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 2007, we are headed to Spain to loop back in on ourselves with…
Movie: Los cronocrímenes [Time Crimes]
Year: 2007
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Country: Spain
The Elevator Pitch: Hector moves into his new house in the countryside with his wife when he accidentally stumbles down a strange path and into a time machine. The machine only sends his back a few hours so surely that’s not enough time to do any damage…right?
How Was the Movie?:
We had such high hopes for this film because we had seen Extraterrestrial in the theater in 2012 but I’m sad to say that despite being a well made film, it’s no from me. It’s unclear to me if my distaste for the films usage of women comes from the film itself or if we had literally just watched a movie before it with a man being gross about women and that colored my ability to enjoy the film but instead of a fun time romp (and make no mistake this movie is an impeccably made time romp) this movie left me with a skin crawling feeling more akin to watching a horror movie than a sci-fi thriller. When I say horror, I don’t mean horror on purpose but the kind of quiet horror where it is unclear to me if the director is aware of how he is framing and using women in his film since it has no narrative usage beyond the camera and audience.
What I can say is that this, like his previous film, is a shockingly tight script that is clearly made as a labor of love for very little money. It’s intense how much mileage he gets from minimal locations, a cast of exactly four people, and props bought from IKEA (at one point literally a prop is removed from an IKEA box, label and all). This probably would be a great watch for people who are fans of the time travel genre who are wiling to set aside the abstract idea of sexism for a minute but I couldn’t do it. It ruined what is a smart, extremely clever, and tense film this could have been for me.
There is a lot to love about this and a couple moments made me jump. I guessed all the twists in the movie pretty early on but that ruins nothing because it makes the film simply logical but it doesn’t actually make the inciting incidents make sense and leaves me feeling worse off because of the original / initial choice was made by the script (written by the director himself), not the character.
Anyway, we’ve now hit the late 00s, aka the era where you need to explain why you don’t have a cell phone. This movie does so by placing characters out in the countryside and replacing it with low-fi tech including phones with answering machines and walkie talkies. Is that ironic in a movie with a time machine? You be the judge.
What was for Dinner?:
I made a Galician-Style Chicken Empanada. Was this a movie shot or filmed in or by people from that region? No, but I make the rules and I saw this recipe and I really love a good savory pie so I decided to make it. This is basically a meat pie with a base of stewed onions and peppers wrapped in a thin paprika and oil crust. If you had any doubt you need not have worried because this was absolutely delicious and surprisingly easy to make. I only made one change which is I used significantly less oil when frying my vegetables because generally you’re supposed to strain them after cooking and use that oil in the dough but I wanted to streamline the process because this year I’m committed to not spending 3 hours every weekend doing an arts and craft project that leaves me in tears.
Hopefully this gets at the spirit of the dish. I saw from a couple of videos I watched that it’s traditional to take a little of the extra pie dough and shape it into the letter of the main ingredient. I didn’t square off my dough so I didn’t have any extra to put on top but decided to poke a “P” on top (for pollo of course). This pie has really simple flavors and the crisp dough makes it perfect for picking up to hold and less like a pot pie than I fear. I want to try experimenting with this a little in the future because it went so successfully.
10/10, go make this pie!
That’s it for 2007, see you in the future year of 2008!