Tarnation

TARNATION (2003) - Mar. 21, 2007
Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. This thing starts off badly and just gets worse and worse; it's a baffling, aggravating endurance test which is so aggressively and annoyingly boring, I was seriously considering walking out, which I never do. It's a pretentious mess. It's annoying because there's probably a passable film in here somewhere, but it is completely and utterly obscured by Jonathan Caouette's wildly overactive editing style -- he probably throws in every editing gimmick iMovie is capable of, from multiple split screens to numerous crazy visual filters. Caouette is not a director, and he's not a filmmaker. To call him that would be an insult to filmmakers worldwide; he's just a guy with a cheap camcorder, a computer and an overblown sense of "style." He's a guy who thinks he is making Art (and failing miserably) with no regard for entertainment value or even whether or not his images meld coherently in any way. He is a charlatan and a poseur, and if there's any justice in the world he will never be allowed near a camera again. ZERO STARS