Auto Focus Critic Reviews

Gets to you like a low-grade fever, a malaise with no known antidote. When it was over, I wasn't sure if I needed a drink, a shower or a lifelong vow of chastity.Read the full review

Schrader is like a reformed addict who isn't even honest enough to show what once gave him pleasure. He's the most dangerous kind of crusader. In Auto Focus, he makes you hate sex and movies equally.Read the full review

In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business.Read the full review

A compelling, sympathetic portrait.Read the full review

A compelling motion picture that illustrates an American tragedy and shows the transformation of a decent family man into someone whose struggles with addiction and association with the wrong man bring him to an untimely end, with no hope of retribution.Read the full review

It grows repetitious, both in its account of Crane's ritual behavior and in clumsily written -- and stolidly directed -- scenes between Crane and Carpenter, two men acting out their own unacknowledged sexual drama.Read the full review

The performances are vividly alive.Read the full review

In Auto Focus, the strangely wonderful and weirdly touching new film from Paul Schrader, the comedy and the tragedy keep getting mixed up.Read the full review

Kinnear's mesmerizing performance comes close to redeeming Auto Focus, suggesting depths the film never gets around to exposing, but Schrader's alternately flat and histrionic storytelling sends the film hurtling beyond redemption.Read the full review