edwin-wks
Joined Mar 2008
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edwin-wks's rating
The Wedding Banquet (2025) is Andrew Ahn's faltering attempt to modernise queer Asian dynamics for the 21st century. This is, in fact, my first time reviewing a film I couldn't even finish. I bailed at the 30-minute mark because the story was already collapsing under its own insipidity.
We begin with Min, heir to a South Korean fashion empire, who refuses to join the family business - even though they've just acquired a multinational with offices in New York, and even though taking the job would keep him in the U. S. on a business visa while sustaining his relationship with his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang). Instead, he opts for the most baffling path: proposing to Chris so he can start the long slog toward a marriage-based green card.
The film never gives us a coherent reason for why Min rejects the business opportunity, only that he does. Naturally, Chris - whose defining traits are "birder," "drifty," and "avoidantly attached due to childhood trauma" - panics and rejects the proposal. We're meant to believe Min never saw this coming, or that Chris was truly his best shot at long-term stability. Right.
Enter Angela, Chris's best friend since uni, and her wife Lily, who are trying to conceive. Their latest attempt fails, and although Angela is the partner more likely to get pregnant, she refuses to carry. Min then offers to fund another attempt if Angela marries him for visa purposes. It's as contrived as it sounds.
None of this lands because the stakes feel paper-thin. These aren't compelling dilemmas; they're queer first-world problems - wants dressed up as needs, inconveniences masquerading as crises. The emotional core that made Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993) a classic is nowhere to be found. That film remains timeless, grounded, and far more relevant today than this glossy reboot.
We begin with Min, heir to a South Korean fashion empire, who refuses to join the family business - even though they've just acquired a multinational with offices in New York, and even though taking the job would keep him in the U. S. on a business visa while sustaining his relationship with his boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang). Instead, he opts for the most baffling path: proposing to Chris so he can start the long slog toward a marriage-based green card.
The film never gives us a coherent reason for why Min rejects the business opportunity, only that he does. Naturally, Chris - whose defining traits are "birder," "drifty," and "avoidantly attached due to childhood trauma" - panics and rejects the proposal. We're meant to believe Min never saw this coming, or that Chris was truly his best shot at long-term stability. Right.
Enter Angela, Chris's best friend since uni, and her wife Lily, who are trying to conceive. Their latest attempt fails, and although Angela is the partner more likely to get pregnant, she refuses to carry. Min then offers to fund another attempt if Angela marries him for visa purposes. It's as contrived as it sounds.
None of this lands because the stakes feel paper-thin. These aren't compelling dilemmas; they're queer first-world problems - wants dressed up as needs, inconveniences masquerading as crises. The emotional core that made Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet (1993) a classic is nowhere to be found. That film remains timeless, grounded, and far more relevant today than this glossy reboot.
According to whistleblower Carl Robinson, he was instructed by Horst Faas to credit the Terror of War photograph to Nick Ut instead of Nguyen Thanh Nghe. Several motives have been suggested: Ut was an Associated Press employee while Nguyen was a freelancer; Ut's older brother had been killed on assignment for AP and Faas may have seen this as a form of restitution; and, as Faas himself claimed, there was bias against "foreign-sounding" names - perhaps why Huynh Cong Ut became "Nick Ut."
The documentary's 3D reconstruction of the events at Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 makes one thing clear: Nick Ut could not have been in position to take that iconic photograph unless he had sprinted back and forth with superhuman speed while carrying heavy gear. In light of these findings, World Press has suspended its attribution to Ut due to credible doubt. Associated Press, meanwhile, stands by its position, saying the evidence is insufficient to prove that Nguyen - not Ut - made the image.
But what is journalism, if not an act of fidelity to truth? Photojournalists like Faas, Ut, and Nguyen were there to document history as it unfolded. Misattributing authorship erodes the very truth their profession is meant to safeguard. Perhaps this saga highlights how susceptible truth is to the distortions of human behaviour - ambition, bias, sentiment, ego.
And as for Ut: at 21, he was young, sharp, and fully aware whether he had taken that photograph or not. He must have known the image could change his life. He accepted the credit then, and he maintains it now. What matters most is that the full truth has finally surfaced - and that, even 50 years late, due recognition can be given to the photographer who actually pressed the shutter.
The documentary's 3D reconstruction of the events at Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 makes one thing clear: Nick Ut could not have been in position to take that iconic photograph unless he had sprinted back and forth with superhuman speed while carrying heavy gear. In light of these findings, World Press has suspended its attribution to Ut due to credible doubt. Associated Press, meanwhile, stands by its position, saying the evidence is insufficient to prove that Nguyen - not Ut - made the image.
But what is journalism, if not an act of fidelity to truth? Photojournalists like Faas, Ut, and Nguyen were there to document history as it unfolded. Misattributing authorship erodes the very truth their profession is meant to safeguard. Perhaps this saga highlights how susceptible truth is to the distortions of human behaviour - ambition, bias, sentiment, ego.
And as for Ut: at 21, he was young, sharp, and fully aware whether he had taken that photograph or not. He must have known the image could change his life. He accepted the credit then, and he maintains it now. What matters most is that the full truth has finally surfaced - and that, even 50 years late, due recognition can be given to the photographer who actually pressed the shutter.
"The Academy Award for Best Screenplay goes to... Nora Garrett"... happened in no universe ever.
In a movie that ponders and ponders about morality and ethics, the glaringly obvious breach occurs in the violation of a student-teacher relationship. In what universe does a professor host a social gathering with a curated handful of students and casually call one of them "a friend"? And in what universe does that same student - supposedly hyper-attuned to the optics of being a Black woman in predominantly white academia - invite a male professor into her apartment for a nightcap after he's walked her home? The film expects us to accept that she steps into this textbook "don't do it" scenario and then claims pure, unambiguous victimhood... when the simplest word in the English language - "no" - was fully available to her.
The male professor, meanwhile, is fired on speculation alone, without charges, admissions, evidence, or even the faintest sniff of due process. In most places - yes, including large chunks of the USA - that's called wrongful dismissal, not justice. But the movie is uninterested in any legal, ethical, or emotional nuance that might complicate its prefab morality tale.
After The Hunt dresses itself up as a new-age, ultra-nutritious vegan smoothie - dense with ethical fibre, packed with intellectual antioxidants - when it's really just a Twinkie in disguise: airy, artificial, and hoping you won't notice the cream filling is mostly hot air.
In a movie that ponders and ponders about morality and ethics, the glaringly obvious breach occurs in the violation of a student-teacher relationship. In what universe does a professor host a social gathering with a curated handful of students and casually call one of them "a friend"? And in what universe does that same student - supposedly hyper-attuned to the optics of being a Black woman in predominantly white academia - invite a male professor into her apartment for a nightcap after he's walked her home? The film expects us to accept that she steps into this textbook "don't do it" scenario and then claims pure, unambiguous victimhood... when the simplest word in the English language - "no" - was fully available to her.
The male professor, meanwhile, is fired on speculation alone, without charges, admissions, evidence, or even the faintest sniff of due process. In most places - yes, including large chunks of the USA - that's called wrongful dismissal, not justice. But the movie is uninterested in any legal, ethical, or emotional nuance that might complicate its prefab morality tale.
After The Hunt dresses itself up as a new-age, ultra-nutritious vegan smoothie - dense with ethical fibre, packed with intellectual antioxidants - when it's really just a Twinkie in disguise: airy, artificial, and hoping you won't notice the cream filling is mostly hot air.