What to watch: ‘Wedding Banquet’ remake manages to be sweet and funny

A sweet and soulful remake, the return of Jon Hamm, and a twisted take on the Cinderella legend are available this week and worth your screen time.

They arrive on the same weekend as Ryan Coogler’s wild new East Bay fueled effort, “Sinners,”

Here’s our roundup.

“The Wedding Banquet”: Whereas “Fire Island” was about as sassy as wearing a rainbow-colored Speedo at the community pool, director Andrew Ahn’s remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 original about a gay couple hiding their love in order to appease familial obligations tones down the horniness to celebrate the families that queer communities create. Make no mistake there are still laughs (including when characters wake up in a bed together) but Ahn is judicious about the humor and is after something much more heartfelt. And his cast — Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-Chan, Joan Chen and Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung (“Minari”) – delivers in that department. The story hinges on Min (Gi-Chan) and Angela (Tran) impersonating a straight couple while their respective partners, Chris (Yang) and Lee (Gladstone) blend in as friends  and help de-gay the Seattle home where Lee and Angela — who are trying to get pregnant via IVF – live and where the noncommittal Chris resides in the basement apartment. The pleasures of “The Wedding Banquet” belong in how unabashedly queer it is as well as its endearing performances. It is Yang’s most complex acting part yet while Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) comes across as so real you almost feel like she’s starring in a documentary. But it’s the veteran actors who really get their moment in the spotlight. Chen is hilarious as an over-enthusiastic PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) mom while Yuh-jung digs in deeper to play a grandmother aware of the impact of those de-gaying contortions going on around her. “The Wedding Banquet” serves up comfort food for queer audiences during a time when they’re hungering for something upbeat to devour. Details: 3 stars out of 4; opens April 18 in area theaters.

“Your Friends and Neighbors”: Few roles fit as snug as a Tom Ford suit on a male model than the one Jon Hamm wears in “Your Friends and Neighbors,” Apple TV+’s new series. The “Mad Men” actor’s role in this rich-people-behaving-badly series plays to all his strengths. He grouses. He struts. He caves and surrenders to having hot sex with someone he probably shouldn’t. And does he ever sneer at the rich, privileged hollow and unhappy friends and neighbors who reside in the same affluent country club community outside of New York that he does. Creator Jonathan Tropper frames all this dissatisfaction from the glib and gone-sour perspective of Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Hamm) whose narration is one of the highlights of this intriguing series. Coop is a true antihero, a cocky guy who’s gotten knocked down from his perch, first by losing his psychologist wife (Amanda Peet) to his best friend (Mark Tallman), and then losing his lucrative hedge fund job. Desperate for some cash flow, he starts to rob his friends and neighbors, who are so rich they don’t notice when a few of their Rolexes go missing. The series carts out a cast of mostly wealthy neurotics — a jilted ex-wife (Olivia Munn) who’s in a love-hate hookup relationship with Coop, and another friend (Hoon Lee) facing his own financial Waterloo. But the primary asset here is Hamm, so good at acting only irritated in the face of situations that would plunge the rest of us into a panic attack. Where it’s all headed, we haven’t a clue — except that Apple TV+ has already renewed “Your Friends and Neighbors” for a second season. Details: 3 stars; three episodes available now, with one new episode dropping every week through May 30 on Apple TV+.

“The Ugly Stepsister”: Since Disney is presumably rethinking its live-animation remake schematic in the wake of that spectacular belly flop “Snow White,” fans of twisted fairy tales can get their fix with Emilie Blichfeldt’s flat-out terrific but brutal feature debut. Blichfeldt tinkers with the “Cinderella” story by setting it in 1800s Norway where she then tears apart our beauty-obsessed culture. The “ugly step-sister” in question is Elvira (Lea Myren), the homely daughter of money-grubber Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp) who just wed the dad of Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess), aka Cinderella. He kicks it just after Rebekka and her two daughters – the second being Alma (Flo Fagerli) – move in. Wanting to up her station in life, Rebekka forces her daughter to go through radical (and nauseating) surgeries and treatments to turn her into an enchantress. They’re wasting all their dignity and time on Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth), a pampered cad and jerk. Blichfeldt doesn’t resort to the same level of relentless gore seen in “The Substance” — a film it will be compared to — but it does have a number of body-horror scenes where you have to turn your eyes away (I did). “Ugly Stepsister” gets get very ugly but it’s a beautifully constructed nightmare bearing with a ‘70s moody Gothic look and a bizarro soundtrack. It takes no prisoners and persuasively slams home its bloody point about how our pursuit for beauty can destroy us all. It also ranks as one of the best horror films yet of 2025. Details: 3½ stars; opens April 18 in Bay Area theaters.

“The Glass Dome”: If Netflix’s six-episode Swedish production gives off the chilly atmospheric vibe likened to dark Nordic page turners, there’s a good reason for that. It’s created by crime novelist Camilla Läckberg. “The Golden Cage” author sticks to the solemn darkness of that genre as Lejla (Léonie Vincent), who was abducted as a child and is now a UC San Diego professor, returns to her hometown village — the scene of the crime —  where a woman she knows has been murdered and a girl has been kidnapped. Läckberg tosses at us dead-end suspects, a backstory about a polluting mine and affairs and cover-ups. The first episode doesn’t find its footing, but by the second one you’ll get drawn into its web. Although it tags a few familiar bases — an unreliable main character who’s overmedicating, a less than bereaved husband — it’s always engrossing even when the actions of the characters get more and more infuriating. Details: 2½ stars; available on Netflix.

“Towards Zero”: Agatha Christie’s designation as the Queen of Mystery faces some serious competition these days, but there’s something so old-school appealing about the late author’s formulaic style that it remains both comforting and timeless to revisit. BritBox does so with one of Christie’s gems and then tweaks it a bit by giving “Perry Mason’s” Matthew Rhys the plum assignment of portraying suicidal Inspector Jim Leach and making him the primary investigator in the 1936 murder of wealthy, bedridden busybody Lady Tresillian (Anjelica Houston). Per Christie’s norm there are suspects aplenty: Lothario-like tennis star Neville Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who’s the nephew of the recently departed; Neville’s too-accommodating newlywed wife (Mimi Keene); his still rudely in-the-picture ex-wife (Ella Lily Hyland); a pariah of a cousin (Jack Farthing) who returns home and receives the cold shoulder; a nosy valet (Adam Hugill) with secrets and motives of his own; an opportunistic male flirt (Khalil Ben Gharbia) and more. They congregate at the coastal estate in Gull’s Point where they slowly start to reveal their true stripes. Series creator Rachel Bennette keeps it pithy, but it really comes to life whenever Rhys appears on the scene; his character is far more interesting than any other and reminds us of what a tragedy it was that “Perry Mason” received the ax from HBO. Details: 3 stars; first episode airs April 16, second, April 17 and third, April18; BritBox.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.