 |
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY RECOMMENDS: VIDEO & DVD |
DVD: 'Auto Focus,' 'NYPD' 1st season
 |
Greg Kinnear and Rita Wilson in "Auto Focus."
Story Tools
|
(Entertainment Weekly) -- In retrospect, it's no surprise that "Auto Focus" didn't do much business in theaters. This is a movie about a TV star, "Hogan's Heroes" funnyman Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), whose compulsion to videotape himself having sex culminated in his murder.
Somehow, the subject seemed too small for the big screen; the film's natural home, eerily enough, is on video.
Director Paul Schrader, an intrepid explorer of sexual obsession since 1979's "Hardcore," proves an inspired choice to tell Crane's story, and Kinnear pulls off nothing short of an acting miracle: a profound portrait of a shallow man.
Crane's codependent partnership with technogeek-swinger John Carpenter (the deeply creepy Willem Dafoe) seems perverse at first, then turns twistedly poignant when they're reduced to watching their own X-rated reruns. But the most touching relationship in "Auto Focus" is Crane's tender bond with his longtime agent (Ron Leibman, indelible as a mensch among mensches). And if that's not a measure of how skewed Crane's moral compass was, nothing is.
Grade: A-
-- Bruce Fretts
'NYPD Blue: Season 01'
Now in its 10th season, Steven Bochco's durable detective show has settled into such a familiar groove that it rarely surprises. But to revisit its rule-breaking first season is to remember what all the original fuss was about. It wasn't just the raunchy dialogue or bare-butt bedroom scenes; it was also the complex, character-driven stories of cops solving usually sordid crimes while grappling with their own demons.
Dennis Franz's ornery, bigoted, alcoholic Andy Sipowicz remains one of prime time's most compelling characters, but the early center of the "Blue" universe was his first partner, John Kelly (David Caruso), a bristlingly intense, tortured tough guy who was, in his smoldering way, as volatile as Sipowicz. With respect to Jimmy Smits, no subsequent costar has created such potent chemistry.
Caruso's infamously disruptive on-set behavior is too briefly, too tactfully remembered in the set's making-of featurette. Bochco is more forthcoming as he recounts his network battles over language and nudity.
Still, a common thread unites these two recollections: Both reflect the artistic integrity of a series that has earned a permanent place among TV's great cop shows.
Grade: A
-- Michael Sauter
