"Some time in his early teens Azazel Jacobs did what many kids of that age do: he rebelled by becoming a punk. But, rather than recoil in horror, his parents shook their heads in disappointment that their son would make such a banal and conventional lifestyle choice. “It didn’t allow me to have the punk fantasy,” Jacobs says. “I’m wearing the gear, exactly what you’re supposed to wear. But I couldn’t wholeheartedly enjoy that experience because in the background I have my parents saying: ‘That’s so uniform, so conservative’.” (read more)
Momma Calling
Momma's Man UK release from Diffusion Pictures
this Friday, May 8th
at these theaters-
ICA - London
Chapter - Cardiff
Watershed - Bristol
Broadway - Nottingham
Cornerhouse - Manchester
Showroom - Sheffield
Yorks - Brighton
Roses - Tewkesbury
this Friday, May 8th
at these theaters-
ICA - London
Chapter - Cardiff
Watershed - Bristol
Broadway - Nottingham
Cornerhouse - Manchester
Showroom - Sheffield
Yorks - Brighton
Roses - Tewkesbury
Very Short List
"Momma’s Man — a film-festival favorite by writer-director Azazel Jacobs — takes a twee conceit and spins it into a poignant, funny look at what it’s like trying to grow up (finally!) in one’s thirties. (It’s out on DVD next week.) It’s a modest, minor-key masterpiece. "
(read more)
WNYC
The Year in Film: A Critic’s Roundtable Part 2
For the second part of my critic’s roundtable with Melissa Anderson, film editor of Time Out New York, and A.O. Scott, film critic of The New York Times, we start with a discussion of “Momma’s Man,” Azazel Jacob’s touching micro-indie about a young man caught up in the mysterious gravity of his parent’s life and legacy.
by Nathan Lee
DCist
"Momma's Man is deeply personal, and uncomfortably realistic, filmmaking at its finest."
by Ian Buckwalter
by Ian Buckwalter
Viennale WINNER
Standard VIENNALE Readers' Jury Award
The Award
The Standard Readers’ Prize goes to a film that does not yet have an Austrian film distributor and is particularly recommended to be screened in Austrian cinemas. If the award-winning film consequently finds a distributor, Der Standard supports its film start with free advertising space in its newspaper.
The jury 2008
Jury: Adrian Ortner, Magdalena Pichler, Jörg Rainer, Maria Schimpf and Nadine Zielonke
The winner 2008
The Standard VIENNALE Readers' Jury Award 2007 goes to:
The STANDARD READERS’ JURY PRIZE goes to:
Momma’s Man, Azazel Jacobs, USA 2008
Excerpt from the jury’s decision:
«Momma’s Man» is a film that is both documentary and fictional, a pearl of American Independent Film, [...] an invaluable film that succeeds in being witty and sentimental at the same time.
(read more)
The STANDARD READERS’ JURY PRIZE goes to:
Momma’s Man, Azazel Jacobs, USA 2008
Excerpt from the jury’s decision:
«Momma’s Man» is a film that is both documentary and fictional, a pearl of American Independent Film, [...] an invaluable film that succeeds in being witty and sentimental at the same time.
(read more)
Culture Wars UK
Where do filmmakers come from?
Momma's Man (2008), directed by Azazel JacobsThe Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival
"In a self-indulgent tribute to the world in which he grew up and to which his current career is obviously indebted, Azazel Jacobs’ third feature treads a fine line between alienating and welcoming the audience to his lead characters’ thirty-something life crisis. Set in the New York loft apartment, in which Azazel grew up, Momma’s Man tells the tale of Mikey, whose short visit to his parents’ home is constantly extended for no apparent reason, much to the concern of his parents and the anxious confusion of his wife, waiting in California with their baby girl."
The Oregonian
You Shouldn't Go Home Again: "Momma's Man"
by Stan Hall, Special to The Oregonian Thursday October 23, 2008
"When life becomes overwhelming, we tend to temporarily retreat to something safe, comfortable and less complicated. In Azazel Jacobs' intimate family comedy-drama "Momma's Man," a married new father in his 30s responds to stress by crawling into a childhood memory hole -- the Manhattan loft apartment where he grew up -- and denying the reality of his adult life." (read more)
"When life becomes overwhelming, we tend to temporarily retreat to something safe, comfortable and less complicated. In Azazel Jacobs' intimate family comedy-drama "Momma's Man," a married new father in his 30s responds to stress by crawling into a childhood memory hole -- the Manhattan loft apartment where he grew up -- and denying the reality of his adult life." (read more)
The Portland Phoenix
Viewers uncomfortable watching characters in stasis should keep their antsy asses away from Azazel Jacobs’s Momma’s Man; those more tolerant will be happily sucked in by this lovely cocoon of a movie." (read more)
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Never grow up
Momma's Man is a welcome portrait of the artist as a thumb-sucker
REVIEW Azazel Jacobs' portrait of the artist as a regressive thumb-sucker is a welcome antidote to Hollywood's inane home-for-the-holidays pictures. Jacobs' counterculture parents, the experimental filmmaker Ken and his painter wife Flo, were sporting enough to play Ma and Dad to Mikey (Matt Boren). The slouchy 30-something purposefully misses his flight back to wife and baby in New York, and lands back in the family nest in a deep funk. Momma's Man's delicious comedy derives from Mikey's fruitless conquests of the past: playing through a notebook's worth of high school breakup songs, reading comic books, and, memorably, propping up in bed with his parents to watch Monsieur Verdoux (1947). The mother-son bond veers toward Portnoy's Complaint territory when Momma Flo won't stop asking if Mikey needs anything from the other side of a bathroom door, but elsewhere her gentle prodding strikes just the right homey notes. And after Mikey uses his parents' aging as a cover for his own semi-consciousness, her final, wordless embrace of her son is enough to make you want to call home. Momma's Man is a bleary-eyed nostalgia trip, mindful of the precarious limbo of post-adolescent reflexivity.
The Guardian
Continuing our series celebrating films appearing at the London film festival, Azazel Jacobs traces the genealogy of his film Momma's Man.
(take a look)
(take a look)
The Times (U.K)
"One of several particularly strong American indie films in the festival (see also Medicine for Melancholy and the music documentary Largo), Momma’s Man has already received a raft of positive reviews in the US." (read more)
Time Out London
by David Jenkins
"This intoxicating and brilliant third film from American indie director Azazel Jacobs has wisdom and melancholy bursting from its every frame, and plays like an upside-down ‘Tokyo Story’ with a self-analytical, almost Bressonian ‘lost soul’ at its centre." (read more)
"This intoxicating and brilliant third film from American indie director Azazel Jacobs has wisdom and melancholy bursting from its every frame, and plays like an upside-down ‘Tokyo Story’ with a self-analytical, almost Bressonian ‘lost soul’ at its centre." (read more)
OhMyNews- International
by Howard Schumann
"Living away from parents, having a job, a wife, and children are ingredients that suggest maturity but do not guarantee it. Mikey (Matt Boren), a recently married man in his thirties, comes from California to visit his parents in New York and falls into a psychological paralysis that keeps him from accepting the reality of his adult life.
