Does anyone else consider the ending to Another Round [2020] directed by Thomas Vinterberg to have what is possibly one of the most feel good endings to a movie? Also, Mads Mikkelsen is a goddamn international treasure.

For added context: I [M23] drink alcohol very occasionally and am not from Denmark.

With Oscar season approaching and Festival Season in full swing I was wondering about the award champs for Danish film Another Round (Druk).

There aren’t many mainstream reviews yet but the few I have seen are positive:

Given Mads and Vinterbergs last collab (The Hunt) scored a best Foreign Language picture nomination should this be seen as likely to happen again?

And, perhaps more interestingly, with the academy having given at least one FL performance an acting nodding the last couple years, the relatively weak field and his general popularity, could Mads Mikkelsen get a Best Actor Nomination?

So I saw this list of best 2020 movies which recommended this movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Another round is a Danish movie about 4 high school teachers who are best friends. They decide to test a hypothesis proposed by a psychologist for which they have to consume alcohol on a daily basis to see how it affects their professional and social life.

It's a funny movie which also has beautiful sad moments but again a lot of scenes which makes you smile really hard. The music was infectious , loved mad's performance and really enjoyed the bond between the 4 friends.

PS- beware, this movie might make you want to drink more in life. Hahaha

I haven't seen the hunt yet. (yes can't believe it. How did I miss it?) Definitely watching it next :D

Heartfelt thanks to Reddit users Tokyono and Numerous-Lemons for helping me out. (Wasn't able to tag you guys because I use reddit on my phone)

Welcome to Mads Mikkelsen week, a little mini-series I'm trying to start to bring attention to Mads Mikkelsen's Danish-language films. Feel free to contribute your own reviews for other Mads Mikkelsen films from Denmark. This review is for Druk AKA Another round, and later on in the week I’ll be reviewing Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice, both from director Anders Thomas Jensen.

This if you prefer to watch rather than read.

Mads Mikkelsen is one of my favorite actors, but I’ve found that many American audiences— or maybe just English-speaking audiences in general— tend to undervalue Mads’s talents as an actor. Even those who like him tend to hold this sort of reduced view of his thespian abilities. So you can consider this mini-series an American’s introduction to Mads’s Danish language films.

Mads’s best roles in the U.S. tend to be villain parts, owing I think to some semi-subconscious ethnocentrism in Hollywood filmmaking that suggests that if someone has a “foreign accent” then they must be “evil”. It’s more rare than you might expect to find anyone who speaks English as a second language placed in the protagonist role of a major Hollywood film. The best you can hope for most of the time is a juicy villain or sidekick role. I’d like to see American screenwriters and studios get away from this narrow view of the world where anyone from outside the country’s borders must not be important, or likable, or interesting enough to follow as a protagonist.

And while Mads is great at playing villains, back in his home country of Denmark, he frequently fills likable protagonist or supporting character’s shoes. A villain role like whatever his name was in Doctor Strange gives him nothing to work with, and even a non-villain role like his part in Rogue One is such a nothing character that it’s hard to see the part as anything other than a waste of his immense talents.

Now, to be clear, there’s no blame on him for those unchallenging parts; those are the roles that provide big enough paychecks and build enough cache and box-office appeal that he’s able to go be in smaller, more challenging films with less wide appeal back in Denmark without worrying about his star power back in Hollywood diminishing in the interim. Those high-profile roles also help to bring new audiences into foreign-language films that otherwise might not receive much attention abroad. How many people first saw Mads Mikkelsen as the magnetic Bond villain Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, then were convinced to check out one of his more recent Danish-language films because of his involvement?

I’ve been glad to see Mads continually returning to Danish language productions with talented directors who give him material that pushes his abilities and allows him to explore different types of characters and show all that he can do. I first became a massive fan of Mads Mikkelsen through his work in The Hunt, and it’s still the film I would recommend the most for anyone looking to dive into Mads’s Danish-language work.

But now, let’s look at one of Mads’s recent Danish-language films that at least somewhat succeeding in breaking out of its native country and finding significant audiences abroad. Today we’re looking at Thomas Vinterberg’s 2020 Academy Award winning Druk AKA Another Round.

Druk won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Vinterberg was also nominated for Best Director, which is cool to see since so often foreign-language film directors get overlooked for inclusion in other categories. I would have like to have seen Mads get a Best Lead Actor nomination and the film overall getting a best picture nomination, but hey, I’ll take what I can get when it comes to Foreign-Language film representation at the Oscars. I still think it’s ludicrous that Mads has never even been nominated at the Oscars. Overlooking his performance in The Hunt is one of the biggest Oscar snubs ever in my eyes.

Another Round is a bit of a re-team from The Hunt as both star Mads Mikkelsen, were both directed by Thomas Vinterberg, and were both co-written by Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm. This time around, instead of following a single, central performance, Another Round follows an ensemble cast consisting of Mads Mikkelsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang, and Thomas Bo Larsen, who you might recognize as the father of the girl who accuses Mads’s character in The Hunt. Lars Ranthe was also in The Hunt, though in a less prominent role.

