 2006

I can think of no single movie, fictional or factual, that more strongly awakens our common humanity or that establishes such a marvelous, tight bond with its characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 2, 2006

The segments are so cleverly arranged -- [director Michael Apted] includes past pictorial references for each of the people we revisit -- that now there is something almost mystical involved.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2006

But a funny thing happened on the way to the class-warfare lecture: Most of the subjects got on with living their lives, ignoring their class distinctions in the process.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 13, 2006

I'll wait breathlessly for 56 Up, and hope this brave group will speak to the camera again; giving us the gift of a share in their lives.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 13, 2006

On the cusp of their half-century mark, Apted's British subjects have accommodated themselves to what they were, what they are, and what they will be.

| Oct 9, 2006

The latest riveting, heartbreaking chapter to one of the supreme creations of documentary filmmaking, the 7 Up series.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2006

Taken as a whole, these films constitute one of the greatest uses of cinema a documentary filmmaker has ever devised. Like the other films in the series, 49 Up is alternately touching and mundane.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 6, 2006

Dropping by on the same people every seven years like an old friend -- or an unwelcome relative -- Apted has constructed a peerless, suspenseful work that develops character to a depth that would make Tolstoy jealous.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 6, 2006

When I saw 42 Up in 1999, I thought the series had run its natural course and that it was time to leave the "kids" alone. I was wrong. They have just entered a new and exciting phase of lives that are very much works in progress.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 6, 2006

49 Up marks the latest chapter in one of the most ambitious documentary projects in movie history. Make that the history of any medium, for how often do we get to witness a time-lapse study of human life?

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 6, 2006

If the purpose of the Up series has been to show how class determines destiny in the UK, then what we've actually learned is that everyone there gets a fair shot to make it to the middle.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 6, 2006

They're both fascinating and timeless, and like the hopes and dreams we carry with us from the day we're born to the day we die Apted's series captures humanity at every spectrum of its evolution.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 5, 2006

More than a deeply satisfying movie; it's a reminder of the wonder contained in ordinary lives.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 5, 2006

A deeply moving meditation on the natural evolution of existence.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2006

The films have taken on an autumnal shade as we revisit people who seem quietly aware that the years behind them are more than those ahead.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 5, 2006

What the series means in the long run is anybody's guess; I just know I sleep better at night knowing it's out there.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 5, 2006

To the extent that it opens a window into the puzzling business of growing older and affirms - with touching reflectiveness and exuberant humor -- the suspicion that we are all in the same boat, 49 Up is priceless.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 5, 2006

What 49 Up shows is how the past is forever changing in its significance, its context. The more you watch, the more you are committing yourself to watching 56 Up and beyond.

| Oct 5, 2006