Shot in the actual loft on Chambers Street in which he grew up, native New York director Azazel Jacobs' extraordinary Momma's Man zeroes in on our inability to let go, complete the past, and move on." (read more)
"Living away from parents, having a job, a wife, and children are ingredients that suggest maturity but do not guarantee it. Mikey (Matt Boren), a recently married man in his thirties, comes from California to visit his parents in New York and falls into a psychological paralysis that keeps him from accepting the reality of his adult life.
Shot in the actual loft on Chambers Street in which he grew up, native New York director Azazel Jacobs' extraordinary Momma's Man zeroes in on our inability to let go, complete the past, and move on." (read more)
Film Comment
By Nathan Lee
"THE KEY LINE OF MOMMA'S MAN IS SCRAWLED ON A CRUMPLED sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper stashed inside an old file box: "What the fuck is your problem?"
Mikey (Matt Boren) has been rifling through a collection of his old high school memorabilia - albums full of stickers and Garbage Pail Kids cards, aborted lyrics to punk anthems - kept by his parents in their Manhattan loft. There's something about this letter, written in resonse to some long forgotten slight, and perhaps about this question, very much relevant just now, that sticks with Mikey. He pins it to a wall. and then he goes back to doing what he was doing - namely, nothing."
read more in the current September/October issue. Order online at filmlinc.com
"THE KEY LINE OF MOMMA'S MAN IS SCRAWLED ON A CRUMPLED sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper stashed inside an old file box: "What the fuck is your problem?"
Mikey (Matt Boren) has been rifling through a collection of his old high school memorabilia - albums full of stickers and Garbage Pail Kids cards, aborted lyrics to punk anthems - kept by his parents in their Manhattan loft. There's something about this letter, written in resonse to some long forgotten slight, and perhaps about this question, very much relevant just now, that sticks with Mikey. He pins it to a wall. and then he goes back to doing what he was doing - namely, nothing."
read more in the current September/October issue. Order online at filmlinc.com
Boston Globe
'Momma's Man' star goes home again
FRAMINGHAM - The neighborhood was the same quiet place he remembered, and the house was the same size and color - but then there was this big boat in the driveway.
"The whole place looks different," said Matt Boren as he drove by his old home for the first time in a decade. "I used to dream about getting out of Framingham when I was a kid, and now I sort of dream about being back." (read more)
Daily Plastic
September 22, 2008 — Podcasts
This edition of the Plastic Podcast features two interviews: Robert Davis talks with writer-director Azazel Jacobs about his new film, Momma's Man, and J. Robert Parks talks to actor and comedian Steve Coogan about his new film, Hamlet 2, among other things.
This edition of the Plastic Podcast features two interviews: Robert Davis talks with writer-director Azazel Jacobs about his new film, Momma's Man, and J. Robert Parks talks to actor and comedian Steve Coogan about his new film, Hamlet 2, among other things.
In 'Momma's Man,' growing up is hard to do
By Ty Burr"Momma's Man" is dedicated to the proposition that in every man's heart lives a homesick little boy, and if he's very unlucky his childhood bedroom is still waiting for him. Complete with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
The last time we saw filmmaker Azazel Jacobs was with 2005's "The GoodTimesKid," a lovely little surrealist-identity-crisis comedy. The new film finds Jacobs bringing it back home in every conceivable way. On the surface, it's a straightforward low-budget tale about a grown man who visits his parents and refuses to leave. Yet deeper, darker currents move through "Momma's Man," eddying around fears of letting go on both sides of the generational divide. The fact that Jacobs has cast his own parents and filmed in the NYC loft in which he grew up only sharpens the film's teeth." (read more)
Variety
Indie fans get their 'Man'
Micro-budget indie nabs N.Y. audiences
By MICHAEL JONESEven as helmer Azazel Jacobs finished his micro-budget indie "Momma's Man," he had his doubts.
"I remember talking with the producers and saying that if nothing happens we'll get it out on DVD on our own."
Now, less than a year after its Sundance preem, "Momma's Man" is the little-film-that-could, winning critical plaudits and grossing an impressive $17,000 on opening day on one screen in New York. On three N.Y. screens in its second week, the pic cumed $26,322. (read More)
Philadelphia Inquierer
Rating: 
"Mikey (Matt Boren), a sad sack visiting the Lower Manhattan loft of his parents, is immobilized by . . . what exactly? Lethargy? Fear? The fact that he is a parent (to a daughter in Los Angeles) but wants to himself remain a child?
"Mikey (Matt Boren), a sad sack visiting the Lower Manhattan loft of his parents, is immobilized by . . . what exactly? Lethargy? Fear? The fact that he is a parent (to a daughter in Los Angeles) but wants to himself remain a child? Momma's Man, insightful and involving, is a shaggy-dog story about Mikey's quarterlife crisis." (read more)
Philadelphia City Paper
RECOMMENDED
In Azazel Jacobs' unsettling comedy, doughy, moon-faced Matt Boren leaves his wife and toddler to visit his parents in New York and finds himself unable to go home. Sleeping in his childhood bed, where his name glows in reflective tape after he turns off the light, he crafts a series of intricate fibs to explain his presence - his flight was overbooked, his mother is sick, his wife is having an affair - but there's no calculation in his deception. He lies without conscience, and seemingly without forethought, as if his mind, his life, has simply been wiped clean. He's so pale he looks as if he might suddenly turn transparent. Jacobs casts his own parents in the corresponding roles, and uses their cluttered downtown loft as the set, but the movie doesn't feel like autobiography. It's too odd and elliptical, slipping sideways whenever you think you've got a grasp on it. Just when Jacobs seems to have settled into a foot-shuffling indie-realist groove, he adds a magic-realist touch straight of Buñuel's Exterminating Angel: As Boren attempts to leave the apartment, he is frozen at the top of the stairs, stuck between the front door and the way out. Jacobs' parents aren't actors, but his father, Ken, is a pioneering experimental filmmaker, and his mother, Flo, has a pinched, downward-sloping face that seems made to convey the melancholy of maternal loss and need. The running joke that she responds to every crisis by offering her son some kind of sustenance (coffee, juice, cereal, etc.) becomes grating and then unnerving: you start to feel that if she mentions one more beverage you're going to scream. But if it's not autobiography, Momma's Man is unfailingly personal. When Boren's wife asks why he's not coming home, he responds with what seems like a non sequitur: "Do you know what it's like to watch your parents getting old?" But the question makes sense for the filmmaker, if not his subject. By filming his own aging parents, he's preserved them forever, which allows him, like his protagonist, to finally bid his childhood goodbye.
