Rating: 
Summary: Nonsense
Review: These are the undisputed facts: Bob Crane and John Carpenter are both dead. Ergo, neither man can speak on his own behalf concerning the validity of this film, which subsequently furnishes a vehicle for the makers of AUTO FOCUS to embellish and sensationalize to their hearts' content.Granted, it's common knowledge that Crane (Greg Kinnear) had personal problems that hampered his career following his successful run on "Hogan's Heroes." And granted, video equipment guru Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) was a problematic friend of Crane's. But when this film shows countless scenes of just the two men, alone, the viewer immediately realizes he or she is watching make-believe--nothing more. After all, no one else was privy to Crane's and Carpenter's private conversations, arguments, or alleged confrontations, which begs the question: Where is the integrity of this story? And I didn't find any integrity, only a warped and twisted interpretation of what director Paul Schrader "thought" took place. Had AUTO FOCUS been a fictitious film--a film about a television star destroyed by his addiction to sex, aided and abetted by a sleazy friend--it would have been much more compelling. Instead, we are asked to believe the menagerie of slimy silliness and dysfunction that allegedly took place in the life of Bob Crane. They say the dead can't be defamed. AUTO FOCUS says otherwise.
--D. Mikels
Rating: 
Summary: A tragic look into the life of Bob Crane
Review: I grew up watching old reruns of Hogan's Heros, so when this came out I rushed to the movies to see it. I was aware of Bob Cranes murder but was unaware of the extent of his swinger lifestyle. This movie did a wonderful job at showing the downfall of this great entertainer. Greg Kinnear did a wonderful job as Bob Crane, but William DaFoe stole the show, He was John Carpenter, Cranes partner in crime. He might have just been the most creepy person portrayed in a film yet! Don't let this pass you by, if you do you'll regret it.
Rating:
Summary: hogan's sexual activities
Review: a great retelling of a celebrity who had it all then lost it with sex and drugs and booze and then one night he was murdered and no one till this day knows who killed Bob Crane. Kinnear is exact and he shows how Crane's life took a spiral to oblivion. Willem Dafoe is also great as John Carpenter, the man with the technology and the person who takes Kinnear into the world of sex. gripping, graphic, hypnotic and powerful. Kinnear plays a whole new role as Crane and he does it good
Rating: 
Summary: Citizen Crane: The Narrow Camera-Eye of
Review: Like many Hollywood productions, 'Auto Focus' takes liberties with the truth. On one hand, it's not documentary film; on the other hand, it's not roman a clef. It's not historical. What type of movie is it, then? It's 'biographical'-- fact glued together with speculation-- and that makes it risky, much in the way that 'Malcolm X' and 'JFK' were. So far, so good. Hollywood's been crying out for risk-takers ever since Frank Capra's 'You Can't Take It With You', a successful anarchist comedy, won Best Picture. The problem here isn't one of historical inaccuracy. 'Auto Focus' simply isn't compelling. Director Paul Schrader puts so much emphasis on Bob Crane's sexual peccadilloes that he neglects to remind us why we cared about the story in the first place: Hogan's Heroes was inspired stuff. Sure, it was campy! It was also groundbreaking, controversial and well-written. The characters were distinctive, there was great on-screen chemistry and it was just plain FUNNY. We don't get that from Schrader's film and it's a shame. [N.B.: A Hogan's Heroes montage, left on the cutting room floor, is included in the extras. See it. Those few seconds would have improved the movie tenfold.] To understand its shortcomings further, one needs to look at 'Auto Focus' within the framework of the director's career. With screenplay credits like 'Taxi Driver', 'Raging Bull' and 'The Last Temptation of Christ', Paul Schrader has shown that he can bring passion to tough treatments. 'Auto Focus' ought to be a perfect vehicle for him' tense, violent and sordidly perverse. Is its failure a sign that he should stick to writing? While no 'auteur', Schrader is a very good director. He's never developed a style, per se, relying instead on a Douglas Sirk cum Nicholas Ray blend of social melodrama (e.g., 'Blue Collar', 'Hardcore', etc.) His results with biographical cinema, however, are mixed. 