Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)

65% of critics liked it
(23 reviews)
55% of users liked it
(4,277 ratings)

A soft-spoken, thirteen-year old dreamer enters into a tentative friendship with a decidedly older and more popular boy in director Cam Archer's compassionate coming of age drama. Logan is an adolescent boy who just doesn't seem to fit in. Though the majority of the kids in his school view Logan as… More A soft-spoken, thirteen-year old dreamer enters into a tentative friendship with a decidedly older and more popular boy in director Cam Archer's compassionate coming of age drama. Logan is an adolescent boy who just doesn't seem to fit in. Though the majority of the kids in his school view Logan as an outcast, cool older kid Rodeo Walker is one of the few students in the school who don't seem to go out of their way to make Logan's life miserable. As Logan begins to get in touch with his sexuality and a strange bond forms between he and Rodeo, the newly empowered Logan soon begins to take on the persona of Leah, an assured and seductive girl who seems to possess the self-confidence that has long been bullied out of her male alter ego. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 21 min.
Directed By: Cam Archer
Genres: Drama

In Theaters: Mar 2, 2007 Wide
On DVD: Jul 10, 2007
Studio: IFC Films

Critic Reviews

Ed Gonzalez, Los Angeles Times
This is lyricism at its most extreme, at once gripping and off-putting because Archer views his characters as if he were gawking at them through the bars of a cage.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
[Director] Archer isn't necessarily taking us anywhere new, but his movie's rapture is beautiful inside and out.
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
The filmmaker, Cam Archer, seems to be trying for a mood of hazy self-pity, which he achieves just enough to make you wish he'd get over it.
John Anderson, Newsday
Young writer-director Cam Archer uses disjointed imagery, textures and clashing sound to create something seamlessly odd and poignantly pubescent.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
Cam Archer is a 24-year-old with a future. At least that's the impression given by his first feature, Wild Tigers I Have Known, which he wrote and directed.
Stephen Holden, New York Times
The moment at the dawn of adolescence when hormones and daydreams swirl into a heady fog of confusion is poetically evoked in Wild Tigers I Have Known.
Karina Longworth, Cinematical
The movie wears its ancestors on its sleeve -- Tarnation and My Own Private Idaho, sure, but also Kenneth Anger, Warhol, Harmony Korine.
MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher
A vague, disjointed daydream passing for a film...
Don Willmott, Filmcritic.com
Beautifully, I mean really beautifully, shot
Eric D. Snider, EricDSnider.com
If you allow yourself to be immersed in its often beautiful images and its reflective, ethereal atmosphere, it can be a memorable experience.
Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
Totally twee (which is to say, completely annoying), but Cam Archer seems to understand his talent as he does his main character: a work-in-progress.
John Hartl, Seattle Times
Wild Tigers I Have Known studiously avoids the clichés of the genre. It's also exasperatingly inconclusive. Its dreamy, enigmatic characters often fail to engage.
Brian Orndorf, eFilmCritic.com
Archer hypothesizes that the junior high boner is the first step toward a lifetime of heartache and peer humiliation, and his argument is a vivid one.
Frank Ochieng, Movie Eye
There's just not enough psychological mustard to cover this earnest hotdog-of-a-movie about a male loner's breakout infatuation with the studmuffin of his wildest dreams.
Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
While there's something admirable in [director] Archer's attempt at making an ambient song of the self out of the protagonist's search for sexual identity (along with some heavily metaphorical mountain-lion attacks), the result is empty.
Pam Grady, Reel.com
There is talent on display here, but it is ill-used, and that makes Wild Tigers I Have Known a frustrating experience.
Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide
First-time feature filmmaker Cam Archer turns what might have been an exercise in salaciousness into a stylish visual poem about desire and adolescent alienation.