Popular reviews

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  Review by Adam Cloutier 5

  “The film is called RR, but I like to call it “Railroad,” because RR sounds like a pirate movie.”—James Benning

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  Review by reibureibu ★★★★ 9

  A train enters on one side and exits the other, a giant mechanical thing that brings with it a crucial payload: information, resources, and the people riding in it. The shot then ends, before we move onto the next passing train.

  To ride a train is to be in transit, part of a greater network that encompasses humanity at large. The people who ride it all disseminate at different places, each with their own destinations to depart and baggage they carry, but for a brief moment in time they are all gathered in one place and for many this will be the closest they'll ever come to each other; when you ride a train, do you ever think how the…

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  Review by owen ★★★★½

  I watched this while riding the train. That shit was like 4DX.

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  Review by kororā 🌊🌊🌊 ★★★★★ 23

  A train thunders down an uneven terrain — surrounded but unbound by its worldly obstacles and bypassers, though certainly still acknowledging them, indulging in, embracing, and changing them. It’s the peace from when the train leaves and the darkness settles before opening onto another train that drives home the reminiscence; the sounds of the thousand previous rattling carriages carrying on in your mind. It’s hard to put into words how empty that feels. You’d hardly had enough time to get familiar, but maybe you already were, or maybe you were never meant to, and maybe it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. Carrying people, carrying fuel, carrying food; trains, also like people, carry what makes us who we are.…

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  Review by Augie 7

  My dream is to open up a theater and one day do a double bill of this and Unstoppable.

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  Review by marshlandz ★★★★★ 5

  watched on 16mm in the Chicago Film Society parking lot on a rainy night, the sensory experience challenged - or heightened? - by competing cars, helicopters, and buses. industrial society’s machines never shut the fuck up do they? fitting then that this is not just cool shots of trains - which it is - but also a polemic, the screeching metal and rambunctious clanking there to remind us of the iron horse’s menacing function and status in both landscape and history, the train invades the peaceful frame, after all, the paradox of progress, a harbinger of doom! but also a miracle (for capitalists and tourists and filmmakers) and RR’s systematic demonstration is proof in the kino pudding, its pictorial beauty…

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  Review by Eliza ★★★★★ 3

  young children            communists
                                🤝
          being obsessed with trains

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  Review by Valerie Orbach ★★★★★

  James Benning's last film in 16mm, RR is his latest experimental entry on the ever-remarkable American landscape. It's also an homage to the American railroad, and a critique of American consumerism. Typically minimalist, it' comprised of a series of static shots of trains and the surrounding landscape. Benning wants use to get a sense of time and its passing as we wait for the trains to appear from one side of the frame and exit from the other. His compositions are impeccable as always. The locomotives are often fascinating in and of themselves. There's a lot of history here, and Benning contextualizes it by adding a number of audio clips, most notably from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech. RR is one of Benning's best.

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  Review by Lee Does Not Exist सब्बे सत्ता सुखी होन्तु ★★★★

  a bit stressed rn so i was hoping this would help my head reset. it didnt, but i appreciate the effort james

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  Review by Colin the dude ★★★★½ 6

  Migrating metal has never sounded more meditative. This is as much about the soundtrack as it is the visuals. The ominous sounds of migrating metal. Oddly, oddly, oddly satisfying. Essential train movie.

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  Review by Jeremy N. ★★★★★

  Haven't yet seen RRR but I've watched RR twice, so that's one extra R than the lot of you.

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  Review by gabriel guimarães? ★★★★½

  Forget about that movie called Trainspotting. This... this is the real deal.