'Mishima' is the best of this part of his work; 'Patty Hearst' is a disaster. Then we have lopsided efforts like 'The Comfort of Strangers' and 'Witch Hunt', films marked by an icy detachment. How do we explain the inconsistency? Schrader didn't write them. He didn't write 'Patty Hearst' either, as a matter of fact. And while 'Auto Focus' is a passable script for a first timer, it isn't award-winning material and, once again, it isn't Schrader's. The biggest problem with Michael Gerbosi's script is proportion. What begins as a simple Jekyll and Hyde piece loses focus at some point' grasping for something else to say and coming up empty-handed. Much of the footage between Crane's second marriage and his tragic death could be removed without damaging the integrity of the narrative, and this comprises nearly one-third of its length. The homoerotic syzygy that John Carpenter and Bob Crane represent may have been exciting to Gerbosi as playwright, but on the silver screen' it just doesn't work. It works flawlessly in Sunset Boulevard, but, where Crane may be a kind of Joe Gillis, Carpenter is no Norma Desmond. It works in American Beauty, but, where Carpenter may be a kind of Frank Fitts, Crane is no Lester Burnham. No, what you have here are two moderately intriguing lowlifes, locked in a fatal embrace for most of the picture' each dragging the other into swingers' hell. Also absent are the establishing shots and broader character development that separate the seventh art from the stage. The claustrophobic, egocentric 'Citizen Kane' got around this through the strength of its Mercury Theater cast. In place of exterior shots, Welles gave us Kane's retinue for context. Auto Focus is virtually all Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe and while lightly peppered with capable 'bit' players (e.g., Ron Leibman, Kurt Fuller and Ed Begley, Jr.) remains a bland, household recipe. I knew Werner Klemperer personally, and it's a pity that Fuller isn't allowed to do more in portraying him here. Werner had a wonderful acerbic sense of humor, indescribable and lost forever with his death. Based on his accounts of Crane, the movie delivers an excellent depiction of the man's hypocrisy... a conservative, 'Christian' family man with a world-class libido. Werner said, "On the surface, he seemed a gregarious fellow, but, underneath the facade, he was antisocial and troubled... a social/antisocial, so to speak." This film's too-tight 'auto focus', unfortunately, fails to place this psyche in its proper milieu. Kinnear's self-loathing narcissist is on the mark, and I have to give him kudos for that. He even managed to copy many of the actor's mannerisms and speech patterns. It's brilliant work. If at times he lacks some of Crane's smugness, we can forgive him. His 'likeable' version says more about human nature than the off-putting original did. I've heard 'Auto Focus' compared to 'Boogie Nights', as if Crane were as naive a patsy as Dirk Diggler. This is simply false, and it does a tremendous disservice to Paul Thomas Anderson's ampler work. At its core, 'Auto Focus' isn't a decent man's descent into dissolution. It is an unholy union, predicated on superficiality, which turns ugly when one partner opts out. When ultimately Carpenter wins the struggle, Crane posthumously exonerates him. Yes, we get it, already: They are halves of the same whole. The 'reject-me-and-die' syndrome. This is 'Star 80' all over again, an embarrassingly apologetic portrait of murder.
Rating:
Summary: Descent Into Madness
Review: I was fascinated by this film, which was a realistic portrait of a man living a dual life. Bob Crane, the good looking charmer from "Hogan's Heroes" seemingly had it all, a beautiful family, fame, money, looks and health. Greg Kinnear is brilliant as Crane not so much due to physical similarity, but rather due to the psychological changes apparent in the character through the film as he distances himself from his family and slides into addiction, and is eventually murdered because he ultimately realizes how hollow his life has become and tries to leave the lifestyle behind. Willem Dafoe is absolutely believable as the evil and corrupting John Carpenter. It is always a fascinating experience to watch emotional conflict well portrayed onscreen, and rarely has it been done better. The DVD has some great extras, notably a concise documentary on the Bob Crane murder. I highly recommend this film to any adults interested in a film realistically dealing with descents into depravity and attempted, though ultimately thwarted, redemption.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but so what?
