The fourth installment of Michael Apted’s brilliant documentary series finds it’s subjects, which it has followed every seven years since they were seven, about to move into their 30s. Many have families now and most seem to have truly found themselves. For people who have not seen the series before, entering at this point is not impossible, because the filmmakers give us recaps of the past, however I wouldn’t it. This is the first installment to not feature all of the participants from the previous films, but we do get caught up on the two missing members as well. Sit back and enjoy catching up with old friends.

First, we meet up with Tony, who grew up in the East End of London. His dream at seven was to be a jockey and was able to enter in three races, one of which featured racing legend Lester Piggott. Outside of the birth of his children, he lists this as the best day of his life. Now he’s living well as a cabbie (his fallback position when he was seven). Most of his rough and tough attitude has faded into a more reflective look on life. He seems to have accomplished what he set out to do and doesn’t need to prove himself as much anymore. He’s even taken up acting on the side.

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Michael Apted’s brilliant documentary series has checked in with the same group of people every seven years since they were seven. As the title suggests, this installment is the third in the series. Now as young adults, some of the subjects have stronger opinions about the way they are portrayed in the previous two films. Some have stayed the same, while others have taken surprising turns. Being older, the young men and women begin to comment on the others, as well as their pasts.

In the first film, John, Charles and Andrew were attending the same lavish pre-preparatory school. John and Andrew have gone onto the same colleges they said they would attend at seven. However, John, the most conservative of the group, points out that the films make it seem like they’ve had it easy, underplaying the hard work that went into how they got where they are today. Charles didn’t make it into Oxford as he planned at seven, but rather enjoys avoiding the pre-prep to Oxford conveyor belt. Since the first film, both Charles and Andrew’s parents divorced. While Andrew seems reconciled to the split, Charles seems to struggle with how it really has affected him. When asked about their opportunities in life, John believes it’s his duty to give back to England, which has given him so much. Charles agrees, but adds that they have no more opportunities than any of the others in the series.

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In 1964 the WORLD IN ACTION TV series followed a group of children in England from different backgrounds. The half-hour program was meant show the potential future leader of the country in 2000. Later a researcher on the project Michael Apted stepped into the director’s chair to see how the children had grown seven years after the first film. Apted has checked in with the subjects for a new film every seven years since, giving the world a filmic time capsule of these individuals and the times in which they lived.

John, Charles and Andrew were young boys at the same pre-preparatory school in the first film. All three in the second film are attending the schools they said they would be attending in the first. While all three came off fairly snobbish in the first installment, only John retains a conservative pretension, while the others seem more progressive, especially Charles who finds the pursuit of wealth to be a road to unhappiness because of all the people you have to ruin to get there. John, on the other hand, wants fame and power, but doesn’t believe he has to be ruthless to get it, only smart. Suzy, a girl from a wealthy, sheltered background, at 14, lives on her family’s Scottish estate. The distance and indifference from the first film has only grown. The other wealthy child in the film was Bruce, who at seven wanted to be a missionary, but by 14, decided that he wouldn’t be good at it because he isn’t good at public speaking.

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Notorious director Tony Kaye, the helmer of cult hit AMERICAN HISTORY X, returns to the scene after nearly ten years. Putting his diva-like behavior behind him, Kaye finally finishes his long-in-the-works documentary about the abortion debate in the U.S. Sometimes graphic and often moving, this somber look at the hot button issue shows people on either extremes of the fight, trying to find some middle ground.

Filmed on and off for 18 years, Kaye captures a wide range of advocates on both sides. Hauntingly, one of those advocates is anti-abortion crusader Paul Hill. At one protest, Hill is asked who else besides abortionists should be executed and he says any blasphemer who simply says, “God damn.” We meet Hill as he champions an assassin of a clinic doctor, calling the killer a martyr. Later Hill will follow suit and murder in the name of God himself.

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Part documentary, part drama, this earnest BBC production tries very hard to legitimize the genius of 19th century composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, while painting a portrait of his personal life and how it influenced his music. Split into two-parts for TV — “The Creation of Genius” and “Fortune and Tragedy” — the reenactments of Tchaikovsky’s life work better when they are freed of interruption from documentary host and composer Charles Hazlewood. Like its subject, the special seems to be looking for a voice.

Halzewood narrates the story of Tchaikovsky’s life as he travels to Russia to show us the influence the artist had on Russian culture, music, ballet and opera. We get moments from Tchaikovsky’s childhood when he is sent away to school and never recovers from the death of his mother when he was 14. Both Pyotr (Ed Stoppard, THE PIANIST) and his younger brother Modest (William Mannering, MASTER AND COMMANDER) were gay and frequented the homosexual underground in Russian and in the U.K. Tchaikovsky has an on-and-off affair with fellow music student Aleksey Apukhtin (Gyuri Sarossy, TV’s EASTENDERS) for years. As his fame grew, he became more worried about his homosexuality creating a scandal and set out to marry. After receiving a letter from admirer Antonina Milyukova (Alice Glover), he meets with the woman and subsequently marries her. Around the same time, he also meets Nadezdha von Meck (Lucy Briers, TV’s WIVES AND DAUGHTERS), a wealthy woman who would become his longtime benefactor and friend, even though she refused to meet him in person, always corresponding through letters. We follow Tchaikovsky’s turbulent marriage, his years as composer for hire and his death from cholera.