Boston Phoenix
StarsViewers uncomfortable watching characters in stasis should keep their antsy asses away from Azazel Jacobs’s Momma’s Man; those more tolerant will be happily sucked in by this lovely cocoon of a movie. Thirtyish Mikey (Matt Boren) was raised by artists (Jacobs’s artist parents, Flo and Ken) in a Tribeca loft (the Jacobses’) filled with esoterica. Having opted for a contrary lifestyle — in California with wife, baby, and corporate job — Mikey stays with mom and dad while on a business trip. For some reason, he can’t leave and reassume his responsibilities back home. What starts as nostalgia (lazing around in briefs, he immerses himself in the ephemera of his youth) turns into a kind of paralysis. Dad looks on with skepticism; mom, compassion shining from her eyes, offers soup (and, movingly, a solution). As played by the fleshy Boren, Mikey is Baby Huey trapped in a story by Gogol. Jacobs films his childhood home with grace and endows it with an air of mystery. 94 minutes | Kendall Square + Embassy
Philadelphia Weekly
B+
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Sept. 19
"Momma’s Man in few ways resembles the work of Jacobs the Elder (whose landmark Star Spangled to Death runs seven mind-melting hours). But aesthetic differences aside, it’s clear talent hasn’t skipped a generation." (read more)
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Sept. 19
"Momma’s Man in few ways resembles the work of Jacobs the Elder (whose landmark Star Spangled to Death runs seven mind-melting hours). But aesthetic differences aside, it’s clear talent hasn’t skipped a generation." (read more)
The Seattle Times
"Momma's Man" is Azazel Jacobs' subtle yet telling drama about a grown man who retreats to his parents' loft for a period of depression and regression.
Movie review 
"Momma's Man," with Matt Boren, Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs, Dana Varon. Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. 94 minutes. Not rated; suitable for mature audiences. Northwest Film Forum.
Very little is spelled out for the audience in Azazel Jacobs' drama "Momma's Man." Yet a discerning viewer can pick up so much about the unspoken dilemma of the film's central character, a 30ish Los Angeles man named Mikey (Matt Boren), just by watching the way he lumbers through the cluttered Manhattan loft in which he grew up. (read more)
LA Daily News
Apparently, you can go home again in 'Momma's Man'
Grown man finds himself consumed by his childhood home in this story that vividly captures the fears of becoming an adult
BY GLENN WHIPP
"In the past movie year, we've been treated to a parade of Peter Pans trying to keep adulthood at bay, but none of these films has captured the fears associated with becoming an adult more than Azazel Jacobs' profoundly moving "Momma's Man."(read more)
LA Times
by Kevin Thomas
"Mastery of tone is everything here, and Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast makes "Momma's Man" a gem."
(read more)
"Mastery of tone is everything here, and Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast makes "Momma's Man" a gem."
(read more)
LA Weekly
Momma's Man: Mikey Likes It
Writer-director Azazel Jacobs' indie Angeleno tries to go home again
By Ella Taylor
"Pudgy, owlish and vague around the edges, Mikey (Matt Boren) looks nothing like the son of an avant-garde filmmaker, let alone one as charismatically rumpled as Mikey's father. Then again, maybe Mikey, a 30-ish Los Angeles resident who's visiting his parents in New York City, looks exactly like the son of a triumphantly marginal artist — he's a passive-aggressive rebel marooned in-flight from the Tribeca bohemia in which he was raised. Stubbornly ordinary and lacking in focus or ambition, Mikey, like many an unconscious mutineer, turns out to be umbilically, helplessly, tragicomically in thrall to home." (read more)The Jewish Journal
Going home again is truly a family affair for filmmaker Azazel Jacobs
LA Times
'Momma's Man' goes home and stays there
By Susan King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
"Among his quirks are a deep connection to the past, so much so that he says he remembers turning 5 and instantly missing being a 4-year-old. Growing up in a cluttered home, he's just as attached to material things and, without a doubt, to the parents who raised him there. That's why he cast them as the parents in "Momma's Man," a Sundance favorite opening Friday." (read more)Entertainment Weekly
by Owen Gleiberman
"Azazel Jacobs, the writer-director of Momma's Man, has done more than make another precious indie family quirkfest; he's created a true vision. Jacobs thrillingly merges his life into fiction by casting his father, the noted experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and artist mother, Flo, as the parents of his depressive-schlump hero — and by shooting nearly the entire film in their ancient Manhattan loft, a supersize hole-in-the-wall that's one of the most spectacularly vivid and eccentric movie sets I've ever seen." (read more)
"Azazel Jacobs, the writer-director of Momma's Man, has done more than make another precious indie family quirkfest; he's created a true vision. Jacobs thrillingly merges his life into fiction by casting his father, the noted experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and artist mother, Flo, as the parents of his depressive-schlump hero — and by shooting nearly the entire film in their ancient Manhattan loft, a supersize hole-in-the-wall that's one of the most spectacularly vivid and eccentric movie sets I've ever seen." (read more)
New York Times
Back to the Womb to Discover Spirits of an Older, Nobler Age
Cluttered with beautiful junk and crammed to the rafters with feeling, “Momma’s Man” is a touchingly true film, part weepie, part comedy, about the agonies of navigating that slippery slope called adulthood. It was written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, a native New Yorker who has set his modestly scaled movie with a heart the size of the Ritz in the same downtown warren where he was raised. Being a child of the avant-garde as well as an A student, he cast his parents, the filmmaker Ken Jacobs and the artist Flo Jacobs, as the puzzled progenitors of his centerpiece, a wayward son of bohemia, Mikey (Matt Boren). (read more)
New York Post
UNRISING SON IS A HOME RUN
by V. A. MusettoRating: 
IT'S time to stop calling Azazel Jacobs a "promising" filmmaker. With "Momma's Man," Jacobs achieves the promise.
The deeply affecting "Momma's Man" goes far inside John Cassavetes territory. Mikey (Matt Boren) visits his doting parents during a business trip to New York, leaving his wife and child back in California. (read more)
New York Sun
'Momma's Man': Who Says You Can Go Home?
