CLOSEUPS.(two movies)

In Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus," a tawdry real-life story, the former radio personality Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) first meets his nemesis, John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), in Los Angeles, in 1965, just after Crane has begun a six-year run as the star of the TV sitcom "Hogan's Heroes." Carpenter, who works with the new videotape technology, is a would-be cool guy in the Deano-Frankie mode. He snaps his fingers in time to music, grins at everyone, and greets spangled strippers in night clubs with leering tag lines. Carpenter becomes Crane's seducer and helpmate: he understands that Crane is bored with his longtime marriage to Anne (Rita Wilson), an intelligent and ...