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Taken at face value one might not see the significance of this film. Put in context, as the start of a continuing series, it takes on the status of an epic undertaking that Roger Ebert once called “an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium.” Directed by Paul Almond as part of the WORLD IN ACTION TV series, SEVEN UP! wasn’t intended to be the first chapter in a series. Based on the Jesuit phrase, “give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” the half-hour program was supposed to be one-off look at a group of seven year olds from different economic and social backgrounds. Original researcher Michael Apted transformed the first film into what it has become, the chronicling of the same lives every seven years since.

For this film, 21 children were chosen, but only fourteen become central subjects. John, Charles and Andrew attend the same pre-preparatory school and seem to have their lives all planned out. Suzy goes to an all girls’ school and is from a very wealthy family. Her sheltered world hasn’t only left her clueless about the world around her, but seemingly shell shocked. Jackie, Lynn and Sue are good friends from a working class neighborhood, who have no clue that they’d be consider the poor kids by others in the group. Tony is a tough kid from the East End of London, who has a girlfriend named Michelle, who he often disagrees with. Paul goes to a charity-based boarding school and his parents are divorced. Simon also goes to the charity-based boarding school and is the only non-white child in the group. Nick attends a one-room school in Yorkshire Dales and observes that he likes to go to town on holiday while city folk like to come to the country. Peter and Neil go to the same middle-class Liverpool suburban school and both want to be astronauts, but don’t think they need to go to university for that. Bruce attends a prestigious boarding school and feels that the most important thing in life is to serve God.

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From the title one might think this might be a SOUTH PARK parody, but it’s really a sobering and thoughtful look at children with autism and the difficulties they and their parents face. We see the wide range of ways the disorder affects various children; some are highly functional and others are barely verbal. Over the course of the documentary a group of autistic kids prepare for the Miracle Project musical in Los Angeles. We get to know the autistic kids as individuals, not just as a problem that needs to be fixed.

Elaine Hall is a single mom of an autistic tween named Neal, who she adopted from Russia. Nicknamed Coach E, she runs the Miracle Project. Her blonde-haired son is the most afflicted of the main children profiled. Barely able to speak his name, Neal is trapped inside a world of his own. On the flip side, the freckle-faced Wyatt is the most functional of the group, understanding his problems and struggling with his need to go to special ed classes with mentally handicapped kids and his understanding that he might not be able to make it in mainstream schools.

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In 1969, then 14-year-old Beatle fan Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced the rock icon to do interview with him. Thirty-eight years later Levitan enlists director Josh Raskin to transform that reel-to-reel interview into a visual poem, using various animation techniques to bring the words of peace to life.

Throughout the film, Lennon rifts on various topics especially the need to bring about world change through peaceful means. With his endless wit, Lennon questions rebels that destroy the government when all they want is to be in power themselves. Why blow up buildings when they might be useful to have when you’re the Establishment? The imagery slyly mirrors and comments on the spoken words. Images flow and blend effortlessly, creating a visual dream. As Lennon says, “Piss for peace, smile for peace, go to school for peace, don’t go to school for peace” then images of a dog peeing to a smile to a school to a boot smashing to school flip by like cue cards. The images pops up so quickly it feels like visual improv, working off the cues of the three-decade-old recording.

The film doesn’t just highlight the genius of Lennon, but also the boldness and naiveté of Levitan, who at one moment asks the music legend serious questions about his immigration problems with the U.S. and then asks him fan boy inquiries about why people would ever listen to the Bee Gees. This lively, smile-inducing, duel-layered time capsule of illustrations and found images captures the energy of the 1960s, as well as the energy of one gutsy young man.

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Who is Charles Ferguson, the maker of the best film thus far on the Iraq War? He made millions selling his company Vermeer Technologies, the creator of the first visual website development tool FrontPage, to Microsoft. He served as a senior fellow at the political think tank, the Brookings Institute. He holds degrees from Berkeley and MIT, where he has also taught. He was originally a supporter of the invasion of Iraq. And now he has made a sobering, infuriating and honest chronicling of the Bush administration’s disastrous handling of the war from the lips of those who served in the administration.

Ferguson doesn’t go for theatrics or sentiment with his film. The facts are damning enough. Thirty-five people were interviewed for the film including: General Jay Garner, who ran Iraq reconstruction before L. Paul Bremer replaced him; Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who headed the Baghdad embassy until her differing opinions led to the Bush administration firing her; Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State; Robert Hutchings, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council; Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff; and Col. Paul Hughes, who worked for both the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

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Some consider Daniel Johnston a genius. Director/writer Jeff Feuerzeig has created a film about the troubled musician and painter that believes so too. Johnston was a typical artistic teen, who made films, drew in notebooks and wrote songs. When he reached college, he started developing the first signs of manic depression, which would define the rest of his life.

Johnston believed at an early age that he was destined to become famous. In college, he became obsessed with a pretty girl named Laurie Allen. However, she was already dating a mortician student, who she would later marry. Two decades later, Johnston still writes songs about her today. Once his parents believed graduating from college was an impossible task for him, Johnston bounced from relative to relative, where he continued to write music. One day, Johnston ran away and joined the carnival. A bizarre incident would leave him stranded in Austin, where he quickly inserted himself into the local music scene. When MTV came to town, he inserted himself on the air too. He was on the rise, but his mental illness just knocked him down time and time again.

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