By S. JAMES SNYDER"Azazel Jacobs's "Momma's Man" is a family film, but one of the least sentimental variations in history. Despite making its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, it is a decidedly non-Sundance narrative that must have stunned Park City audiences, who might have assumed they were walking into the next "Little Miss Sunshine" when they read the title." (read more)
New York Daily News
4 stars
by Elizabeth Weitzman
"A little miracle, Azazel Jacobs' lovely story of a life lost and found tackles big issues -love, maturity, fulfillment - in deceptively modest fashion." (read more)
Filmcritic.com
4.0 out of 5 Stars
A film review by Chris Cabin"The utterance of the name "Ken Jacobs" might not set off alarms in the casual movie fan's psyche, but to any admirer of the avant garde (or survivor of 1960s Manhattan), you might as well be taking the lord's name in vein." (read more)
Hammer To Nail
I
by Mike Tully
"I first met Azazel Jacobs at the
Independent Film Festival of Boston in the spring of 2006 (back in the Cocaine Angel days). Aza was there with his girlfriend Sara Diaz and The GoodTimesKid, a movie that none of us knew anything about. After casually destroying me at Connect Four in the filmmaker lounge, I decided I’d watch The GoodTimesKid and see if this hotshot board game wizard had skills as a director as well." (read more)
by Mike Tully
"I first met Azazel Jacobs at the
Independent Film Festival of Boston in the spring of 2006 (back in the Cocaine Angel days). Aza was there with his girlfriend Sara Diaz and The GoodTimesKid, a movie that none of us knew anything about. After casually destroying me at Connect Four in the filmmaker lounge, I decided I’d watch The GoodTimesKid and see if this hotshot board game wizard had skills as a director as well." (read more)
New York Press
DON’T TELL MAMA (OR DAD)
Azazel Jacobs candidly shares his family’s quirks in a docudrama that doesn’t fall into the typical self-involved indie trap
"Steven Spielberg says he made Schindler’s List for his mother and Saving Private Ryan for his dad. Jewish-American parental tribute also distinguishes Momma’s Man, the semi-autobiographical film by Azazel Jacobs." (read more)indiewire interview
Please tell us about yourself... What initially attracted you to filmmaking, and how has that interest evolved during your career?
My name is Azazel Jacobs I am 35 years old and made my first film about seventeen years ago. It was a super 8 film documenting the place I was raised, an old best friend and my parents. Very much like Momma's Man. In fact, exactly like it. (read more)Indiewire
Tomb of the Mommy: Azazel Jacobs's "Momma's Man" 
by Michael Koresky
"Considering that Azazel Jacobs, the director of "Momma's Man," is the offspring of American avant-garde filmmaker extraordinaire Ken Jacobs, one would be forgiven for expecting his film to be more experimental and abstract than the seemingly conventional narrative that plays out. Yet buried beneath the poignant clutter of this occasionally familiar stunted-youth-in-life-transition tale is a surprisingly complex, elegantly detailed meditation on creativity and artistic growth." (read more)
by Michael Koresky
"Considering that Azazel Jacobs, the director of "Momma's Man," is the offspring of American avant-garde filmmaker extraordinaire Ken Jacobs, one would be forgiven for expecting his film to be more experimental and abstract than the seemingly conventional narrative that plays out. Yet buried beneath the poignant clutter of this occasionally familiar stunted-youth-in-life-transition tale is a surprisingly complex, elegantly detailed meditation on creativity and artistic growth." (read more)
Village Voice
Childhood In Momma's Man
By J. Hoberman
"Thirtyish guy—bit of a schlub but married, with a newborn baby—comes back from California to visit aging parents in New York and, overtaken by a mysterious lethargy, moves into his tiny childhood room. Momma's Man, directed by Azazel Jacobs from his own screenplay, is one of the sweetest, saddest stories Franz Kafka never wrote." (read more)
IFC.com
Last December, I met filmmaker Azazel Jacobs at a coffee shop just down the street from the Tribeca loft he grew up in, and where his parents — avant-garde cinema icon Ken Jacobs and longtime collaborator Flo — still rent. Though he now lives in L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood, Aza was back in NYC for final tweaking on his third feature, "Momma's Man," before its unveiling at Sundance '08. The reason for our meeting was mostly professional, as Benten Films (a DVD label I run with film blogger Andrew Grant) had fallen in love with Jacobs' previous film, "The GoodTimesKid," starring his real-life girlfriend Sara Diaz, "I'm Going to Explode" writer/director Gerardo Naranjo, and himself. (Benten will release "The GoodTimesKid" in early 2009, so let the shilling stop here). (read more)
The NY Jewish Week
Arrested Development
Azazel Jacobs’ ‘Momma’s Man’ darkens the slacker-film motif to fine effect.
by George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Filmmaker Magazine
Interview by Nick Dawson
"Trying to make it as a director is difficult – and particularly so when your father is one of the most respected filmmakers in his field – however in the last few years Azazel Jacobs has made a name for himself in his own right with a string of individual and resonant films." (read more)
"Trying to make it as a director is difficult – and particularly so when your father is one of the most respected filmmakers in his field – however in the last few years Azazel Jacobs has made a name for himself in his own right with a string of individual and resonant films." (read more)
L Magazine
4 Stars (out of 5)
by Mark Asch
Pudgy, babyfaced Matt Boren is the first guy you’d cast as a husband and father who’s still called “Mikey”, even if you’re having your own folks play his mom ‘n’ pop. Food-is-love Flo Jacobs and absent-minded-professorial Ken Jacobs, parents of Momma’s Man writer-director Azazel, get a close look at extended American adolescence when Mikey, in town for a visit, stays indefinitely in their Tribeca loft (read more)
by Mark Asch
Pudgy, babyfaced Matt Boren is the first guy you’d cast as a husband and father who’s still called “Mikey”, even if you’re having your own folks play his mom ‘n’ pop. Food-is-love Flo Jacobs and absent-minded-professorial Ken Jacobs, parents of Momma’s Man writer-director Azazel, get a close look at extended American adolescence when Mikey, in town for a visit, stays indefinitely in their Tribeca loft (read more)
Salon.com
Portrait of the artist as a fallen angel
By Andrew O’Hehir"I could just come out and tell you that Azazel Jacobs, the 35-year-old writer and director whose third feature "Momma's Man" caused a minor sensation at Sundance last winter, is something special on the American indie-film scene, a highly unusual combination of craft, emotion and integrity. But this is one of those cases where showing is better than telling. Here's what you need to know." (read more)
Time Out New York
5 Stars (out of 6)
"It’s hard not to think of a certain writer-director known for schlubby, full-frontal dudity as you watch Azazel Jacobs’s lo-fi gem; though you won’t find Judd Apatow’s name anywhere in the credits, this indie flick could be seen as a downtown-deadpan answer film to Apatow’s blockbuster beta-male celebrations." (read more)
Author: David Fear
New York Times
Mom-and-Pop Production, Directed by Son
By DENNIS LIMAZAZEL JACOBS’S “Momma’s Man,” a film about a grown son’s fraught homecoming, is also a literal home movie, starring his own parents and shot in the TriBeCa loft where he grew up. When Mr. Jacobs, 35, started writing the script, he was thinking about the familiar indulgences of a return to the nest. “You wake up and there’s coffee waiting, and you ask yourself why you ever left,” he said. But he soon became more interested in the murky flip side to those family comforts: the feeling of regression and disorientation. “Some mornings,” he added, “you wake up and you don’t even know what year it is.” (read more and see TRAILER linked to article)
GreenCine Daily
When BAMcinématek presents The Films of Azazel Jacobs from August 11 through 15, attendees may just find their cinema sense expanded a notch. Jacobs, a tad short of household-word status at this point in his career, should find his reputation growing, post-fest, due to a preview screening (Friday, August 15, at 7pm) of his newest film Momma's Man, which Kino International is releasing theatrically the following week.
