Review: Mads Mikkelsen is the Best Reason for "ANOTHER ROUND"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 35 of 2021 (No. 1773) by Leroy Douresseaux

Another Round (2020)
Original title: Druk (Denmark)
Running time:  117 minutes(1 hour, 57 minutes)
MPAA - not rated
DIRECTOR:  Thomas Vinterberg
WRITERS: Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm
PRODUCERS:  Kasper Dissing and Sisse Graum Jørgensen
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
EDITORS:  Janus Billeskov Jansen and Anne Østerud
Academy Award winner

DRAMA with elements of comedy

Starring:  Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe, Maria Bonnevie, Magnus Sjørup, Silas Cornelius Van, and Susse Wold

Druk is a 2020 Danish drama film from director Thomas Vinterberg.  Druk is also known by its English title, Another Round, the title to which it will be referred in this review.  Although the film is an international co-production between Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, Another Round won the “Best International Feature Film” Oscar at the recent 2021 / 93rd Academy Awards as a representative of Denmark.  Another Round focuses on four high school teachers who binge drink alcoholic beverages to see how it affects their lives and work.

Another Round opens in Denmark and introduces Martin (Mads Mikkelson), a middle-age high school teacher.  He is married to Anika (Maria Bonnevie), and they have two teenage sons, Jonas (Magnus Sjørup) and Kasper (Silas Cornelius Van).  Martin is a close friend of three of his colleagues:  Nikolaj (Magnus Millang), Peter (Lars Ranthe), and Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen) at a gymnasium school in Copenhagen.  All four men struggle with unmotivated students, and each feels that his life has become boring and stale, especially Martin, who is the instructor for senior history.  In fact, his students and their parents are so concerned that he is not preparing them for their graduation exams that they meet with him.  Martin is also depressed because of troubles to his marriage to Anika.

At a dinner celebrating Nikolaj's 40th birthday, the four men begin to discuss Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud (a real-life person).  The “Skårderud hypothesis” says that man is born with a deficit of 0.05% blood alcohol content (BAC).  A 0.05 BAC makes a person more creative and relaxed.  Thus, Nikolaj suggests that the four of them engage in an experiment to test the Skårderud hypothesis.  The experiment will involve the four of them consuming alcohol on a daily basis in order to make sure that their BAC should never be below 0.05.  The initial results are good, especially for Martin, but will flirting with alcoholism always yield good results?

If Danish actor Mads Mikkelson is not an international movie star, he should be.  He career includes appearances in several Danish Oscar-nominated foreign language films, besides Another Round, and those are After the Wedding (2006), A Royal Affair (2012), and The Hunt (2013).  He has also made appearances in some Hollywood big-budget event movies, including the James Bond movie, Casino Royale (2006); the remake, Clash of the Titans (2010); and Marvel Studios' Doctor Strange (2016), to name a few.

Mikkelson's Martin defines the themes of Another Round that deal with the midlife crisis, marital strife, family discord, and professional dissatisfaction.  His costars give good performances, but Mikkelson is the star here.  His nuanced and layered performance as a man in full midlife depression is radiant, and the story seems to lack quite a bit of energy whenever he is not on screen.

As films about midlife crises go, Another Round is enjoyable, and it is quaint compared to the lurid American Beauty (1999), a “Best Picture” Oscar winner that is as pretentious as it is salacious.  Truthfully, neither film really excites me, as I could give a crap about middle crises.  I can't see myself recommending Another Round except to Americans who enjoy “international films.”  Still, Another Round has Mikkelsen, and if it must be remembered, it should be remembered as an entry in his exceptional filmography.

7 of 10
B+

Tuesday, May 18, 2021


NOTES:
2021 Academy Awards, USA:  1 win: “Best International Feature Film” (Denmark) and 1 nomination: “Best Achievement in Directing” (Thomas Vinterberg)

2021 Golden Globes, USA:  1 nomination:  1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language”

2021 BAFTA Awards:  1 win: “Best Film Not in the English Language” (Thomas Vinterberg, Sisse Graum Jørgensen, and Kasper Dissing); 3 nominations: “Best Leading Actor” (Mads Mikkelsen); “Best Screenplay-Original” (Tobias Lindholm and Thomas Vinterberg), and “Best Director” (Thomas Vinterberg)

The text is copyright © 2021 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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9 Films Vie for 5 "Foreign Language Film" 87th Oscar Nominations