These four are all high school teachers who have an idea to run a scientific and social experiment on themselves and document the results. So, what is their hypothesis? That being a little bit drunk all the time is the better and perhaps biologically appropriate way to live. That premise sounds like it could make for an extremely goofy movie, but the concept is actually played surprisingly straight.

Another Round is categorized as a comedy/drama, but you should know going into it that it isn’t some happy-go-lucky, laugh-out-loud joke fest. It’s thoroughly grounded in reality and, even though it is definitely both fun and funny in parts, it is also far more heavy and somber overall, especially when compared to other comedies. Be sure to calibrate your expectations appropriately when going into the film. If you’re expecting some joke-a-minute laugh-fest, you’re liable to get tonal-whiplash and might not enjoy yourself, but go in with the right expectations, and Another Round will prove itself to be an excellent film.

Each of these four central characters feels fully dimensionalized and real. We learn the perfect amount about each man for their place in the story and all four of these performances are seriously impressive, not just Mads, though he does steal the spotlight in his big scenes as one would expect. So much of why the film works as well as it does is the chemistry between these characters. If you didn’t buy their friendship and their dynamics, the entire film would crumble around them. Luckily, that is not the case.

One thing I greatly appreciated about Another Round is that it never feels preachy in its message, which this premise certainly had the possibility of doing. You might hear that premise and expect the film to be something akin to an anti-alcohol PSA that shows how drinking constantly destroys lives and whatnot. But, even though the drinking does lead to a lot of damage, the film doesn’t paint anything in black and white. There’s an extremely believable escalation of both drinking and the ramifications of said drinking. For much of the film, it honestly seems more like an advertisement for alcohol than a PSA against it. These guys are all having the times of their lives and everything is better for them at home, at work, and all throughout their daily activities when they’re a little tipsy. This is where the film finds most of its comedy outside of the heavier moments, and it’s great fun.

There’s a lot of dancing in the film from everyone except for Mads, and they point this out repeatedly. It’s constant setup for an eventual payoff, but it’s actually setup so many times and reiterated so many times, that it builds Himalayan expectations for the eventual payoff of Mads dancing, and I worried the film wouldn’t be able to deliver on the caliber of payoff all this setup demanded… but the film absolutely delivers, and Mads’s big dance number is not just the highlight of the film but also easily one of the overall highlights of 2020’s cinematic output.

This is a great film that I can recommend to anyone who goes in with the right mindset. Don’t go in looking for a fast-paced comedy. Instead, go in looking for a somber and slow-moving drama that has a great sense of fun tethered entirely to the emotional and mental state of its ensemble cast of characters.

As a Dane I had the pleasure of watching this brand new movie by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg who previously have made ‘The Hunt’ and ‘The Celebration’ at a preview yesterday, and the film was an amazing depiction of what alcohol does to us and our surroundings for the better or worse. (Will premiere at TIFF and was selected at Cannes as well)

The film centers on four close friends, all of whom are high school teachers, who decide to test the idea that their lives would be improved by constantly maintaining a level of low-grade drunkenness. Without spoiling I can say that it is a boisterous and sobering dramedy about how men deal with aging and alcohilism and it portrays the contrast of relationships depending on sobriety in a very heartbreaking way. It also accomplishes to tell this beautiful and somewhat hilarious story without ever glorifying or demonizing the effects of alcohol, which I really appreciated. And don’t even get me started on praising the ending, which caused literal and audible chills in the theater. I personally couldn’t help to shed a tear when I grasped the bigger scope of the movie. Wow

I am sincere (and perhaps biased) when I say that I would not be surprised if Mikkelsen was nominated for best actor in a leading role as well as the movie winning best foreign film at The Academy Awards. I really recommend people and espeially those who have battled/are battling alcohilism to see this movie when it eventuallty comes out in your respective countries :))

As a Dane I had the pleasure of watching this brand new movie by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg who previously have made ‘The Hunt’ and ‘The Celebration’ at a preview yesterday, and the film was an amazing depiction of what alcohol does to us and our surroundings for the better or worse. (Will premiere at TIFF and was selected at Cannes as well)

The film centers on four close friends, all of whom are high school teachers, who decide to test the idea that their lives would be improved by constantly maintaining a level of low-grade drunkenness. Without spoiling I can say that it is a boisterous and sobering dramedy about how men deal with aging and alcohilism and it portrays the contrast of relationships depending on sobriety in a very heartbreaking way. It also accomplishes to tell this beautiful and somewhat hilarious story without ever glorifying or demonizing the effects of alcohol, which I really appreciated. And don’t even get me started on praising the ending, which caused literal and audible chills in the theater. I personally couldn’t help to shed a tear when I grasped the bigger scope of the movie. Wow

I am sincere (and perhaps biased) when I say that I would not be surprised if Mikkelsen was nominated for best actor in a leading role as well as the movie winning best foreign film at The Academy Awards. I really recommend people and espeially those who have battled/are battling alcohilism to see this movie when it eventuallty comes out in your respective countries :))