(read more)
(read more)
Village Voice
On the Eve of Their Momma's Man Opening, Jacobs Father and Son Talk Shop and Family
By Anthony Kaufman Tuesday, August 5th 2008
By most measures, the films of Azazel Jacobs, screening this week at BAM, are on the offbeat end of the cinema spectrum. From his award-winning short Kirk and Kerry to the melancholic cult feature The GoodTimesKid to his latest, Momma's Man, Jacobs's movies focus on dysfunctional people in a style that is as minimalist and mannered as it is sympathetic and sensitive. (read more)my films
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is showing all my features plus two other films I love - Aug 11th to the 15th..
for more info and tix go here- The Films Of Azazel Jacobs
The GoodTimesKid (2005) 77min
Mon, Aug 11 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
La vie de bohème (1992) 100min
Tue, Aug 12 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
Nobody Needs to Know (2003) 96min
Wed, Aug 13 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
Rude Boy (1980) 133min
Thu, Aug 14 at 6, 9pm
Momma's Man (2008) 94min
Fri, Aug 15 at 7pm
hope to see you all there
best
aza
for more info and tix go here- The Films Of Azazel Jacobs
The GoodTimesKid (2005) 77min
Mon, Aug 11 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
La vie de bohème (1992) 100min
Tue, Aug 12 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
Nobody Needs to Know (2003) 96min
Wed, Aug 13 at 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
Rude Boy (1980) 133min
Thu, Aug 14 at 6, 9pm
Momma's Man (2008) 94min
Fri, Aug 15 at 7pm
hope to see you all there
best
aza
press release
KINO INTERNATIONAL OPENS AZAZEL JACOBS’ MOMMA’S MAN (2008) ON AUGUST 22 AT THE ANGELIKA FILM CENTER IN NYC
Independent and classic film distributor Kino International has acquired US rights to writer/director Azazel Jacobs' MOMMA'S MAN, one of the most acclaimed films of this year's Sundance Film Festival. Slated to premiere August 22 at New York's Angelika Film Center and other local theatres, MOMMA'S MAN will open in major US markets throughout the fall.
Cited by Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman as "a beautiful, wise, poker-faced comedy of discombobulation that does nothing less than re-invent – and purify – that Sundance staple, the quirky family drama," MOMMA'S MAN chronicles the increasingly anxious dilemma of Mikey (Matt Boren), a young husband and father who upon a visit to his parents' labyrinthine lower Manhattan loft, finds himself emotionally stuck, immersed in childhood memorabilia and literally unable to get back on a plane to his life in Los Angeles.
Mikey's mother and father are played by the director's real-life parents (venerable avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife Flo), whose alternating tenderness and exasperation ups the film's emotional ante. Filmed in the couple’s long-time Tribeca loft, the main set in MOMMA’S MAN is adorned with decades of real-life bric-a-brac and cinematic ephemera – enhancing the film’s layered realism.
As Mikey attempts to resurrect old local buddies (at least one as hair-raisingly adrift as he), dodge his wife's angry voicemail messages and defuse parental interrogations, his life builds to a darkly comic pitch reminiscent of Jacobs' fellow 'downtown' auteur Jim Jarmusch.
The New York Times' Manohla Dargis wrote from Sundance that "the film beautifully combines the idioms of independent fiction narrative with the personal expressiveness of the avant-garde for a work of surprising emotional and structural complexity. This is independent cinema defined."
MOMMA'S MAN also represents a re-teaming of producers Alex Orlovsky, Hunter Gray and executive producer Paul Mezey who collaborated on 2006's acclaimed Half Nelson, which earned a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Ryan Gosling. Director Azazel Jacobs' previous feature The GoodTimesKid and numerous short films have played various international film festivals and will be featured in a weeklong retrospective at Brooklyn's BAM Rose Cinemas August 10-15.
Kino International's recent theatrical releases include Kelly Reichardt's acclaimed Old Joy, Pascale Ferran's Cesar-winning Lady Chatterley, Joseph Cedar's Oscar-nominated Beaufort and David Volach's My Father My Lord.
Please, contact Rodrigo Brandao at Rodrigo@kino.com to R.S.V.P. to the following press screenings:
MOMMA’S MAN (PRESS SCREENING):
Wednesday, July 9, at 6PM – Review II
Thursday, July 24, at 8PM – Review I
Tuesday, August 5, at 8PM – Review I
Magno Screening Room
729 7th Ave., 2nd Fl, at 48th St
In English – 94 minutes
KINO.com
Independent and classic film distributor Kino International has acquired US rights to writer/director Azazel Jacobs' MOMMA'S MAN, one of the most acclaimed films of this year's Sundance Film Festival. Slated to premiere August 22 at New York's Angelika Film Center and other local theatres, MOMMA'S MAN will open in major US markets throughout the fall.
Cited by Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman as "a beautiful, wise, poker-faced comedy of discombobulation that does nothing less than re-invent – and purify – that Sundance staple, the quirky family drama," MOMMA'S MAN chronicles the increasingly anxious dilemma of Mikey (Matt Boren), a young husband and father who upon a visit to his parents' labyrinthine lower Manhattan loft, finds himself emotionally stuck, immersed in childhood memorabilia and literally unable to get back on a plane to his life in Los Angeles.
Mikey's mother and father are played by the director's real-life parents (venerable avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife Flo), whose alternating tenderness and exasperation ups the film's emotional ante. Filmed in the couple’s long-time Tribeca loft, the main set in MOMMA’S MAN is adorned with decades of real-life bric-a-brac and cinematic ephemera – enhancing the film’s layered realism.
As Mikey attempts to resurrect old local buddies (at least one as hair-raisingly adrift as he), dodge his wife's angry voicemail messages and defuse parental interrogations, his life builds to a darkly comic pitch reminiscent of Jacobs' fellow 'downtown' auteur Jim Jarmusch.
The New York Times' Manohla Dargis wrote from Sundance that "the film beautifully combines the idioms of independent fiction narrative with the personal expressiveness of the avant-garde for a work of surprising emotional and structural complexity. This is independent cinema defined."
MOMMA'S MAN also represents a re-teaming of producers Alex Orlovsky, Hunter Gray and executive producer Paul Mezey who collaborated on 2006's acclaimed Half Nelson, which earned a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for Ryan Gosling. Director Azazel Jacobs' previous feature The GoodTimesKid and numerous short films have played various international film festivals and will be featured in a weeklong retrospective at Brooklyn's BAM Rose Cinemas August 10-15.
Kino International's recent theatrical releases include Kelly Reichardt's acclaimed Old Joy, Pascale Ferran's Cesar-winning Lady Chatterley, Joseph Cedar's Oscar-nominated Beaufort and David Volach's My Father My Lord.
