WIld Tigers I Have Known (2006)

"Wild Tigers I Have Known," Cam Archer's visually striking but somewhat self-indulgent debut, is an abstract and meandering portrayal of teen angst and burgeoning sexuality. Its youthful protagonist, Logan (Malcolm Stumpf), seems perpetually caught between a daydream and and the harsh, uncaring real world.

 Sounds kind of like Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth." Except that movie actually had substance. Oh well. This movie at least looks pretty, and art-chic-happy film students might find more to love in the film than I did.

   13-year-old Logan is lonesome soul, given to walks on the beach and recording himself going on a abstract tangents. He also is in the midst of discovering his sexuality (gay as a maypole) while harboring a crush on Rodeo Walker (Patrick White), the most popular boy in school.

The Gift (2000)

Sam Raimi avoids the camp of the "Evil Dead" trilogy to deliver some serious scares in "The Gift," a Southern-Gothic ESP thriller that stars Cate Blanchett in the role of Annie, a psychic living in a small town.

   When local flake Jessica King (Katie Holmes) gets murdered, Annie's sixth sense acts up, leading the authorities to one man: resident wife-beater and town redneck Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). Of course, Donnie's not the one who done it, and with her power under scrutiny, Annie must find the real killer before she, too, becomes a victim.

   The strength of this movie is that it avoids the pitfalls of modern horror films. First of all, Annie isn't the usual ditzy, flaky, slutty heroine, who along with her group of dumb friends has a total IQ of 50. She behaves in an admirable and most of all, INTELLIGENT way.