Rain in Skåne

Latest push for evidence of bicycling culture began as a pastime during quarantine, but has escalated past obsession into full time occupation. But do a hundred more examples keep notion pristine? Have discussed how bikes add smarts and sparks to health food ads and pharma sales spots. Figure they might sell joint medicines to cyclists with bad ankles, backs, feet, knees, and wrists by showing aged others happily riding despite pain that exists. There’s no question once into your 70’s you’ll take these drugs if it will help you move freely, but they condemn champions and strip titles for same reason among twentysomethings, as scandalously documented in Icarus (Bryan Fogel, dir., 2017), which won an Academy Award. Movies untoward push bikes on kids as if a gateway drug to automotive addiction. You are born a creature with feet without extraneous conveyance predilection.

Neglect can exceed naked aggression in lost lives and ruined property. Amidst government confusion an ammonium nitrate stockpile blasted Beirut, cost billions, and killed hundreds. If you don’t exert yourself physically off and on your job, hydrate religiously, monitor conditions, and rest judiciously, your bag of bones, flab and fluids atrophies into a sickly blob and heart explodes. A cycled half century under 90° loads becomes nearly impossible for any coasting and panting slob. Global warming increasingly confines jaunts to early morning’s same old haunts. Leaves lots of air conditioned hours to address exploratory taunts.

Swedish experimental short film Hämta en cykel [To Fetch a Bike] (Roy Andersson, dir., 1968) stars a morose Monica Löf and pensive Pierre Bené. They wake early after having slept together. Following a minimal breakfast they get his bicycle stored in the attic above his brother’s cold water flat and part ways. He has to get to work, so she saunters off into an existential vacuum of meaningless modernity.

Twenty years later for Icarus Films young Scot actress Tilda Swinton exclusively by bike toured West Berlin’s border alongside its infamous Wall, documented in half hour short Cycling the Frame (Cynthia Beatt, dir., 1988). Goal was to experience poetically its psychogeography. On film’s twentieth anniversary, after Swinton had already won an Academy Award, they decided to team again to retrace this 162 km route where Wall, once graffiti laden yet hardly acknowledged as if a taboo topic, no longer exists, documented in The Invisible Frame (Cynthia Beatt, dir., 2009).

Bicycling trio Bean (Martin Delaney), Chip and Sumo are self proclaimed Peacekeepers, members of an exclusive club. Bean’s dad, science professor McNeil, aka Gadgetman (Jim Goddard, dir., 1996), is also an inventor, but his clever device gets him kidnapped by criminals, who want to use it for ATM robberies. Dad installed jet packs on Bean’s bike, which enable him to outride Cyber Rats bicycling gang and spring dad from captors. But Bean’s girlfriend Frankie and dozens of Cyber Rats create a diversion when McNeils need it most.

My Teacher’s Wife (Bruce Leddy, dir., 1999) is Vicky Mueller (Tia Carrere), whose abusive husband might recommend high school senior Todd Boomer (Jason London) for admission to Harvard University. Having an affair with her wasn’t at all advisable, wrecks his relationship with buddy Faber and girlfriend Kirsten, yet Todd rides his hybrid bike back to Vicky studio for math tutoring and more as if a moth to a flame.

In a remake of H.G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine (Simon Wells, dir., 2002), Alex Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) hurtling forward into future stops briefly to reveal conditions in May of 2030. New Yorkers who aren’t flying in space cars are mostly bicycling and walking surface streets, except those who’ve begun adapting moon for underground condos. By 2037, after too aggressive tunneling, moon breaks up, which destroys earth’s surface, with bikes strewn haphazardly about burning wreckage. While time travel raises all sorts of physical impossibilities, it has been repeatedly linked with bicycling as a metaphor, such as going backwards to a simpler era. If you remain stationary in space-time, you’d drift off surface of earth as it rotated, planet continued to orbit sun, and sun orbit galactic center. Very accurate chronometers aboard space craft show that the faster you go, the more time slows. After a long journey an astronaut would be much younger upon return than her/his twin sibling, or even younger than offspring, if Einstein’s relativity, conceived while bicycling, is to be believed.

Twelve-year-old Ryan (Bryan Parkes) spending summer with astronomer dad Ned (Thomas Garner), doesn’t get any attention since dad was promoted. Ned compensates by buying Ryan a new bike. He meets three kids his age: Carlos (Wolf Bradley), Kyle (Graham Spillman), and Lisa (Callie Waterman). Kyle invites Ryan on a bike ride intending to embarrass him on a hilly course, so he avoids them and rides alone. When he comes home, pet retriever Jupiter is missing, nowhere to be seen. Resolving their differences to find lost pet, kids form Bike Squad (Richard Gabai, dir., 2005). Collecting evidence by bike, kids break case by following two bumbling dognappers (Michael Vaccaro and Michael Olifiers), who’ve sold Jupiter to Mr. Jackson (Michael McConnohie) for lab experiments.

Modern Indian Muslim girl living in San Francisco, Beena (Melanie Kannokada) is Bicycle Bride (Hassan Zee, dir., 2009). Struggling under thumb of a domineering mother, she hopes to overthrow old school tradition of arranged marriages. Seeing couples riding bikes, she recalls mom’s prohibition, “Bikes are for boys. Girls don’t ride bikes.” She literally bumps into a white Swedish bicyclist James (Andreas Wilson) from state college she longs to attend, who teaches her how to ride. She then sabotages every suitor visit her mother sets up, so they can live happily ever after riding through Golden Gate Park.

