Strong reviews here for Momma's Man, Azazel Jacobs' touching film about a thirtysomething who comes to New York for a business trip, stays with his parents, then extends his stay indefinitely rather than returning home to his wife, young daughter and dreary office job. He finally goes home at the end, but it's not the narrative that I found so beautiful. It was the cinematography - the light coming through the windows of the filmmaker's real-life parents Flo and Ken Jacobs' Tribeca loft, the slow moving shots of the thirtysomething stuck on the A train making his way to JFK, the silent, troubled, understated expressions on the parents' faces as they watch their son struggle with his life.
Strange timing watching this movie just as we're expecting our first child. I have absolutely no feelings of running away from the situation we're about to get ourselves into. I cannot wait for the challenges that are coming. In fact that was the one thing about the film that didn't quite work for me. Jacobs' "protagonist" is paralyzed by responsibility, and fumbles around his parents' loft nostalgically reading old comic books and playing homemade punk tunes on a broken jr-sized guitar. But this gets old quickly. I found myself thinking "get your act together and go home to your young family" even as I was mesmerized by the the camera following him around as he lingered in the apartment. Worth a look.
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