Punkin’ “Cinemain”

Riding around lately noticing obsessions with “Horrorween” decorations and orange greasepaint clown creations. Are homeowners trying to dodge own anxiety and dread from nation’s walking dead who only vote red? Don’t you adore commentators who endorse Top Ten lists deciding for you what to explore? “Compared to what?” those they annoy might ask. How many films have these pumpkin headed critics seen? Small sample numbers bias opinions and skew perceptions. Labann has viewed tens of thousands, though only a few thousand set within last 200 years actually involve bicycling, mere hundreds in some main role. Among the many mentioned or reviewed never rated any against another, given each have scenes worthy of attention that uniformed punks ignore.

Excusable mistakes in Bike&Chain’s appendix “Bike Obsessed Films” rate a retraction. Long unavailable Les Bicylettes de Belsize (Douglas Hickox, dir., 1968) is a short musical with almost no spoken dialogue about Steve (Anthony May) recklessly riding a Raleigh RSW16 (not a Moulton) sans helmet on location in Hampstead, London, England. Belsize Park neighborhood in title of famous Englebert tune (someone else sang on soundtrack) is never visited. One morning Steve evades 2 broadsides and gets into 2 minor crashes before falling in love on first sight with Raleigh billboard model Julie (Judy Huxtable). Best to review after you actually view.

The Cyclist, aka Peloton (John Lawrence, dir., 2012), depicts down-on-his-luck self-absorbed athlete Nash (K.C. Clyde), looking to resume his racing career while scraping by as a messenger. There’s a contrasting Iranian film under same title, aka Bicycleran (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, dir., 1989), in which a motivated Nasim (Moharram Zaynalzadeh), hoping to pay wife’s medical bill, will do anything for money, including marathon riding in a circle nonstop for 7 days. Both plumb depths to which humans will go when determined to succeed or survive.

Infinitely Polar Bear (Maya Forbes, dir., 2015) depicts Boston biracial married couple Cam (Mark Ruffalo, Avengers) and Maggie (Zoe Saldaña, Avatar) as they try to work around his bipolar disorder and their two school age girls so she can attend Columbia’s MBA program in New York full time for 18 months. Set amidst the 1970’s bike boom, filmed on location in Providence, Rhode Island, in manic mode Cam bikes around in a speedo and embarrasses family. Despite important story and star cast (including cycling obsessed and often mentioned Ruffalo), film didn’t return 25% of its investment.

In “awesome” short Litterbugs (Peter Stanley Ward, dir., 2016), precocious inventor Alice (Leila Wetton) and tween sidekick Stanley (James Grogan) get even with mean girls who’ve bullied them. Riding out to a junk yard on her adult tricycle, Alice scavenges castoff gadgets and mechanical litter then recycles into "robugic" drones to do her bidding. Vengeance!

Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, dir., 2018) one generation later to a Banks family in Depression Era crisis at risk of losing their home. Mary (Emily Blunt) advises as usual to “go fly a kite”, through which they avert foreclosure and regain youthful outlook. Leader of lamplighters Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) makes extended and frequent uses of his cargo bicycle culminating in a dance scene with bike acrobatics and Mary spinning wheelies.

Youths who are bicycling sleuths Elliot (Jensen Gering) and Willow (Catherine White) save mom Celine (Denise Richards) and town of Wickensburg (Richard Boddington, dir., 2022) from an unscrupulous nuclear waste disposer. In worse sequel Return to Wickensburg, 2 years later young adults motor about rather than ride, unlike adventurous twentysomething Anathema Device in Good Omens.

Documentary feature Dear Sirs (Mark Pedri, dir., 2022) retraces by mountain bicycle grandfather Silvio’s route as a soldier captured by Nazis during WWII, a wounded patient mistreated in an insane asylum, an exploited slave scavenging scrap metal, and starving prisoner in Sandbostel’s Stalag 10 concentration camp. While in Hamburg, Mark reflects on Nazi inhumanity by citing ANTIFA dissident and Hitler victim Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself... No man in the whole world can change the truth. One can only look for the truth, find it, and serve it... Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.” This one hour sobering reminder exposes what occurs when a nation becomes subservient to a sociopathic tyrant and stops caring about entire community. Nazis detained and murdered anyone who wasn’t compliant and white; history repeats itself, both bad and good, so resistance isn't futile.