Review: It was only going to be a matter of time before Hollywood made a film about the life of Bob Crane. Is it entirely accurate? Probably not based on comments by his family on various websites. Perhaps they are protecting his seemingly seedy image, but at the end of the day evidence has been found to suggest that Crane spent many hours producing home blue movies. The film explores some interesting themes - the cost of fame, the bad side of money, and the value of friendships. Greg Kinnear is excellent as Bob Crane, and William Dafoe is equally as good as the sleazy friend. At the end of the film I thought "what a sad existence Bob had near the end" but in a sense he was really happy with how his life ended up. Porn became his world, his obsession.
Rating: 
Summary: less of a review and more of a question
Review: i never saw this film in the cinema, it came and went at the local art house before i gave myself half a chance to see it. the other day i purchased the DVD and after all was said and done, i came to realize something a bit strange. what i want to know is (from you folks whom actually saw it back then): were certain scenes in the film digitally blurred in the theatrical release or is that just exclusive to the DVD? this information would greatly affect my review since censorship, especially in a film of this type, would defeat the purpose of its addition to my collection. if anyone would care to clarify this for me, i would greatly appreciate it. on the plus side, i always get a kick out of seeing rita wilson in any film. not too many people know that one of her first acting jobs was as a cheerleader on the original "brady bunch" television program (one of greg's many hotties).
Rating:
Summary: More like "Out Of Focus".
Review: Being in the right age group to remember "Hogan's Heroes", and Bob Crane's murder may have made me a little less objective while viewing this film, but I really wasn't impressed. Although Greg Kinnear puts on a tour de force in his portrayal of the late, troubled actor, this movie is dragged down by its choppy writing, and lack of direction. The plot follows (with reasonable accuracy) what has been established to be actual events, and yet it seems to leave gaping holes in the narrative. I found myself frequently wondering if I had missed something. The movie clocked in at 106 minutes, but maybe it would have been a fuller story if it had it been cut to a full 2 hour feature. Willem Dafoe seemed very miscast in his role as Bob Crane's enabling partner John Carpenter. While being an excellent actor, he never quite seems comfortable in this admittedly awkward part. The supporting cast didn't leave me with anything memorable enough to form an opinion on. In all fairness, I never watched the special features of this disk, because while the actual story of Bob Crane was truly a tragedy as it unfolded, this movie, while having great potential, was an even bigger disaster.
Rating:
Summary: Ambivalent Look at a Complicated Man
Review: Was Bob Crane a sick, twisted individual with a disturbing fetish for exhibitionism and random sex? Or was he just a normal guy with an unusual hobby? That's the question that writer Michael Gerbosi and director Paul Schrader pose in "Auto Focus," a film inspired by the real-life story of "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, who was killed in 1978 under circumstances that are still a mystery. For those who hear of the subject matter and buy or rent this film looking for a cheap thrill, I would tell them not to bother. Regardless of the fact that he didn't write it, this is very much a Paul Schrader movie, with all of the attendant baggage that the screenwriter of "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" brings to a project like this. Bob Crane may not seem on the surface like Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta, but Schrader clearly sees his signature themes of guilt, sin and redemption in this character. "I'm normal," Crane says to his agent when he's told that to get his foundering career back on track he has to put his hobby of videotaping his compulsive womanizing behind him. But is he? Is Crane simply a degenerate, a sick man who needs help, or is he what any good-looking, famous man would become if he had strange women approaching him worshipfully for autographs? This film is as much about the price of fame as it is about sex. When we first see him, Bob Crane is a simple, semi-well-known L.A. disc jockey with a wife and a couple of kids, who aspires to be the next Jack Lemmon. He's a conservative, a "one-woman man" and proud of his status as a suburban breadwinner. But when he takes the part of Hogan on the 1960s sitcom set in a German prisoner-of-war camp that changes his life, his life opens up in ways that