Please, contact Rodrigo Brandao at Rodrigo@kino.com
MOMMA’S MAN (PRESS SCREENING):
Wednesday, July 9, at 6PM – Review II
Thursday, July 24, at 8PM – Review I
Tuesday, August 5, at 8PM – Review I
Magno Screening Room
729 7th Ave., 2nd Fl, at 48th St
In English – 94 minutes
KINO.com
The Stranger
Momma's Man
United States, 2008 | 94 min. | Dir. Azazel Jacobs
"Part of the fun of the tightly wound family drama is knowing how everyone is related. Middle-aged Mikey is visiting his folks in New York City when he finds himself unable to return to his wife and child in California. The film’s mom and dad are played by the director’s actual parents—his father, Ken Jacobs, being one of the leading luminaries of American experimental film. The small drama is perfectly tuned all on its own, but you can’t help enjoying the delicious—and Oedipal—irony of how, in a drama about a child who’s unable to leave the nest, the director is trapping his iconoclastic father in a plain old narrative film."
The Stranger
Warm
"Momma's Man": Warm Moods
By Nika Bohinc
The first image we see in Azazel Jacobs' Momma's Man is of two hands clinging to each other. The next shot reveals that the two hands being united in this tight shake belong to a mother and her grown-up son, sitting at the family table. While the figure of the father, observing the scene from the side, appears in the background, we smile for the first time, and both the story and the atmosphere of the film are set.
IndieLisboa!
Distribution Award
MOMMA´S MAN, Azazel Jacobs, fic., USA, 2008, 98`
FIPRESCI Award
MOMMA´S MAN, Azazel Jacobs, fic., USA, 2008, 98`
(read)
Visit Films
Visit Films has acquired international rights to Azazel Jacob’s new film Momma’s Man. The Company’s partners Ryan Kampe & Sylvain Tron announced the deal following negotiations with the film’s producers. Visit Films will premiere Momma’s Man at the Marché du Film during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival for international buyers. Momma’s Man has recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, and New Directors/New Films program and is scheduled to screen at many more festivals throughout the world in the upcoming months. THINKFilm acquired domestic rights earlier in the year.
Kampe and Tron said in a statement “This film represents the evolution of current American independent cinema. It has such a strong footing in classic cinema and yet feels so fresh and daring. We are extremely pleased to be working with Aza and the entire team. For us, this project is the exact type of film that we want to bring to the marketplace and truly believe that buyers will have the same incredible reaction that critics, programmers and audiences have had so far.”
In this warm, witty and wise comedy, 30-something Mikey (Matt Boren) comes to New York on a business trip and stays in his parents’ downtown loft. When his consulting job is finished, instead of returning home to his wife and newborn, Mikey finds an excuse to stay on. And on.
Momma’s Man is written and directed by Azazel Jacobs (The Good Times Kid) produced by Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky, executive produced by Paul Mezey and Tyler Brodie, with cinematography by Tobias Datum, editing by Darrin Navarro, music composed by Mandy Hoffman and music supervision by Joe Rudge. The film stars Azazel Jacob’s real-life parents Flo and Ken Jacobs, along with Matt Boren, Richard Edson, Dana Varon, Nan Archilesi, Eleanor Hutchins and Piero Arcilesi.
Visit Films is an independent film production and sales company based in New York whose mission is to create, produce, and sell unique and interesting independent American and international films. Working with talented filmmakers, Visit develops and produces films that reimagine genres and styles. The Company will be announcing its full Cannes lineup shortly and has been involved in the international and domestic sales of a number of films including Hannah Takes The Stairs, Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America, Choking Man, and Arranged. The Company’s upcoming production slate includes Sundance short filmmaker Fellipe Barbosa’s feature debut The Wanderers and southern-gothic feature The Good Forest.
GreenCine Daily
ND/NF Dispatch. 2.
Following up on his first dispatch, David D'Arcy looks back on one of the highlights of the just-wrapped series. Now that New Directors / New Films, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, has come to an end, we can see that a few first features were stand-outs. One which showed the hand of a promising new talent was Momma's Man, by Azazel Jacobs, son of the veteran independent filmmaker Ken Jacobs.
(read more)
Time Out NY
Time Out New York / Issue 652 : Mar 27–Apr 2, 2008
Home movie
A new film looks at how, for some New Yorkers, their own parents make the perfect roommates.
Homecomings can be dangerous. The free laundry service, the perpetually stocked refrigerator: Creature comforts for the stomach and the soul are in unending supply. It’s a mighty temptation, as filmmaker Azazel Jacobs discovered during a visit with his folks. “One morning I found food and coffee waiting for me. And I thought, Hey, why did I leave this? I thought it was funny, and I started toying around with that idea.”
That moment grew into Momma’s Man, a surprisingly moving portrait of a Californian named Mikey (Matt Boren) who puts his uninspiring job—and his wife and baby—on hold so he can live with the New Yorker parents whose eccentricities used to embarrass him. (read more)NY Times
Big Ideas in Deceptively Small Packages
"“Momma’s Man” is one of the most unsettling and lyrical depictions of what has lately become an inescapable topic in American movies: the refusal or inability of grown men to act their age." (read more)
Village Voice
New Directors/New Films Brings the New Class
Old New York, the ghosts of Raleigh, and queer debuts mark an exceptional ND/NF
by Nathan Lee
March 25th, 2008 12:00 AM
"Momma's Man finds Azazel Jacobs, son of legendary avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, contemplating a filial funk. Set almost entirely in the senior Jacobs's ramshackle Tribeca loft—sine qua non of old-school Manhattan bohemia—the movie hangs out with Azazel surrogate Mickey (Matt Boren) as he delays and delays and delays a flight home to California to rejoin his anxious wife and young daughter." (read more)
"Momma's Man finds Azazel Jacobs, son of legendary avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, contemplating a filial funk. Set almost entirely in the senior Jacobs's ramshackle Tribeca loft—sine qua non of old-school Manhattan bohemia—the movie hangs out with Azazel surrogate Mickey (Matt Boren) as he delays and delays and delays a flight home to California to rejoin his anxious wife and young daughter." (read more)
The NY SUN
The Nest Egg Comes Home To Roost |
Movies | Review of: Momma's Man |
By S. JAMES SNYDER
March 24, 2008
This year's New Directors/ New Films program — the annual survey of emerging artists presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art — is chock-full of unusual stories and unlikable heroes. In keeping with the history of the series, it is a proudly defiant break from Hollywood conventions by a group of filmmakers more interested in pushing the envelope than in reaching the mainstream.
But cinephiles will have to wait until Friday to catch what may be the series's most captivating, inscrutable, and jarring entry: "Momma's Man" (read more)
SLANT.com
Momma's Man
n actual home movie, shot in the director's childhood home with his parents playing themselves, Momma's Man, completely unshakeable, is implicitly nostalgic, about a nostalgic man, but only because it has such an unsentimental commitment to the gap between past and present: You can never get to the past, but it can always get to you. (read more)
press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“MOMMA’S MAN”
Acquired by THINKFilm
New York, March 4, 2008 – THINKFilm has acquired North American rights to MOMMA’S MAN from writer/director Azazel Jacobs, a feature that recently showed at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The deal was announced by the company’s Theatrical Division Head, Mark Urman, who plans to release the film in exclusive engagements later this year. The film will have its New York premiere presentation at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Friday March 28th as part of the New Directors/New Films series.
