In Transit

When I was much younger I rode on a train, running across from Detroit to Chicago. I was with my dad and we were visiting his friend, and for the week we were there we'd visit lots of museums. But my most vivid memory of this trip came from this train specifically: I was…

reibureibu

☆"Whatever happens happens, you know."☆ A special thanks to Letterboxd all-star Cormac Jones for the link to watch this film legally, the final work of one of the great all-time documentarians, the late Albert Maysles. Maysles was most famous for working with his…

Andrew Chrzanowski

There's a great scene in this film where a boy proclaims that making friends is as easy as going up to them and asking them for their friendship. He puts this belief immediately into action, approaching two boys, one who's white (like him) and one's black, who accept his…

Ed Gonzalez

despite being an American film, this captures the Scottish lad sensibility of being very drunk on a train at night as acutely as I’ve ever seen. I found this very moving and heartbreaking, because in 10 years, it feels like empathy and companionship found amongst strangers…

Logan Kenny

When documentary legend Albert Maysles died in March, his loss hit with the same immediacy that defined his work (the most famous of which he made with his late brother David). In Transit is enduring proof that the iconic director of vérité masterpieces like Salesman and…

davidehrlich

Available to watch here Exactly what you’d want from a film on cross-country train travel. Captures such an authentic slice of American life without bragging about it—meditative and quietly moving. Strangers in close quarters become so familiar to each other, to the…

Em

This is streaming for free for a week: http://www.intransitfilm.com/watch — but you’ll only find out about it on social media apparently. So here I’ll do my part. Tied up in legal rights limbo (on which, see this Indiewire article from 2017), this fantastic doc and Albert…

Cormac Jones

Let me tell you something: If you don’t have income, you’re not on a train. You’re on the Greyhound. I’d have loved to have rich parents, ‘cause rich parents let you be at a crossroads. My parents were broke. I’ve never been able to been at a crossroads. Oh, you…

Chris Freiberg

Goodbyes and hellos at train stations are easily my fondest (and less and less seen) movie cliché, the sort of emotional transitory space we can immediately understand, where all types of relationships can be renewed, ended, or suspended in an indefinite future. It’s an…

quinitolobo