Bikes vs Cars

I’d love to be in Spain to see this movie Bikes vs Cars, namely in Barcelona where it is going to be shown this Saturday at Docs Barcelona. The movie has been doing the tour of independent film festivals, from Sweden to South by south west and the american circuit. It is coming back to Europe again and I hope Bikes vs Cars can be seen in DocLisboa in October. Let’s hope some organiser reads my blog . . .

THE STORY OF BIKES VS CARS

We are immersed in a great global crisis that we will eventually have to face: climate change, the exhaustion of fossil resources, urban and ocean pollution. In this context, the bicycle stands as a powerful tool for change. However, this is a David and Goliath fight, since the automobile industry invests millions of dollars every year to maintain its business. Car sales are currently higher than ever before and there are more than one thousand million vehicles in the world.
Activists and thinkers around the world, from São Paulo to Los Angeles, including the idyllic situation in Copenhagen, get organized to change the state of things and make cities more sustainable. Alongside those citizens who refuse to stop cycling despite the increase in the number of deaths from traffic accidents, they carry out a small action that can lead to great changes.

from DocsBarcelona.

Lucy, not really a must go and see film

Lucy

Take a good idea, a potentially great idea, and put it in the hands of a director (Luc Besson) that is known for stories of triads, professional assassins and revenges and you get Lucy. But the problem is that the brain expansion and the Taipei triad scenario don’t match.

This movie was going to be all about execution, and it doesn’t deliver. It is not even entertainment. The director uses the same tricks every time (Corridors for example: in one case Lucy makes every french cop fall to the ground with the flick of a finger, in another every mob member flies into the ceiling, and while the former was kind of fun, the latter is just dull, dull, dull, and repetitive).

The movie doesn’t really build to a climax, there is no surprise or twist of events, it isn’t about an hero trying something, it isn’t about a conspiracy, it isn’t even about trying to survive the Taipei triad while trying to understand the universe by your expanding brain. It is just a BAD summer movie, backed by two well-known actors and lot’s of publicity.

Ah, the actors! Scarlett Johansson plays the role but somehow the scenes where she walks into or out of rooms, corridors, etc. didn’t convince me. She doesn’t have the walk. She’s competent, but not much else is there. She is not very expressive in the action parts of the role and is better in the close up dialogs and interactions mainly due to her magnetic look. Morgan Freeman playing the role of a scientist teaching in the Sorbonne is now doing these roles of the “expert” that gives instant credibility to any story (was the same thing with Transcendence). In the end they are the duck calls for people to go and see the film. They do their job, but no one will remember them for this movie.

One final thing. What was that in the end of the film, were after building the most powerful next generation super computer that looked like a live termite ant tower, the computer expends a protuberance to give “All knowledge a 100% brain has” to Morgan Freeman in a USB stick? WHAT? And a big clunky one too! And Morgan Freeman stands there, astonished, holding the USB stick in the air and probably thinking “Is this what I’m doomed to do for the rest of my acting career?“