This is the purported behind the scenes “true life” story of actor Bob Crane, known mostly as Colonel Hogan on the 1960’s TV show “Hogan’s Heroes”. There would never be a behind the scenes movie about Bob Crane if he wasn’t an apparent sex addict who was clubbed to death in a hotel room. This guy was no big star – do you even know anything he did besides “Hogan’s Heroes”?
The attraction here is the strange “double life” the guy lived. Here he was the basic suburban Dad, father of three, and when the movie opens in 1964, an LA disc jockey. But inside of him was this sex maniac dying to sleep with as many women as possible, and to videotape it . All it took was to meet the “right guy”.
That guy would be John Carpenter, played by Willem Dafoe. An audio-visual freak, Carpenter and Crane bond first over the latest camera equipment, then later they share the passion of sex orgies. They top it off by filming themselves and enjoying the playbacks. It’s an odd relationship, but what is even stranger is the feeling you get watching this movie. Was Crane such a cipher? He was like this thirteen year- old kid who didn’t start smoking until he hung out with the “wrong crowd”. Is that all it took? I kept thinking that whoever wrote this movie either didn’t know Bob Crane, or Crane was such a simpleton, a follower, that he gave in to all temptation simply because it was put in front of him. Then I realized he was a DJ and an actor, and believe me, there’s no great IQ points to be found in either of those professions.
Crane is played by Greg Kinnear, and I don’t fault him. There’s just so much missing and the lack of insight makes the movie boring at times. I saw Crane’s second wife, one of his co-stars on “Hogan’s Heroes’, on “20-20’ last week and I got more from her than I did watching nearly two hours of this guys life on the screen. Of course, her objection to the movie is that it doesn’t show what a great Dad he was and that she never objected to his sex parties. She knew he really loved her, and that other stuff was just about sex. She divorced him anyway, claiming he showed some of his homemade porn to their young son. By the way, that kid is now over thirty years old and has a website with the dirty pictures of his Dad on it. Interesting family, isn’t it?
Which is, again, why I was frustrated with this movie. It wasn’t all that interesting. I felt they were going through the motions and not getting to the heart of the story. They barely even showed any nudity. What was really going on between this guy Carpenter and Bob Crane. Was Carpenter just a “glom-on”, using Crane’s fame to get chicks, or was he romantically interested in Crane too? There is one funny scene where Crane freaks out as he watches the porn and notices Carpenter’s hand on his rear end. Random orgy stuff or is there more to it? And as for Crane’s murder, you can really forget it. Much like his life, that was never solved.
“Auto Focus” suffers because you can’t see if there’s any “there” there. Yes, this was the 1960’s and 70’s and people just didn’t talk about these things. I know that. But a little insight would have helped. Crane comes off like dope, just following the leads of others. By the way, the crowd I saw this movie with was a mixture of dirty looking old men and some high school class of teenagers. . Was the teacher trying to give them a morality tale or he just wanted to see the movie and the class got in the way? It was strange. Anyway, I give “Auto Focus” a “5.0”.
Friday, October 18th, 2002
Remember that old question “if you were to be left on a deserted island with only one other person, who would it be?”. Well, after this turkey, not Madonna, that’s for sure. I hate to pile on, but this is one really, really bad movie.
Madonna plays a rich , snobby, spoiled, irritating brat who ends up stuck on that deserted island with this Italian fisherman played by a guy named Adriano Giannini. Never heard of him? Lucky for him. He had no reputation to kill. I couldn’t decide whose acting was worse – Madonna’s or this guy’s.
I’ll back up a little and give you some info. Madonna and her quiet, nice guy husband charter a boat to sail from Greece to Italy. So there is a crew and this Italian guy is part of it. From the first scene in this movie, Madonna is a bitch. For over the first half of this movie she’s whining, complaining and making those nasty faces. Of course, the crew, in particular the Italian guy, is taking the brunt of it. His name is Pepe – but Madonna calls him “Pee-Pee”. Pretty witty, isn’t it? He curses her behind her back and she continues to torture him. Except most of the torture is really inflicted on us, the viewing public.
This goes on long past the point that somebody should have already killed them both, but it goes on until the two find themselves all alone on that island. It’s bad enough we have the cliché known as the “deserted island”, but on top of that, they are, of course, going to find love.
That’s when things go from annoying to plain weird. Pepe decides that in order to make Madonna see the world in a better light, he has to beat her. Not that I’m complaining- if anyone deserved a beating, it’s this character played by Madonna. But the way it evolves from S&M to total romance is kind of revolting. To make matters worse, in between the beatings, the movie is plain boring. They fill in with little music video scenes showing the two on their own exploring the island for food and water. Very exciting. I saw more action from that volleyball Tom Hanks played with in “Castaway”.
When Madonna and Pepe do speak, it’s grating. Madonna’s character is simply not to be believed, even for a rich bitch. “Whine, whine, whine”. Her best insult to Pepe is to call him a mongrel dog. But the Pepe guy – his lines are mostly the over the top kind such as “what did you do that for?”, or “what’s the matter with you?” Honestly, you get a better performance from the guy who used to say “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meatball!”
Which brings me back to the main question – why would anybody make this movie? It’s a remake of a foreign film from the ‘70’s. What’s worse is that Madonna has even managed to drag down the reputation of her husband, the director of this mess, a guy by the name of Guy Ritchie. He has made a few good tough guy movies such as “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”.
