10/10: Benjamin Crotty

The director of Fort Buchanan shares ten films released in the last ten years that left a strong impression.

– in alphabetical order –

1. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk(Ang Lee, 2016)

A 3D/4K/120fps film about the crappy but somehow endlessly touching spectacle of America and Americanness.

2. De Novo (Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, 2009)

The funniest thing I have seen at the Pompidou, a melancholy meditation on art making and not making.

3. I-be Area (Ryan Trecartin, 2007)

Art world wunderkind Trecartin’s big first work seems to simultaneously invent and exhaust its own formal possibilities: a dizzying if perhaps ultimately tragic achievement.

4. Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello, 2015)

Pulcinella and a talking buffalo.

5. Melvil (Melvil Poupaud, 2006)

Melvil Poupaud’s love (or hate!) letter to himself: a portrait of the actor as object, freak and voyeur.

6. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Eric Rohmer, 2007)

The only Rohmer to make it under this ten-year limit is an excellent one.

From its subtle ecocritique opening (revealing Rohmer could not shoot the film where the story was originally set due to the environmental degradation of that region) to its almost unnoticeable IRCAM voice pitching of its cross-dressing lead, a film of liberty, precision and discretion.

7. Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard, 2012)

The movie I imagine humans watching in the Wall-E future when they are obese and immobile and attached to screens – a truly vulgar corporeal porn poem that invites us to luxuriate in the intense physical experiences of our beautiful onscreen avatars Cotillard/Schoenaerts as they train whales and lose limbs, street-fight and fuck.

8. They All Lie (Matias Pineiro, 2009)

The discreet charm of the young Argentine bourgeoisie, a film to watch, not really understand, and love – the antipodes of number 7.

9. Tom at the Farm (Xavier Dolan, 2013)

Xavier Dolan’s secret comedy, maybe even a secret to himself…

10. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)

A truly elegant and epic serial killer film where not much happens, over the course of many years.

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Benjamin Crotty’s Fort Buchanan is available to own on DVD.

10/10 is an ongoing series in which we ask cinephiles to name their ten favorite films from the last ten years (currently, between 2007 and 2017).