he never could have expected. Helped along by his own personal Mephistopheles, home video pioneer John Carpenter (not to be confused with the director of "Halloween" and played to creepy perfection by Willem Dafoe), this likable prude with a love of photography becomes a compulsive womanizer whose fame can help him score with just about any woman who owns a television set. The performances are excellent. Greg Kinnear clearly knows what this guy is going through, and while his grasp of Crane's mannerisms struck me at times as a little bit like an impersonation rather than a performance, overall he does a splendid job. Rita Wilson does as much as is possible (which, frankly, isn't much) with the role of Crane's sexually neglected first wife, and Maria Bello has fun, at least at first, with the part of the free-spirited actress whom Crane makes his second wife (and, in a patently Freudian way, turns into a carbon copy of his first). Ron Leibman is a voice of sanity as Crane's agent, who in vintage Hollywood style tells his client that it doesn't matter what you do as long as you're discreet about it. And that's the problem -- Crane does pretty much what any normal guy would do who is suddenly rocketed to international stardom. It's just that he refuses to be a hypocrite about it. Crane's attutude is at odds with Schrader's Calvinist moralizing, which sends the second half of the film a little off the rails (almost literally -- Schrader illustrates the extent to which Crane's life is going out of control with such shaky camera work that you might need a barf bag for some scenes). It has moments that just don't work -- a fantasy scene where Crane's mind wanders during the filming of a scene for "Hogan's Heroes," turning into a fantasized orgy involving his actress-mistress, Colonel Klink and Schultz (I'm not kidding) would have been far better left on the cutting room floor. And the descent into grubby desperation towards the end rings just the tiniest bit false, as if the director were working out his own personal and sexual demons and grafting them onto a convenient fictional receptacle. So while this film isn't perfect (and yet when was the last time you saw a mainstream Hollywood film that even came close to perfection?), it's a fascinating character study of how fame can toss gasoline onto the fire of a man's inner demons, causing them to rage out of control. It's interesting to ponder what Bob Crane would be doing today if he hadn't been bludgeoned to death in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1978. Would he have become the first mainstream actor to segue into hard-core pornography? Or would he have gone into counseling, rediscovered Jesus as his Lord and Savior, and gotten himself another hit sitcom? Was he just a pervert? Or, given the fact that half the couples in America who own camcorders have used them at least once to videotape themselves having sex, was he simply ahead of his time? I have no idea, but it's a tribute to this film that it made me ask the questions. It's not for everybody, but if the subject matter doesn't turn you off completely, "Auto Focus" is well worth taking a peek at.
Rating: 
Summary: Bob Crane's addiction makes his life spin out of control.
Review: This 2002 film explores the world of Bob Crane, the TV star of Hogan's Heroes in the 60s. Based on the true story of his addiction to videotaping himself in erotic encounters with hundreds of women, we watch his life spin out of control. His two marriages fail. He can't get jobs in Hollywood anymore. And he's all alone. Greg Kinnear stars as Bob Crane. His performance is excellent for its depiction of the shallowness of the man. And Willem Dafoe, as John Carpenter, his best friend who entices Crane into a wanton lifestyle, gives an outstanding performance. Carpenter works for SONY and introduces Crane into the world of home video. He also brings him to strip clubs, sets Crane up with women, and flatters him incessantly. Crane gets hooked into this lifestyle and this leads to an inevitable violent outcome. The script is somewhat lacking but the actors still manage to get into the skin of the characters. However, it makes these two men seem somewhat different from those around them and never captures the real whirl of the early 70s, when the freedom of the times was gripping America. Also, I wish that every woman depicted in the film didn't come off as a lightweight bimbo. The DVD had some long extras about Bob Crane's murder. This was the era before DNA testing and so, even though there was a trial, nothing was ever proved. There were just too many questions. And too many people who might have had a motive. I enjoyed the film and the theme. It held my interest and kept me watching.
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