Auto Focus (2002)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Must See Movie...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I have not been able to find this movie at any of the local stores. I would sort of like to see what Hollywood is showing regarding the star of Hogan. I have always gotten lots of laughs from the show but sometimes got the feeling Hogan was overdoing it.I go to youtube to get my Hogans fix every once in awhile.When I saw that Maria Bello was playing Hilda (Sigrid Valdis) I was skeptical. I have liked her in everything I have seen of her but to put her in the role of Hilda? Oh boy that is a stretch. Hilda was a healthy, curvy hunk of woman, while Bello is considerably thinner.I found the movie on netflix, so I just have to wait for it to arrive, then I'll come back and edit this review.

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.

I don't know what Greg Kinnear has been up to lately, but as far as major rolls in movies go, he isn't doing enough.I'll admit I'm biased. I remember my girlfriend and myself laughing hysterically at Kinnear's commentaries when he hosted the old cable show 'Talk Soup', which featured highlights of the days' more outrageous talk show guests back in the late eighties. Priceless stuff.Like most people, I visibly cringe at the real Bob Crane's personal life as the details slowly began to leak into the public consciousness years after he was brutally murdered. We follow Bob as he makes the quantum leap from radio to TV early in the story as his agent lands him the lead role in risky new comedy set in a P.O.W. camp in World War 2 Germany. "Hogan's Heroes" turns out to be an overnight hit, and Bob is quickly seduced into a double life.One has to remember it was the mid-sixties. The sexual revolution was accelerating rapidly, and many already full grown adults were drawn into this new and forbidden territory, and often with disastrous results at the expense of spouses and children as well as careers. Bob's experience was no exception. By day, Bob is a loving husband and father (well, sort of). By night, Bob soon becomes unrecognizable as he quickly falls victim to all the dark sides that Hollywood has to offer, and then some.A big part of the problem is Bob's new best buddy, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) who he meets on the set of Hogan's Heroes. John works as a salesman and representative for Sony, and is busy introducing the emerging technology of portable analog video recording systems, or video tape recorders. John is a likable enough guy, but he has a sleazy streak a mile wide.John already has Bob hob-nobbing at strip clubs after hours soon after they meet, but when John introduces Bob to the world of video tape, he is quickly filled with all kinds of dirty fun ideas.In the beginning as Bob descends into his personal cesspool, he stops himself here and there completely stupefied and shocked at his own tawdry decisions. But with John's help, he gets over it. Fast. Bob begins to swirl the great cosmic toilet bowl of depravity to the bitter end. After Hogan's Heroes is canceled, Bob, armed with his drunken arrogance, proceeds to ruin every personal and professional relationship he has. He tears through yet another marriage, loses all his children from both, alienates his agent and colleagues, and burns away money. All he has left is more booze, more sex, and John.After Bob and John begin to develop unavoidable contempt for one another, the end for Bob is right around the corner. Aside from an ending that I found too abrupt, Director Paul Schrader does an excellent job creating the tension and drama throughout the story as palpable and well presented. The supporting cast recreating the Hogan's Heroes sequences left a little to be desired, but was adequate. The exception was actor Kurt Fuller's reprising the late Werner Klemperer's role of Colonel Klink who bags it effortlessly.There is also a bit part in the movie acted by no less than Bob Crane Jr. See if you can spot it.

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.