Wild Tigers I Have Known 2006

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: 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. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Wild Tigers I Have Known studiously avoids the cliches of the genre. It's also exasperatingly inconclusive. Its dreamy, enigmatic characters often fail to engage. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: [Director] Archer isn't necessarily taking us anywhere new, but his movie's rapture is beautiful inside and out. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Young writer-director Cam Archer uses disjointed imagery, textures and clashing sound to create something seamlessly odd and poignantly pubescent. Read more

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. Read more

Time Out: Dreamlike first feature by [Cam] Archer -- short-form auteur of the queer teen crush -- in which a sensitive 13-year-old loner nurses an infatuation for an older boy. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: An impressive declaration of talent that nonetheless gets a little drunk and disorderly at the trough of High Art. Read more