I’ve read that the problem is that no one can tell Madonna what to do – what movies to make or how to act in them. I guess it’s true. Only Dan Ackroyd has as bad a record in my book. So it continues to be true that maybe you can’t have it all. That is, an incredible music career, a husband, two kids and some pretty good movies made. Sorry, Madonna, time is up. I give “Swept Away” a “1.0” because “one” thing it has going for is that it is only eighty five minutes long.
Friday, October 11th, 2002
No, this is not a review of a porn movie. “Igby” is the name of the main character in this movie, but as for the rest, well, it has to do with a military school hazing, but nothing sexual. And actually, not all that relevant.
Igby is played by Kieran Culkin. Yes, he is one of the younger brothers of McCauley Culkin, the “Home Alone” kid. But unlike his real life “troubled” brother, Kieran is only playing one in this movie.
This Igby kid is about seventeen years old and comes from a wealthy family. His Dad, played by Bill Pullman, is in a mental institution. His Mom, played by Susan Sarandon, is a nagging bitch. Igby’s older brother Oliver, played by Ryan Phillippe, is a polite phony only looking to get rich and score with women. If you add all this to the fact that Igby is a smart, subversive, sarcastic boy who hates his Mom and brother, then you can see the kid has problems.
You start off disliking Igby. He’s rude, quick to judge and arrogant. Then you begin to assess the people around him and you begin to understand.
Jeff Goldblum plays Igby’s “Godfather”- known only by the initials “D.H.”. A Donald Trump type guy who seems like he’s involved with Igby’s family because he was a friend of the now hospitalized father. But this guy is no role model – just another rich guy using people for his own purposes. Igby sizes this up pretty quickly and turns it around on him by using him. This involves “crashing” at the rich guy’s secret apartment where his mistress hangs out. That would be Amanda Peet, a “wanna-be” who is nothing more than a whore and drug addict. Oh, and by the way, she shares the apartment with her “friend”, a transvestite “artist” named Russel who deals drugs on the side. Everyone in Igby’s world seems pointless and just out to use other people to survive. No wonder the kid is skipping school and on his way to cracking up like his Dad.
The turn around begins when Igby meets Sookie – a college drop-out played by Claire Danes. She appears to be his match and doesn’t let any of his sarcastic stuff get the better of her. Igby starts to look like a kid who might make it after all.
“Igby Goes Down” takes a while to build your interest. At first I had the feeling I wanted to spend no time with these idiots. The Dad was beginning to look like the lucky one by escaping all these people. But the humor grows on you and start to take the antics less seriously. When Igby’s Mom is comforted by another woman who asks her how she did it – that is, how did she come by these two “wonderful” sons, the Mom replies, “stirrups and a turkey baster”. You have to appreciate how Igby and his Mom refuse to put up with fools and always speak their minds.
In fact, the complex relationship between Igby and his Mom is one of the most fascinating things about this movie. He blames her for Dad’s mental problems. She is trying to motivate him into some kind of life. It all leads to one dramatic scene where Igby finally comes to terms with all his family’s ugliness. I appreciate a movie that can make me laugh at the wacky people, but become involved enough to care if one of them makes it through. “Igby Goes Down” is another old look into the wasted lives of rich people, but it was worth the look this time. I give it a “7.0”.
Friday, October 4th, 2002
By now you may know this movie is a prequel to “The Silence of The Lambs”. There was a version made in the 1980’s, but nobody saw it and Anthony Hopkins did not play Hannibal Lecter. On top of that, it was decided that you did not like “Hannibal”, the sequel to “Silence”, which came out last year. Well, that’s what “they” believe, even though “Hannibal” took in over $350 million. So all of that leads to this movie being made, where once again Hannibal is called upon to assist an FBI guy in finding a serial killer.
The FBI guy is named Will Graham and he’s played by Edward Norton. Seldom have I seen a more unconvincing performance. The Will Graham character is detached, stoic and extremely uninteresting. Maybe it’s the Jodie Foster thing, maybe it’s because the Clarice Starling character is a woman and that added extra sexual tension between she and Lecter. I don’t know, but what Jodie and Anthony had in that first film is sorely lacking this time around. This is a great cast though – Ralph Fiennes as the current killer, Emily Watson as the blind lady he befriends to show his softer side (think “Frankenstein” here). Then there’s Harvey Keitel as Graham’s FBI boss and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a tabloid reporter out to get the hot story. I usually only see these people in artsy movies that play in old, crappy Westside theatres. What a waste. Here they’re given the usual lines and the pat parts to play and that’s about all they can do. They do it well, but they’re just not a part of anything very special.
Which brings me back to Ed Norton. The guy is a good actor. I figure there just wasn’t much to work with. Near the very end he finally show a bit of personality when he tells the blind woman her hair is a mess. That’s it – until then, he’s reduced to blurting out all the important clues that will lead us to the killer’s identity. You can get that kind of acting and dialogue from any episode of “C.S.I.” I do wish that we had one of these guys to solve cases like the killings of Chandra Levy and JonBenet Ramsey. How come this brilliant FBI work only pops up in the movies?
As for Anthony Hopkins and his Hannibal Lecter – well, he’s effective, although I sensed his voice seemed “speeded” up after they lock him up in that jail cell. It was strange and distracting. “Red Dragon” does have quite a jolting twist of an ending, but until then I sat there largely uninvolved. Yes, I liked “Hannibal” better and I think it’s time to let Doctor Lecter go. I give the movie a “5.0”.
