Sundance 2025: Wedding Banquet, Kiss from Spider Woman | Festivals and prices
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Sundance 2025: Wedding Banquet, Kiss from Spider Woman | Festivals and prices

My critical efforts to never judge a movie before I see it is most challenged by remakes of movies I love. Ang Lees’The wedding banquet“Is a wonderful comedy, and Hector Babencos”Spider woman“Be a powerful movie experience for me as a young man. I once discussed why a movie would be redone with a Hollywood producer who accused me of hating them all, and I offered my belief that a new recording must have a different strategy (“for example” Materials. Both of these Sundance – Remakes went into some fairly large shoes to motivate their existence. The good news is that they do, more or less, although none of them will replace their predecessor in film history.

To be fair, Andrew AhnS is taking on The “wedding banquet” Sometimes feels like a completely different movie. After all, as he noted in his Sundance introduction, one could not really redo a movie about a shame marriage to hide a gay couple in a modern time when gay marriage is legal. Ahn has reshaped the spirit of Lee’s movie to make a story that is more about a provisional family than anything else, which creates a series of misunderstanding that can sometimes feel a bit sitcomish but to do it in a way that is just smooth enough to be entertaining.

“The Wedding Bank” Centers two pairs: Chris (Bowen yang) & My (he gi-chan) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) & Lee (Lily Gladstone). In a kind of “Strangers on a Train” twist of fate, the couple ends up in need something from each other when Lee’s other attempts at IVF do not take. Mine comes from a very rich family and can give Lee & Angela the money for the next treatment, but they suggest Angela & My marries so that he can get a green card and stay in the country. When my grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung Of “Minari”) comes to the United States to throw a lavish wedding for his grandson, a comedy of errors and misunderstandings follow, even if not exactly in the way you can expect. One of Ahn’s smartest choice was to undermine the traditional roles of the homophobic, archaic elders, give Youn his own bow and parallel with that of Angela’s mother, played perfectly Joan Chen. Youn and Chen are phenomenal here and soil the “wedding banquet” every time it threatens to spin and become just another one -off comedy on a streaming service, which it does quite often.

Most people come to a “crazy parkomedy” like the “wedding banquet” who are willing to interrupt criticism of stupid misunderstandings, emotional overreactions and fall from heard conversations. The structure of Ahn’s plotted frustrated me, and he does not really know how to give his film visual language in addition to a standard comedy. He is also basically the sideline his Oscar nominated and drove Gladstone from the film for much of the second half. While Yang is a very nice comic artist, he can’t really land the dramatic heft of his role.

And yet every time the “wedding banquet” threatens to be rotten, Youn and Chen make a choice that reminds you of how good they are. Ahn works with them to take parts that could have been archetypal – the conservative elderly who must be overcome to find happiness – to make them genuine in a way that founded the entire movie. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this background, which means that the actors in the younger generation can do the stupid things in a world that feels more three -dimensional.

Spider woman
Tonatiuh and Diego Luna show up in Kiss of the Spider Woman by Bill Condon, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. With the permission of the Sundance Institute.

There is a similar “performance monitoring of crafts” as Bill CondonS “The kiss from the spider woman,” But it is not a supportive in this case. For Condon’s adaptation of the hit musical adaptation of the beloved book, it is the leadership: a fantastic newcomer called Tonatiuh, which carries this film with an emotional, physical performance that motivates its existence by itself. There are other effective elements in the new “kiss” including supporting turns from Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez. Condon’s direction is still working often towards what is good about this version, reminiscent of how good he can be with artists, but how much his vision still lacks when it comes to things like framing, blocking, lighting, etc.

In a time of great upheaval, when it feels like honest resistance and gender identity is attacked, some people will have a very personal response to “spider woman” which will stifle all criticism about its lack of visual language, but which does not mean it That this musical could not have been better.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” opens up with Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) being thrown into a cell under the height of the dirty war in Argentina in 1981. His cellmate is a powerful figure in the resistance called Valentin (Luna), which first seems annoyed by it Flamboyant Molina, even when his new friend tries to give an escape from their difficult reality by telling her favorite movie, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, with the legendary Ingrid Luna (Lopez).

Condon, who also adapted the stage music by Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb, is struggling to mix the two halves of his version of this often story, even as the stories of the film-inom-a-film and the reality of Molina & Valentin crosses each other. Condon tries to create a pastic of classic film music styles, but the first numbers fall flat because of choreography and camera elections before finally sitting in a trace after the excellent “where you are.”

Being unknown with the Broadway show is also possible that the songs only become more consistent, but the stake of them will also improve when the film goes with a couple of numbers that buzz with such energy that the Sundance public applauded at the completion. Say what you want about her actor, Lopez is an ever rare type of movie star, the type that can hold a camera with pure star power alone, which makes her perfect for this part.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is about what inspires us not only for survival but action. Molina uses the films not only to escape but to keep him and valentine alive and bridge the gap between the two very different men in a way that eventually leads to both love and resistance. It is a moving, powerful fiction, and that foundation remains largely intact, although Condon is allowed to dig into the dynamics of the passion between these characters in a way that the 80s version could not.

It helps a lot that he throws a vulnerable artist like Tonatiuhand that Luna and Lopez understand how to really support their leadership and abolish the limelight to the real center in this paragraph as often as they do. All three are good, even when they are truncated by Condon’s choice – maintained times the camera is only in the wrong place, either film a cell scene at a distance as if it is on a stage instead of doing something to improve claustrophobia/ tension or cut feet in a dance number.

Through everything bears the power of the source material (both the book and the award -winning musical) and the trifect of artists day. Sometimes all it takes to motivate the existence of a new recording is to find the right people to do so.