Welcome to my 2026 project honoring the first quarter of the 21st century. In this extremely lax project I watch a movie from each year to hopefully give myself some insight with what has changed within cinema during this century. At the very least I’ll have watched 25 interesting films and paired them with a dinner inspired by the movie, the place its from, and maybe a little bit of nostalgia for the past 25 years. You can watch along with me or find out what’s up next by checking out the full list of movies.
Today’s feature is from the year 2011, we are headed to Brazil to figure out how to fix the past…
Movie: O Homem do Futuro [The Man from the Future]
Year: 2011
Director: Cláudio Torres
Country: Brazil
The Elevator Pitch: On one fateful night in 1991 João had everything taken away from him and his fate sealed as a loser. When he accidentally creates a time machine he thinks he has the ability to fix everything once and for all…
How Was the Movie?:
This is a really fun movie. If you loved 90s cheesy blockbusters this is kind of like a perfectly updated version of that. I actually kept waiting for the movie to get sexist because of some of the events in it but it steers well clear of that and does a fantastic job of being very funny about all the sexy women around our main character.
If you had to compare this movie to any other movie in the world it’s just so obviously a version of Back to the Future that I was also worried it would be derivative but thankfully it goes off and does its own thing pretty early on. It also updates everything from that 80s movie including telling the main character to invest in Google and Apple in 1991 (the thing we would all do if we were able to go back in time) and using Twitter as a plot device! Because it’s 2011!
While you probably won’t get anything terribly deep from this movie there are a couple of extremely good stand out moments including so very savvy camera tricks and some fantastic acting. The main song in the film “Tempo Perdido” is used to maximum effectiveness that by the end even I was tapping and half-singing along with it. This is also just actually a comedy film and I laughed probably more than a dozen times and especially at a joke that I’m sure Brazilians are completely sick of but was new to me.
I will note that while the movie takes place in 2011 for the “main setting” this film feels more like it exists in the Marvel/MCU world of 2011 and not in the real life world but it’s also firmly 2011 with ideas around computing power, coding, Twitter, and big tech being in central components of it as opposed to Back to the Futures focus on changes in social norms.
The only downsides of this movie are that it is extremely predictable because it’s a time loop movie though it makes up for that with some wacky antics and great acting and also that it uses the song Creep by Radiohead which didn’t exist in 1991 [released 21 September 1992 so not even close]. I’m the only person who is salty about that so it doesn’t deter me from recommending this film to everyone! It’s a real crowd pleaser!
What was for Dinner?:
I should probably give up on the concept of making fish stews because this Moqueca was not appealing to me. It’s a rich fish stew with coconut, lime, and chilies and I think it might have turned out better if I’d used a different type of fish but sadly we have pretty limited options here unless you want to splash out cash. I instead made the mistake of being cheap and I paid for it because I thought this was awful. I’m not going to blame the recipe because it sounds like something I would have liked but I used some cheap white fish and got exactly what was coming to me. My husband thought this was a fantastic fish stew, possibly the only good fish stew he has ever had so it was just me or my stomach that night.
I would possibly try this again but I would go to a proper fish market and buy whatever was very fresh that day instead.
That’s it for 2011, see you in the future year of 2012!