Anytime (Darcy Wittenburg, dir., 2024) has extreme sports promoter Red Bull celebrating freeride’s elites through sponsors Arosa Lenzerheide’s Bike Kingdom park, Evoc Sports bags, Maxxis tires, and Shimano components.

Another documentary, The Extraordinary Journey of the Bicycle (Michael Kollatschny, dir., 2024), describes how the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1818 and its dust resultant global winter diverted reliance on horses onto mechanical innovations, such as the draisienne. One might argue that chariots were also bicycles; putting cart wheels in line with a pedal push pulley drive reassigns human riders as horse’s asses.

Gold Peak Tea, Real is Gold spot (2024), “Doesn’t need hype or trickery to be interesting,” because bicyclist spokesman breaks away from phony set to tour exotic fascination of tea plantation.

History Honors 250 is a series of PSA spots that History Channel is running through 2026, when America celebrates its quarter millennium as a Greco-Roman democratic republic... if it makes it that far under current totalitarian threat. Of particular interest is one on Women’s Rights first aired on 7 April 2025 that connects their vote with freedom experienced while riding bicycles.

Itinerant bicyclist Cliff Cash delivered The Long Road standup comedy special and destroyed MAGA mythos specifically.

Xfinity Mobil Spot (2025) shows Frankenstein’s creature bicycling around some dark scary backwater, which inspires learning to cook with a pinch of cinnamon like a gourmet chef. Incongruous?

Jimmy Kimmel Live, September 30th, 2025, half way through show, Seth Meyers’ brother Josh parodied California Governor Gavin Newsom bicycling onto stage, cracking up his Brooklyn audience, and reviving stereotypical west coast tropes. Will show survive?

Fantasy/SciFi film in development Ghostwriter (J.J. Abrams, dir., 2025) produced on location in both Glasgow, Scotland, and Rhode Island, USA stars Glen Powell (Twister), Jenna Ortega (Wednesday), and Samuel L. Jackson (Avengers, Pulp Fiction). A bloodied Powell was snapped being filmed along Providence’s Lovecraftian streets for supernatural scenes of him cycling on a Specialized.

Mocking Ozempic and Wegovy commercials, Comedy Central’s South Park interrupts itself for a “Lizzo spot" with a stop at a bike shop, then resumes ridiculing godless villainy of Pol Prop. Pigs who want it all pop semaglutide pills to avoid exercise and glomb whatever they want. You can simply adopt riding as a lifestyle and so much safer lose chubby blubber, then thumb your nose at first president since Lincoln who didn’t appreciate bicycling and rather make war against bike advocacy in favor of petroleum consumerism.

Rhythm and sounds of bicycling inspire so many songs, some composed over last 5 years heretofore slipped through cracks:

Christian Alexander, Bicycle, single, AMF Records, 2023

Doon Kanda, Bicycle [piano instr.], Celest, wwwomb, 2023

Eric Owyoung & Future of Forestry, Bicycle [piano instr.], single, Sound Swan Records, 2023

Lili Trifilio, Bicycle, Book Club, 1326398 Records DK, 2019 - “I was riding home on my bicycle on the northwest side of Chicago. Then I saw your face in a rain puddle looking back at me from a car window... If you wanna come and see my new place in the city by the freeway, we could ride our bikes at our own pace. If they break down, we can fix them.”

mariek, Bicycle, single, self, 2021

Nevi, Bicycle [jazz instr.], Istanbul Edition, Losen Records, 2020 - Russian and Turkish musician collaborate; no apparent relation to the Italian bicycle brand.

Sarah Watson, Bicycle [piano instr.], Bicycle EP, self, 2021

Xaia, Bicycle, single, self, 2020 - “I don’t have a car... I’m tired of the yelling, I just want to be alone... All I do is ride my bike all day...”