Thirtysomething men in a state of arrested or regressed development. Is there a sociological phenomenon more over-analyzed in recent cinema? Men who can’t commit, men who can’t grow up, men using every excuse imaginable to justify their inability to function as mature adults. We’re “a generation of men raised by women,” whined Tyler Durden famously in Fight Club, giving a scapegoat to legions of aggro dudes who never got that he wasn’t the hero of that movie. No one can blame you if you want to avoid Momma’s Man on the basis that you don’t really feel like watching yet another young male filmmaker work out his own insecurities on a movie screen rather than a therapist’s chair. But it would be a shame if the fact that it’s such an over-done trope kept you away, because Azazel Jacob’s intimate little indie is such a quietly dazzling film.

The movie’s central character is Mikey, a man in his mid-30s living in southern California with his wife and baby, who stays with his parents in the Tribeca loft in which he grew up during a brief business trip to New York City. On the verge of boarding a plane back home, he suddenly decides to stay on another day. Then another. And another. It soon becomes apparent that Mikey has no intention of going back home, as he spends his days in solitude, poring over the detritus of his younger self stored at his parents’ place, telling them and his office lies about why he’s not leaving, and avoiding increasingly distraught calls from his wife.