FILM: 63 UP

2019 / documentary / 3 hr (180 min) / director: Michael Apted / country: UK / Language: English

“A remarkable feat—and now, nearing retirement age itself, it prompts questions about how much time is left for its subjects, for its director, for all of us, and reminds us that we cannot know.” -Sarah Larson, The New Yorker

“On a scale that makes “Boyhood” feel like a flash in the pan, the “Up” series has become a singular portrait of life itself: of its freedoms and limitations; of its differences and similarities; of its predictability and chaos. And if you’ve never seen one of these films before, there’s no time like the present. Indeed, this is the perfect place to get started.” -David Ehrlich, Indiewire

“Beginning in 1964 with 7 Up, directed for British television by Paul Almond with Apted initially on board as a researcher, the series tracked a cross-section of 14 children from England’s famously rigid class system, with Apted checking in every seven years thereafter to document what and how they were doing. I’m roughly the same age and grew up lower middle class in London, so I’ve followed the series obsessively from soup to nuts. But you don’t have to have been as hooked as I on the anthology (now available as a boxed set) to find your way around the latest, 63 Up, which is studded with flashbacks to catch you up on how the group has fared since we first met them, mingling to frolic and brawl in a grim-looking adventure playground.” -Ella Taylor, npr