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When 48-year-old novelist Christopher Isherwood began his three-decade relationship with 18-year-old future portrait artist Don Bachardy in 1953, both men looked their ages. Their union understandably turned heads, particularly in an era when most prominent homosexuals kept their sexuality behind closed doors.

One of the best aspects of the documentary Chris & Don. A Love Story is that it doesn't care about the chasmic age gap, much less that the pair were, you know, two dudes. As the intimate title suggests, this is a film that puts aside sociopolitical context and other such matters to portray these men as two individuals in love.

Of course, it would be impossible to ignore the sociopolitical context altogether, and so directors Tina Mascara and Guido Santi take the time to showcase their luxurious life lived backstage. Isherwood, most famous for writing the autobiographical Berlin Stories, which yielded the stage and film adaptations of both I Am a Camera and Cabaret, jet-setted among the rich and famous, from Tennessee Williams and Igor Stravinsky to such closeted types as Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins and Montgomery Clift.

Bachardy, meanwhile, was a starstruck teenager and autograph collector who suddenly found himself sharing dinner tables with the likes of Leslie Caron and Anna Magnani. Bachardy later earned recognition for his extensive collection of intimate portraits of any celebrity with whom he came in contact.

But how much can he really attribute to himself and how much is simply the product of him being with Isherwood? Chris & Don catches up with Bachardy, now 74 and still drawing, and he acknowledges what everyone thinks: that he was essentially molded by Isherwood into a sort of Isherwood clone.

Friends remark that Bachardy, a California native, adopted Isherwood's posh Brits accent not long into their bumpy but committed relationship, while archival footage of Isherwood in his twilight years finds him boasting several of the same mannerisms and speaking patterns as footage of Bachardy today.

Chris & Don could actually stand to delve a little further into the way committed lovers tend to bleed into one person. But as the title says, this is, at heart, a love story, and ultimately Chris & Don raises a lot of fascinating issues but pays them only limited attention. Apparently even in documentaries you have to keep the story moving.

In 1971 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released the song "Ohio," a rally cry against the government's handling of the Kent State shootings in a time of war and political division. The people listened and rallied.

In 2006 Neil Young penned "Let's Impeach the President." Barring remarkable action in the next few months, it appears no one took that song title to the streets and enacted change (though CNN's Sibila Vargas did ask him to explain what the song was about).

CSNY/D�j� vu, which debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, is a documentary chronicling the band's experiences through both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. It begs the question, if a bunch of aging hippies took the stage again--as they did in 2006 during their "Freedom of Speech" Tour--to speak out against their government, would anyone still listen?

Journalist Mike Cerre followed the band on their tour, and just like the Dixie Chicks--who are mentioned multiple times in this film in regard to their own anti-Bush sentiments--CSNY had their fair share of loyal listeners who just want to hear them play their music.

In Atlanta the band was met with an intensely hostile reaction to their politically charged show. Others, including many Iraq war vets whose stories are featured in the film, took their message very close to heart. And this is where the movie takes on a whole other life.

While the archived footage of the band during the Vietnam years, current concert footage and a spirited clip of Neil Young appearing on The Colbert Report convey the story of this legendary band, it's the widely ignored Iraq war vets who make this movie into something timely and important.

The film shows more footage of the Iraq war in two hours than the mainstream news shows in a month. It pays homage to the lives lost, but most importantly, to those still living with the horrors of war.

Give Woody Allen a little credit: He did stop treating himself like a romantic lead after 2002's Hollywood Ending. (But not before depicting himself in relations with Debra Messing and T�a Leoni, both 30 years his junior.) If he hadn't, his films might look a bit like Love Comes Lately, a Woodyesque, postmodern saga whose fairly virile protagonist is played by an actor who has 13 years on Allen.

Austrian actor Otto Tausig, currently 86, plays Max Kohn, an elderly writer of beloved short stories and �bermensch to the extreme. No neurotic quip-slinger, Kohn is doddering and perfunctorily responsive at best, suggesting he may simply be on leave from the nursing home.