| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

A twisted pastiche of pain, suffering, and narcissistic indulgence.

| Original Score: B+ | May 4, 2005

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 22, 2005

There's no doubting the deep love Caouette feels for his troubled mother, nor his achievement in forging such a rawly emotional film from his own traumatic experiences.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 19, 2005

A soul-baring scrapbook of a film, its audacity surpassed only by its tragedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 24, 2005

Although aggressively unconventional, it's never pretentious.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 21, 2005

An astonishing multimedia diary ... all accompanied by a scrolled family history that is as harrowing to read as a ransom note.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 21, 2005

In making beautiful peace with a difficult past, Caouette has delivered a promising vision of a future.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 10, 2004

Tarnation may not always be pretty, but it's pure, powerful stuff.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Nov 18, 2004

Background is provided by affectless, unemotional words that seem to float on-screen, adding to the sense of dislocation, of fractured fairy tale.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 14, 2004

Mesmerizing.

| Nov 12, 2004

Heartbreaking film.

| Nov 12, 2004

Tinged with nostalgia and flooded with narcissism, this isn't easy to watch. But Caouette's fractured history is imbued with heart-crushing sincerity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 4, 2004

It's just devastating stuff.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2004

Tarnation leaves the viewer in a positive state of mind.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 24, 2004

The mesmerizing, trippy and thoroughly heartbreaking result of two decades' work.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 22, 2004

A tortured, inspired, convulsively beautiful film memoir.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 22, 2004

It transcends the recent trend of self-revelatory documentaries and becomes something rare: art.

| Original Score: A | Oct 21, 2004

It is to be hoped that Mr. Caouette can make many more films of all kinds, but he will probably never again be able to cut to the bone of his existence with such sublime feeling.

| Oct 21, 2004

By all odds, Tarnation should have been an unwatchable, masochistic morass, but Caouette's love for the broken Renee -- which is the true subject of the film -- is awe-inspiring.

Full Review | Oct 19, 2004