'Mamma's Man,' 'Ping Pong Playa,' 'Mister Foe,' 'Love and Honor'

It's a key strength of this subtle, beguiling film that Mikey hasn't been living a seemingly dysfunctional life in California, where he has a lovely wife (Dana Varon) and a baby daughter, a pleasant apartment and a decent job.

The film is a comment on the stresses of fast-changing modern life, with its sense of loss and dislocation that make the security of Mikey's parents' bohemian artists' loft, his beautiful, nurturing mother's tender attentions and his childhood mementos so irresistible a security blanket for Mikey; he keeps postponing his return to California and soon discovers that he can't even step outside his parents' apartment.

Jacobs wrote the role of Mikey especially for Boren, who as a paunchy, unhandsome guy in his 30s fearlessly allows Mikey to seem at times an outsized baby.

But Boren shows us that Mikey is much more than that, and the filmmaker's actual parents, Flo Jacobs, a painter, and Ken Jacobs, an avant-garde filmmaker, emerge as an attractive couple of much sensitivity and intelligence, handling their son's sudden mid-life crisis with concern and restraint.

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.

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Kevin Thomas

"Momma's Man" Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. At the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500.

'Ping Pong Playa' serves up laughs

Yet another comedy about an immature, smack-talking Chinese American NBA wannabe who discovers his inner grown-up through the challenge of a table-tennis tournament? "Ping Pong Playa" breathes fresh life into the tired, bloated sports-comedy formula -- while remaining utterly formulaic. The movie doesn't take its broad, jokey premise terribly far, but it manages to sustain a goofy-sweet comic energy and offers sly observations about assimilation, sibling rivalry and the art of competitive maternal bragging.