Alicia I love this movie so much

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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.

videorama-759-859391 Involving and insightful film shows the dark side of actor Bob Crane who played the legendary character, Hogan on Hogan's Heroes, with Kinnear giving a splendid performance, where Dafoe must be highly commended too as his "leech hanger on'er" friend, John Carpenter. The reenactment of the murder and grisly crime scene, isn't exaggerated, either, as having seen the real one. The movie boasts many other great performances, especially from Rita Wilson as Crane's first wife and from his kids, with some others, worth a mention. The movie begins just before Crane was given that once in a lifetime role, and does go quite a bit behind the casting, rehearsal reads, and filming of Hogan's Hero's, which this aspect of the movie, I really enjoyed where it really blended in well with the rest of the movie. The movie centres a lot on Crane's womanizing and cheating, if a little too much, up past his second divorce with the lead actress of the show, which was painfully sad and heavy, for a bit. He was a sex addict, who couldn't contain his urges, and there's a lot of frank nudity in front of the rolling camera, where during his and his friend's John's sexcapades, they would film it. Whether Carpenter, an avid video photographer, killed Crane, one can't really say, although before it, what gave motive, was Crane's sudden rejection of his real only friend. Although the film seems longer than it is, Auto Focus, is engrossing, as is watching the actors who played beside Crane, like Dawson, a homosexual, and enemy to Crane. I honestly thought Kinnear was worthy of Oscar nomination status, here, but there can only be so many for that selected and elite pool. It will be a performance though, that'll never leave you and you'll always remember, especially Kinnear's funny moments. Screenplay by Taxi Driver great, Paul Schrader, director, here too.

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.

CitizenCaine After several television appearances, actor Bob Crane landed the starring role of Hogan's Heroes, a television series which ran from 1965 to 1971. The majority of baby boomers will remember it well. After the series ended, Crane made several unsuccessful attempts at continuing his television career, including his own television series: The Bob Crane Show was canceled after just 15 episodes in 1975. He was reduced to the dinner theater circuit in the mid to late 1970's when he eventually was murdered in cold-blooded fashion on June 29, 1978. How did he go from television star to obscurity in a matter of seven years? Paul Schrader's film Auto Focus suggests it was Crane's debauched lifestyle that did him in. After Crane's bloodied and bludgeoned body was discovered, police found a large number of home made sex videos with Crane and his friend John Carpenter.Greg Kinnear stars as Bob Crane, the penultimate likable guy and radio DJ, circa 1964. Kinnear has Crane down perfectly, except you have to wonder if Crane was really that superficial or was the script just that superficial? Schrader suggests that Crane really was that shallow, and Crane's pornographic fervor fueled his career decline. Crane never realized it as witnessed by the script's closing narration given by Kinnear as Crane after his death. Despite the support Crane received after death from his second wife about changing his life around, it seems like Crane became a pariah in the industry, increasingly shunned for his inappropriate behavior as an out-of-control womanizer disconnected from reality. The film's "Celebrity Cooks" appearance, which Crane filmed 6 days before he was killed, makes this apparent.Willem Dafoe stars as John "Carpy" Carpenter, the electronic technician working on the cutting edge of the dawning video age. Crane's association with Carpenter drew him deeper into a world of hedonistic sex and pornographic home movies. The film seems to be ambiguous to a certain extent regarding the catalyst for pushing Crane over the edge, but he had already built up a collection of nude magazines of the day, including Gent, Swank, and others. However, director Paul Schrader indicated Hollywood didn't corrupt anybody, but it allowed corrupt individuals to continue their corruption. I agree with Schrader's assessment. The cinematography uses picturesque Norman Rockwell types of colors and settings in the early part of the film, and then it slowly gravitates to darker hues as the film progresses and Crane's personal turmoil becomes more apparent. The fantasy sequence when Crane's Hogan's Heroes' set collides with his personal demons is just one of these darker moments. Kinnear and Dafoe are both interesting enough to carry the film, and as with most of Schrader's films, the supporting cast is excellent. Rita Wilson, as Crane's high school sweetheart and his first wife Anne, is prim and proper in a 1960's sort of way. Maria Bello is fantastic as Patricia, Crane's second wife he married on the set of Hogan's Heroes. Ron Leibman is great as Lenny the agent who increasingly warns Crane to tone down or hide his personal life or his career will suffer. Ultimately, it's a film that draws no conclusions about Crane's murder or passes no judgment on Crane's wild lifestyle. It's simply a sad story about a likable guy who never realizes his addiction to sex and the effect it has on his career and those around him. It's also a film about exploiting celebrity status for one's gain and the unending number of seemingly ordinary people who are only too willing to be hoodwinked by individuals with barely a modicum of celebrity status. Schrader continues his string of disturbing portraits of male protagonists with sexual ambivalence and hangups. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Jake VanDorn in Hardcore, Julian in American Gigolo, Paul Gallier in Cat People, Yukio Mishima in Mishima, Robert and even Colin in The Comfort Of Strangers, Wade Whitehouse in Affliction, Alan Riply in Forever Mine, and now Bob Crane in Auto Focus. The sexual dichotomy in Auto Focus is much more extreme than in the other films, and Crane's rise and fall parallels the innocence to cynicism transition American society underwent from the mid 1960's to the late 1970's at the time. Michael Gerbosi wrote the script based on Robert Graysmith's book: The Murder Of Bob Crane. *** of 4 stars.