Another Round aka Druk (Thomas Vinterberg/Mads Mikkelsen)

[Noodle Lizard]

This sort of appeared out of nowhere for me, but apparently it's done quite well at the festivals and is a BAFTA/Oscar contender.

I absolutely love The Hunt (Jagten), so I was predisposed to enjoy this one. In some ways they're quite similar, with Mads playing a schoolteacher with a group of friends played by the same actors as his friends in The Hunt, but this is far less bleak for the most part and a lot more comedic. The basic premise of it is that a bunch of middle-aged men who are variously dissatisfied with their lives decide to do an experiment based on a famous psychiatrist's suggestion that humans are supposed to be slightly pissed at all times in order to function optimally. So they start drinking a little bit throughout the day trying to maintain a roughly 0.05% blood alcohol content, AND THE RESULTS MAY SHOCK YOU![nb]It's basically a longform version of Mitchell & Webb's Inebriati sketch.[/nb]

It's good, I think. It's got a nice warm tone to it, and it's often very funny and somehow makes its rather bizarre premise feel tasteful and relatable. Mads is obviously the highlight, and it's interesting to see him doing some overtly comic acting. It does feel somewhat underdeveloped, though I recently learned that Vinterberg's daughter (who had given him the idea) died sometime during production and forced him to rewrite a lot of it on the fly, so that might explain why it feels a little disjointed or inconsistent. It'll flit from one extreme to another without much of a crossfade at certain points, and a couple of the emotional beats feel unearned as a result of that. I'll go into more specifics once some of you have had a look at it.

It didn't impress me the way The Hunt did, nor do I think it's nearly as deep or engaging as that one or Festen, but those are some pretty big shoes to fill. It is good, though, sometimes very good.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I watched this the other night and was surprised it's either won or been nominated for so many awards. I liked it a fair bit, it's an enjoyable enough affair and it is beautifully filmed, while Mads is superb in it,

Spoiler alert

that early seen at the birthday party where the camera remains on his face is particularly stunning

[close]

, but it's also one of the most predictable films ever made and doesn't really have anything that interesting to say.

[dissolute ocelot]

I just watched this. It's enjoyable as a character study of middle-aged lassitude, and has some very funny moments, including someone walking into a doorframe which is always comedy gold. Although not exactly exciting and tense, or particularly unexpected. It doesn't really come to any astonishing conclusion about the merits of daytime drinking but as far as the ending goes

Spoiler alert

I thought it worked quite well. The conclusion seemed to be that drinking all day isn't really the answer, but Danes will go on drinking too much and sometimes having fun, and sometimes dying from it. And it can be fun, and sometimes it's good to shake things up. This was a better message than something very moral deciding that drinking is evil, and more realistic than having everyone winning Nobel prizes and turning up pissed for the ceremony. Great dancing too.

[close]

Also slightly confusing that the Danes seem to use per mille (per 1000) rather than percent (per 100) to measure things. But no stupider than the metric/imperial (delete as appropriate) system.

[Noodle Lizard]

If you liked but didn't love this (like me), I found Riders of Justice (another Danish Mads Mikkelsen-starring film from the same year) to be far better/funnier. And of course if you haven't seen The Hunt already, get to it.