Mads Mikkelsen (centre) will drink to anything in Another Round.
NOW critics pick what’s new to streaming and VOD for the weekend of December 18. Plus: Everything new to VOD and streaming platforms.
Another Round
(Thomas Vinterberg)
Director/co-writer Vinterberg’s latest reunites him with Mads Mikkelsen for a film slightly looser but no less unforgiving than their last collaboration, 2012’s The Hunt. Another Round casts Mikkelsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang and Vinterberg mainstay Thomas Bo Larsen as high-school teachers who embark on a radical experiment: would their careers and relationships be better if they maintained a minimum blood-alcohol level of 0.05? The answer may not surprise anyone, but the path to it is both very funny and very grim, with the quartet adapting to their state of constant inebriation with varying levels of success. Vinterberg is an old hand at spinning awkward human moments into explosive comedy or soul-freezing dread, as the situation depends, and this story gives him the opportunity to do a little of both. Similarly Mikkelsen finds a way to play both the liberation and misery of a never-ending drunk, turning down his quicksilver charisma to blend into the ensemble – until it all comes pouring out of him in a brilliant, and brilliantly ambiguous, final dance number. You’ll see.