To middle class Scot debutante Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway, Academy and Golden Globe Award winner), rich playboy Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) quotes a proverb involving 9th Century Bishop of Winchester, “St. Swithun's day [July 15th], if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain.” One Day (Lone Scherfig, dir., 2011) covers 18 years of these feast days that they spend apart or together. Too bad she doesn’t love bicycling comedian Ian (Rafe Spall) the needy slob with whom she lives. After finally ending up happy with Dexter, Emma on her bike exiting an alley is fatally t-boned by a London bus on a rainy July 15th in 2006. Dexter’s in for rough emotional weather, as are all characters in Dogme 95 productions in which Scherfig indulges.

Micro-documentary from Malmö, Skåne County, covers women entrepreneurs who invent The Invisible Bicycle Helmet (Carl Fredrik von Gertten, dir., 2012). Device, worn like a collar, inflates like a car air bag. But is it practical? Skåne is replete with thousands of bicycling routes among nearly half a million kilometers of dedicated lanes, fine ways to segregate cyclists from motorists during short Swedish summer, but to reach a destination roads must still be shared. Seems a crime E20 Öresundsbron to Copenhagen doesn’t allow bicycles, but a segment of Europe’s longest span for both motor vehicles and trains is submerged, so hard to see how that would work. Passenger train allows bikes for a fee, and supposedly there’s a seasonal bike ferry.

Set in 1993, 20 years before date of film’s release, The To Do List (Maggie Carey, dir., 2013) is what high school valedictorian Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) compiles as pre-college chores designed to catch up with missed fun and to ditch her perfect image. Being so organized was how she rose to top of her class. Biking through the Big Bun takeout lane wasn’t an item among them. With Aubrey’s awkward and cringeworthy persona, got to expect an R rated chuckle fest. What a delight she is!

Not to be confused with Adventure Boyz reviewed below, The Adventure Club (Geoff Anderson, dir., 2017) consists of 3 school kids - Bill (Jakob Davies), Ricky (Sam Ashe Arnold) and Sandy (Dalila Bela) - who bike around suburban Regina, Saskatchewan so much that without bikes there’d be no story. Ricky’s mom Jane Young (Gabrielle Miller) runs a science museum founded by her father, an archeologist in the mold of Indiana Jones and reputed recoverer of lost mystical objects. Ricky, eager for excitement, discovers a key and map to what he thinks might be a hidden treasure. It turns out to be an ancient wishbox, which grants a holder who’s “pure of heart” 3 wishes. Ricky hopes to save his family’s museum, but there are those who'll stop at nothing to have this box, in fact, enlist a rival gang of cycling kids to steal it. As these family movies go, this one has decent production values.

Adopted Detroit teen Eli Solinski (Myles Truitt) bikes to scavenge copper wire from abandoned buildings, where he finds a powerful alien weapon. Using it to protect his ex-con brother Jimmy (Jack Reynor) from villain Taylor (James Franco) triggers a signal to its owners, his actual birth KIN (John and Jonathan Baker, dirs, 2018) from another world. Mayhem ensues. Not even an edgy score composed and performed by old friends Mogwai could raise critical acceptance and ticket sales.

Teen son James (Lucius Hoyos) of Phat Tire bike shop manager Randy Nash (Tyler Christopher) finds lovable, one foot tall robot F.R.E.D.I. (Sean Olsen, dir., 2018) in a back pack while hiking in woods near his Bentonville, Arkansas home. He wants to keep this Future Robotics Engineered Design Innovation for an artificial intelligence pet, like E.T., but has an impeding move to Tucson and school science project to complete. Corporate security agents are desperately searching for this robot, programmed to analyze and avert safety hazards through telekinetic capabilities, before its power cell explodes and incinerates everything within village. Gang of kids on bikes lead gasping agents on bikes on a merry chase after they tase dad, who wouldn’t cooperate with questioning as to son's whereabouts. Why they abandoned SUV makes little sense. Teens return robot to Dr Palmer (Kelly Hu) who wants to keep its technology from being used as a weapon.

Emulating motorcycle racer dad Mike Harris (Howard J. Ford, dir. and star), towhead Adventure Boyz (2019) Jake and Sam (Felix and Rory Ford) tear about on their BMXs after dad gets framed and jailed for stealing diamonds. Ability to read lips aids their search for evidence to clear him. Capacity for eluding capture comes from biking around neighborhoods and vicinity which dad had urged instead of spending so much time playing virtual games on electronic devices. One must take physical risks to thrive; bicycling in particular nicely serves that prescription. Such films portray doltish adults schooled by schoolboys. Given so many supposed grown ups act as if emotional infants, including some in highest office, soothes to hope next generation may somehow evolve.

Tall Girl (Nzingha Stewart, dir., 2019) protagonist Jodi (Ava Michelle) is a teenager whose 6 foot plus height makes her insecure and self conscious at Ruby Bridges High School in New Orleans. Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck), a student in her class who always carries a crate, asks her repeatedly for a date, but she declines any request from suitors too familiar or short. Tall Swedish exchange student Stig arrives to stay with Dunkleman, but Jodi's nemesis Kimmy (Clara Wilsey) tries to lure Stig away when she assumes Jodi would be interested in him. Still chasing Jodi in vain, Dunkleman on his bike collides head over heels with a parked car.