Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

SnoopyStyle Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) is a radio DJ in Hollywood looking for acting work. In 1965, he gets an offer for an unconventional project. It's a comedy in a Nazi POW camp. Hogan's Heroes becomes a big hit. He befriends home video salesman John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) in a strip club. Unlike his public wholesome image, his interests in strippers, sex, and home video are heightened by Carpenter and his state-of-the-art cameras. It's a toxic friendship of easy women, sexual proclivity, and hidden videos. In 1970, he divorces his wife Anne (Rita Wilson) and marries his co-star Sigrid Valdis, real name Patricia Olson (Maria Bello). Crane and Carpenter's friendship based on their sad common interest degenerates.Director Paul Schrader often dives into the darker side of humanity. It's a sad portrait well delivered by Kinnear. On the other hand, the movie is not always great at delivering the danger and tension. For half of the movie, Bob Crane is not threatened with discovery. This keeps the tension low. It's got a chipper tone which is weird. It would have been nice to speed up the first half. It takes too long to get to his downfall. Willem Dafoe is equally strong and necessary for this movie to work. There is interesting work here but this should be more intense.

krocheav Unless your as morally bankrupt as Bob Crane, this movie should leave you feeling so grotty you may find yourself wanting to scrub yourself clean. Perhaps this film is as much an expose' of producer/director Paul Schrader as it is of Mr Crane - the two faced TV star in denial of his real-life condition. Schrader, sometimes a fellow collaborator of Scorsese, who like Scorsese, is drawn to these stories of people wallowing in their own carnal excesses, seems to be enjoying it far too much. Some have written that they think Schrader is on a moral crusade but his work overflows with so much perverse detail it tends to paint him as little more than a fellow pornographer (as with Pasolini and Bertolucci). 'Auto Focus' also has too much fiction amongst its facts. Unfortunately, as with many based on 'fact' productions - speculation creeps in - especially where two people are in particular situations alone - film makers and writers use these opportunities to add their own suppositions as how the events may have actually played out.Here, Bob Crane, a relatively 'B' grade performer who becomes the star of the 1965 TV sit-com "Hogan's Heroes" - is painted as a regular church going family man - according to his son he was not. Crane ruined two marriages with his perverse sexual addictions. The script also follows an obvious bias by setting-up his fellow partner (involved in numerous pornographic photography sessions) John Carpenter, as the only suspect for Crane's murder - this also was not so. This 'set-up' is too obvious and somewhat weakly developed - it just doesn't work all that well. We end up knowing more about the vile exploits of Crane and Carpenter than we really need and not enough of what else was playing out at this time.Crane, for all his amiable outward persona, made many enemies - any could also have been involved with his murder. The DVD includes a documentary covering the two subsequent investigations and court cases that may (or may not) help to shed light on this brutal murder - a murder that to this day, remains unsolved. Maybe all you need to see (if interested in this sordid case) is the doco. Apart from good performances, sleazy (and maybe not for all the right reasons) is the overall feeling left following this show.

dougdoepke No need to go into consensus technical or performance aspects of the film, which I largely agree with. My reservations are with the way the movie's conceived.All in all, the movie does no favors to Crane, either the man or the performer. Instead, the star of Hogan's Heroes comes across as pretty much one-dimensional in his plunge into sex induced degradation. Surely there were other dimensions to the man that allowed the performer to carry on with a career up to the night of his murder. But except for a few sketchy scenes at the outset, this phase of his life is largely ignored. A few more glimpses of some kind of normalcy would have added badly needed realism and depth. Maybe a few scenes at home with the second wife would help frame the tragic descent. Yes, we get the idea of Carpenter's foul role in Crane's downspiral, but why repetitive scene after repetitive scene of the two and their various fleshly delights. Despite the semi-biographical intent and the use of the man's name, this is not a rounded character study. Instead, the film's mainly a voyeuristic look at turgidly told sex addiction. Now, I have no particular sympathy for Crane, the man, and never watched his dubiously conceived series. However, I sympathize with his offspring, now that the public's lasting impression will be drawn from this pitiless caricature.

tieman64 Paul Schrader's films often reflect his Calvinist upbringing. This one, "Auto Focus", plays like a sequel to his earlier feature, "Comfort of Strangers". And so where "Comfort" was about sexual repression and stifled emotions, "Auto Focus" offers the opposite.The plot? Greg Kinnear plays Bob Crane, an affable TV star who finds his squeaky-clean suburban life degenerating into a morass of sexual addictions. Crane visits strip-clubs, has orgies with multiple men and women, begins to record his sex sessions, has penis enlargement surgery and eventually sadomasochistic sex. Crane, in short, auto focuses on kinkiness. Eventually he begins hoarding and storing these prized moments in vast sex libraries, the poor guy consumed by his indulgences.Many of Schrader's scripts ("Raging Bull", "The Last Temptation of Christ", "Hardcore", "Dominion" etc) feature a battle between fleshy desires and an almost spiritual ideal. This has led to many accusing Schrader of being puritanical, though his films always paint the body as being inescapable, be it his protagonist's lusts in "Cat People" or Christ turning away from God and toward the phallus in "Last Temptation". The way Schrader's heroes find themselves caught between desire and the guilt induced by socially constructed values itself echoes the first point in the Calvinist doctrine of grace. This is the belief that man exists in a state of "total depravity", fallen into sin and so by nature not inclined to love God.7.5/10 – Worth one viewing.