MOMMA’S MAN is about Mikey (Matt Boren), a young man who comes to New York on a business trip and stays in his parents’ downtown loft. When his consulting job is finished, instead of returning home to his wife and newborn, Mikey finds an excuse to stay on. And on. Holed up in his childhood bedroom, Mikey prefers life before responsibilities to life the way it is. But his parents’ growing unease, and the mounting pressure from his own family, threatens his temporary break from reality.
MOMMA’S MAN represents a re-teaming of THINKFilm and producers Alex Orlovsky, Hunter Gray, and executive producer Paul Mezey, all of whom served in the same capacity on THINKFilm’s 2006 specialty smash “Half Nelson.”
About the acquisition, Urman says, “MOMMA’S MAN is a wise, witty, and beautifully executed film that speaks to both the adult and the child in all of us. Aza Jacobs has made an extremely accomplished feature and, more importantly, it’s a film none of us has ever seen before.”
In a statement from producers Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky, and executive producer Paul Mezey: “We are delighted to be working with ThinkFilm and Mark Urman again. Our experience with ‘Half Nelson’ showed us they are one of the most creative and dedicated distributors in the business. We know that MOMMA’s MAN is in great hands.”
MOMMA’s MAN is written and directed by Azazel Jacobs (“The GoodTimesKid”), produced by Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky, executive produced by Paul Mezey and Tyler Brodie, with cinematography by Tobias Datum, editing by Darrin Navarro, music composed by Mandy Hoffman and music supervision by Joe Rudge. The film stars Azazel Jacob’s real-life parents Flo and Ken Jacobs, along with Matt Boren, Richard Edson, Dana Varon, Nan Archilesi, Eleanor Hutchins and Piero Arcilesi. For more information, please visit www.mommasman.com.
The deal was negotiated by Urman, Randy Manis, THINKFilm Executive Vice President of Acquisitions & Business Affairs, and Ben Stambler, THINKFilm Vice President of Acquisitions, and Cinetic Media represented the filmmakers.
About THINKFilm
THINKFilm is a privately held production and distribution company founded in September 2001 that is now a division of David Bergstein’s Capitol Films; Bergstein also serves as the company’s Chairman. With seven Academy Award nominations in six years, “Taxi to the Dark Side” recently won Best Documentary Feature. Ryan Gosling’s 2006 Oscar nomination for Best Actor in “Half Nelson” and a 2005 Best Documentary Feature Oscar win for “Born Into Brothels” highlight an Oscar list that also includes nominations for “Spellbound,” “The Story of the Weeping Camel,” “Murderball,” and “War/Dance.” THINKFilm’s current and forthcoming releases include: Daniele Luchetti’s “My Brother Is An Only Child” on March 28th; Helen Hunt’s “Then She Found Me” with Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick on April 25th; and “The Tracey Fragments” starring Oscar-nominee Ellen Page on May 9th. For more information, please visit www.thinkfilmcompany.com.
# # #
“MOMMA’S MAN”
Acquired by THINKFilm
New York, March 4, 2008 – THINKFilm has acquired North American rights to MOMMA’S MAN from writer/director Azazel Jacobs, a feature that recently showed at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The deal was announced by the company’s Theatrical Division Head, Mark Urman, who plans to release the film in exclusive engagements later this year. The film will have its New York premiere presentation at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Friday March 28th as part of the New Directors/New Films series.
MOMMA’S MAN is about Mikey (Matt Boren), a young man who comes to New York on a business trip and stays in his parents’ downtown loft. When his consulting job is finished, instead of returning home to his wife and newborn, Mikey finds an excuse to stay on. And on. Holed up in his childhood bedroom, Mikey prefers life before responsibilities to life the way it is. But his parents’ growing unease, and the mounting pressure from his own family, threatens his temporary break from reality.
MOMMA’S MAN represents a re-teaming of THINKFilm and producers Alex Orlovsky, Hunter Gray, and executive producer Paul Mezey, all of whom served in the same capacity on THINKFilm’s 2006 specialty smash “Half Nelson.”
About the acquisition, Urman says, “MOMMA’S MAN is a wise, witty, and beautifully executed film that speaks to both the adult and the child in all of us. Aza Jacobs has made an extremely accomplished feature and, more importantly, it’s a film none of us has ever seen before.”
In a statement from producers Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky, and executive producer Paul Mezey: “We are delighted to be working with ThinkFilm and Mark Urman again. Our experience with ‘Half Nelson’ showed us they are one of the most creative and dedicated distributors in the business. We know that MOMMA’s MAN is in great hands.”
MOMMA’s MAN is written and directed by Azazel Jacobs (“The GoodTimesKid”), produced by Hunter Gray and Alex Orlovsky, executive produced by Paul Mezey and Tyler Brodie, with cinematography by Tobias Datum, editing by Darrin Navarro, music composed by Mandy Hoffman and music supervision by Joe Rudge. The film stars Azazel Jacob’s real-life parents Flo and Ken Jacobs, along with Matt Boren, Richard Edson, Dana Varon, Nan Archilesi, Eleanor Hutchins and Piero Arcilesi. For more information, please visit www.mommasman.com.
The deal was negotiated by Urman, Randy Manis, THINKFilm Executive Vice President of Acquisitions & Business Affairs, and Ben Stambler, THINKFilm Vice President of Acquisitions, and Cinetic Media represented the filmmakers.
About THINKFilm
THINKFilm is a privately held production and distribution company founded in September 2001 that is now a division of David Bergstein’s Capitol Films; Bergstein also serves as the company’s Chairman. With seven Academy Award nominations in six years, “Taxi to the Dark Side” recently won Best Documentary Feature. Ryan Gosling’s 2006 Oscar nomination for Best Actor in “Half Nelson” and a 2005 Best Documentary Feature Oscar win for “Born Into Brothels” highlight an Oscar list that also includes nominations for “Spellbound,” “The Story of the Weeping Camel,” “Murderball,” and “War/Dance.” THINKFilm’s current and forthcoming releases include: Daniele Luchetti’s “My Brother Is An Only Child” on March 28th; Helen Hunt’s “Then She Found Me” with Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick on April 25th; and “The Tracey Fragments” starring Oscar-nominee Ellen Page on May 9th. For more information, please visit www.thinkfilmcompany.com.
# # #
Film Comment
"Momma's Man is a mind-bogglingly personal work, ahybridization of avant-garde autobiographical/home-movie elements with a familiar indie narrative trope: the return-to-the-nest syndrome." - Amy Taubin
full article in March/April issue of Film Comment
full article in March/April issue of Film Comment
NY Times -by Manohla Dargis
Azazel Jacobs’s conceptually bold, emotionally naked “Momma’s Man” has a similarly deep-rooted sense of place, in this case downtown Manhattan. A portrait of a young man at very loose ends — Matt Boren as Mikey — the film is at once a valentine to the bohemia of a lost New York and to Mr. Jacobs’s parents, the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife, Flo, who play Mikey’s tenderly loving mother and father. (read more)
Entertainment Weekly - by Owen Gleiberman
I go to Sundance looking for good films. What I'm really out to discover, though, isn't just a film but a voice — the sound of a filmmaker speaking to me, and doing it in a way I've never heard before. I'm looking for a vision.
