The Wedding Banquet (2025)

We quite liked this updated remake of the 1993 Ang Lee movie, which I saw when it was new. In both versions, a gay couple (Chris and Min played here by Bowen Yang and Han-Gi Chan, respectively) plan a wedding of one of them to a woman to satisfy his traditional parents. In this version, Chris and Min's best friends are a lesbian couple played by Lily Gladstone as Lee and Kelly Marie Tran as Angela, who need money for IVF and Chris and Min agree to pay for it. Youn Yu-jung is Min's mother and Joan Chen is Angela's. In the original, the woman is a single straight woman needing a green card.

Director Andrew Ahn co-wrote the script with James Schamus, who co-wrote the original screenplay with Lee and another writer.

The soundtrack by Jay Wadley doesn't seem to be available online, but there's a long list of songs, some of which are in this playlist.

Interesting trivia: Chen was considered to play the woman needing a green card in the original.

Yang and Ahn were last blogged for Fire Island, Gladstone for her Oscar-winning performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, Tran for Raya and the Last Dragon, Youn for her Oscar-winning turn in Minari, Chen for Didi, Schamus for Indignation, and Wadley for We Grown Now (he also scored Fire Island). This is Chan's second feature after a few TV series.

 

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are united in their appreciation, averaging 86 and 84%. We rented it on June 24.

Ex-Husbands (2023)

I've long been a fan of Griffin Dunne, which led us to this dramedy about a man, mourning the end of his marriage, who crashes his son's bachelor party in Mexico. I think Jack and I liked it? WE saw it over a month ago. Rosanna Arquette, James Norton, Miles Heizer, and Richard Benjamin are among the cast.

Noah Pritzker directs from his own script. I did jot down that women are given short shrift. The soundtrack by Robin Coudert, a French man apparently also known as ROB, is not available online.

After I profiled Dunne in The Great Buck Howard, he's been in over a hundred projects, notably eight episodes of House of Lies, eight of I Love Dick, and 47 of This Is Us. Arquette has even more credits than Dunne, particularly starring in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), appearing with Dunne in After Hours the same year, Pulp Fiction (1994), and The Whole Nine Yards (2000). Norton, a Brit who here uses a very good American accent was in Little Women, though I didn't write that in these pages. Heizer is best known to me as Drew in 103 episodes of Parenthood. The reliable Benjamin is perhaps best known for Goodbye Columbus (1970) Diary of a Mad Housewife (1971), the title role in Portnoy's Complaint (1972), The Sunshine Boys (1975), and Deconstructing Harry (1997). This is Pritzker's second feature and Coudert has dozens of credits.

Rotten Tomatoes's critics aren't in love with this, averaging 78%, but its audiences are happier at 86. We rented it on July 20.