What ever happened to the movie Auto Focus? It was supposed to be a big deal. It got great reviews and I don’t ever remember it coming to Chicago. It was full of Oscar buzz and then nothing, what happened?
It definitely came to Chicago:
http://us.imdb.com/ReleaseDates?0298744
It appears to have had it’s US premiere there.
OK, maybe it was a film festival, but I don’t remember a regular theatrical run in Chicago. It looks like it was released in NY/LA in October but no place else.
It was a good little movie, but not great. I’m afraid it has been overshadowed in the awards season by some other movies (The Hours, Adaptation, Chicago, etc.) which may not have been better, just better timed. Greg Kinnear and William Defoe did great jobs, but the screenplay seemed a little unfocused, and the camerawork was distractingly showy. But it’s worth two hours of your life, so you should check it out when it comes out on DVD.
Here’s the Chicago Reader’s own review of the film. Yeah, it vanished pretty quickly. I’d ditto the terrific work by Defoe but can’t agree on Kinnear; the film, like his performance, settles on examining the details of Crane’s life in too glib and arch a fashion, never lending any genuine insight into what the man was really about. A shame because I like Paul Schrader.