I found it this year when I saw Momma's Man, a beautiful, wise, shaggy, poker-faced comedy of discombobulation that does nothing less than re-invent — and purify — that Sundance staple, the quirky, angst-ridden family drama. (read more)
I found it this year when I saw Momma's Man, a beautiful, wise, shaggy, poker-faced comedy of discombobulation that does nothing less than re-invent — and purify — that Sundance staple, the quirky, angst-ridden family drama. (read more)
Cinematical - by Kim Voynar
For the first half or so of Momma's Man, I wasn't sure I was going to like the film all that much. It is about a guy named Mikey, who, while on a holiday trip to visit his parents in New York, decides not to return home to his wife and infant daughter. Admittedly, my tolerance for watching another "man who can't or won't grow up" film is fairly low, but I'd heard such good things about this film that I decided to stick it out, and I'm glad I did. (read more)
NY MAGAZINE
‘Momma's Man’ Director Azazel Jacobs on Sundance, Real Estate, and Living With His Parents (read more)
LA Times - by Mark Olsen
'Momma's Man' director in prime form
Another late-festival discovery with the Wednesday-night screening of “Momma’s Man.” Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs, son of the legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, has crafted a beautifully understated film about love, maturity and the recent man-boy syndrome. (read more)
Another late-festival discovery with the Wednesday-night screening of “Momma’s Man.” Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs, son of the legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, has crafted a beautifully understated film about love, maturity and the recent man-boy syndrome. (read more)
IndieWire - by Rob Nelson
PARK CITY '08 REVIEW | Kicking and Screaming: Azazel Jacobs' "Momma's Man"
The year's prevailing Sundance theme--young males kicking and screaming their way into acceptance of adult duties and/or downward mobility--finds one of its fullest expressions in "Momma's Man," director Azazel Jacobs's exceptionally tender, funny, and poignant New York indie (read more)
The year's prevailing Sundance theme--young males kicking and screaming their way into acceptance of adult duties and/or downward mobility--finds one of its fullest expressions in "Momma's Man," director Azazel Jacobs's exceptionally tender, funny, and poignant New York indie (read more)
IndieWire blog - by Michael Tully
The Best Film of Sundance 2008
It is five o'clock, nearly six hours since I finished watching Azazel Jacobs' Momma's Man, and I am still on the verge of a major breakdown. About halfway through the movie, tears began streaming down my cheeks, and they continued (read more)
Rolling Stone - by Peter Travers
Momma's Man —a California husband and father moves back in with mom and dad in New York as writer-director Azazel Jacobs examines grave issues with laughs that stick in the throat. (read more)
Salon.com - by Andrew O'Hehir
NARRATIVE GRAND PRIZE: "Momma's Man" (writer and director: Azazel Jacobs) This deceptively simple, marvelously filmed and profoundly affecting movie is first and foremost a love letter from director Jacobs to his parents, New York experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and painter Flo Jacobs. The senior Jacobses still live in (read more)
Screen Daily by Mike Goodridge
Azazel Jacobs' highly personal Momma's Man was a major discovery at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Artfully tracking the internal breakdown of a thirtysomething man, the film is both lyrical (read more)
Variety - by Scott Foundas
Thomas Wolfe's immortal words about the impossibility of homecomings loom large over "Momma's Man," writer-director Azazel Jacobs' wryly comic, sometimes heartbreaking and altogether original film about a thirtysomething Angeleno who pays a visit to his aging New York parents and finds himself unwilling or unable to leave. (read more)
The Village Voice/ LA Weekly - by Scott Foundas
Two of the best films at Sundance 2008 expressed subtle nostalgia for literally and figuratively extinct stretches of lower Manhattan. Shot almost entirely in the Chambers Street loft of his father, the legendary avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs, Azazel Jacob’s delightful Momma’s Man consecrates a bohemian lower (read more)
Spout.com by Karina Longworth
When a filmmaker casts his own parents as parents in a film, which he shoots in his childhood home, about an adult and his relationship to his parents upon returning to his childhood home, you’d expect (or maybe fear) that the result would be meta-personal to the point of solipsism. But what’s really surprising (read more)
Il Manifesto - by Christina Piccino
Mickey è un trentenne, vive a Los Angeles con la moglie e la figlioletta di qualche mese, non è particolarmente sexy né brillante, anzi è un po' goffo e parla poco di sé, del suo lavoro, di cosa gli piacerebbe fare... (read more)
Newsweek- By David Ansen
The Spectrum section is often looked at as an "also-ran" segment for those movies that didn't make the competition cut, but often you'll find better movies there than in the more high-profile divisions. Such was the case with the deceptively unassuming "Mamma's Man," a funny, poignant study (read more)
San Francisco Bay Guardian= Fick's Sundance picks
Filmed with director Azazel Jacobs's real parents in their real home, this is a throwback to the great films that Sundance showcased in the early 1990s. (read more)
HAMMER TO NAIL - Michael Tully
With Momma’s Man, Azazel Jacobs has shattered the promise of his wildly impressive The GoodTimesKid and delivered a statement of personal artistic expression so profound and moving that I am still holding back tears days after having seen it. While Jacobs’ film (read more)
Indiewire "PARK CITY '08 DISPATCH | Name Actors Not Needed: "Baghead," "Ballast," "Momma's Man" Shine in Park City"
Along with "Ballast," another intimate indie here at Sundance featuring non-professional actors -- an intimate look at family dynamics -- and a setting that also doubles as a main character is Azazel Jacobs' excellent "Momma's Man," which tells the story of (read more)
The Wind In The Trees
MOMMA’S MAN (Azazel Jacobs, USA)
It’s no slight to say that this unusual, achingly moving film feels like a throwback. To me it has the timeless feel of a lost indie classic from a previous decade, a hidden gem like Jon Jost’s Bell Diamond or Jim McBride’s David Holtzman’s Diary. Not that it’s copying anything in particular; in fact, despite the fact that it’s made by the son of one of America’s great experimental filmmakers it also seems strangely sui generis, which is a rare thing these days in any medium. (read more)
It’s no slight to say that this unusual, achingly moving film feels like a throwback. To me it has the timeless feel of a lost indie classic from a previous decade, a hidden gem like Jon Jost’s Bell Diamond or Jim McBride’s David Holtzman’s Diary. Not that it’s copying anything in particular; in fact, despite the fact that it’s made by the son of one of America’s great experimental filmmakers it also seems strangely sui generis, which is a rare thing these days in any medium. (read more)
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Fri, Dec 19, 2008