9 Foreign Language Films Advance in Oscar® Race

Nine features will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 87th Academy Awards®.  Eighty-three films had originally been considered in the category.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

Argentina, "Wild Tales," Damián Szifrón, director;

Estonia, "Tangerines," Zaza Urushadze, director;

Georgia, "Corn Island," George Ovashvili, director;

Mauritania, "Timbuktu," Abderrahmane Sissako, director;

Netherlands, "Accused," Paula van der Oest, director;

Poland, "Ida," Paweł Pawlikowski, director;

Russia, "Leviathan," Andrey Zvyagintsev, director;

Sweden, "Force Majeure," Ruben Östlund, director;

Venezuela, "The Liberator," Alberto Arvelo, director.


Foreign Language Film nominations for 2014 are being determined in two phases.

The Phase I committee, consisting of several hundred Los Angeles-based Academy members, screened the original submissions in the category between mid-October and December 15.  The group’s top six choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist.

The shortlist will be winnowed down to the category’s five nominees by specially invited committees in New York, Los Angeles and, for the first time, London.  They will spend Friday, January 9, through Sunday, January 11, viewing three films each day and then casting their ballots.

The 87th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The Oscars® will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.  The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

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Review: "De Tweeling" (Twin Sisters) a Powerful Sister Act

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 27 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

De Tweeling (2002)
Twin Sisters – English title
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Netherlands and Luxembourg; Language:  Dutch, German and English
Running time:  118 minutes (1 hour, 58 minutes)
MPAA – R for a brief sexuality and a scene of violence
DIRECTOR:  Ben Sombogaart
WRITER:  Marieke van der Pol (based upon the novel by Tessa de Loo)
PRODUCERS:  Hanneke Niens and Anton Smit
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Piotr Kukla
EDITOR:  Herman P. Koerts
COMPOSER:  Fons Merkies
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA/ROMANCE/WAR

Starring:  Nadja Uhl, Thekla Reuten, Gudrun Okras, Ellen Vogel, Sina Richardt, Julia Koopmans, Jeroen Spitzenberger Betty Schuurman, Jaap Spijkers, Roman Knizka, Margarita Broich, and Hans Somers

The subject of this movie review is De Tweeling (Twin Sisters), a 2002 Dutch drama, romance, and war movie from director Ben Sombogaart.  The film is based on the 1993 novel, De Tweeling, by Tessa de Loo.  The film received a theatrical release in the United States in May 2005.

De Tweeling or Twin Sisters earned a 2004 Academy Award nomination for “Best Foreign Language Film” (Netherlands).  The film opens in 1925 and introduces us to German twin sisters, Anna (Sina Richardt) and Lotte (Julia Koopmans), who live with their well to do, widower father.  When he dies of consumption in 1926, competing relatives with different agendas separate the girls.  Anna remains in Germany on her uncle’s farm where he basically uses her as cheap labor.  A rich aunt and uncle take Lotte to Holland, where she lives a privileged life of culture, education, and opportunity.

The bulk of the story takes place between 1936 and 1947, when the sisters, now young women find themselves on opposite sides of World War II.  The young adult Anna (Nadja Uhl) marries a young Austrian soldier, Martin (Roman Knizka), who goes on to become an SS officer.  The young adult Lotte (Thekla Reuten) falls in love with a Jewish musician, David (Jeroen Spitzenberger), who ends up in a concentration camp.  The film later finds the sisters estranged from one another as old ladies, with Old Anne (Gudrun Okras) trying to reconcile her differences with Old Lotte (Ellen Vogel).

Twin Sisters is a compelling drama that is at its heart a bittersweet romance about two sisters who dearly love each other, but find that not only are their home countries at odds, but also their choice in lovers.  Indeed, the sisters’ lives during WWII are the center of this tale with the sequences involving Anne and Lotte as old women being nothing more than TV movie-of-the-week melodrama.  The opening segment with the sisters as six-year olds is sentimental and darkly sweet, while being something like a surreal and tragic fairy tale of kidnapped princes.

The film seems to jump around too much, but director Ben Sombogaart and writer Marieke van der Pol do their best work chronicling the sisters’ painfully desperate attempt to hold onto their lovers.  That’s the film right there, and although this adapts a novel, the movie should have focused exclusively, except for maybe a framing sequence, on the sisters as young women.  Here is the best acting both on the part of the actresses playing the sisters and the supporting cast portraying their family, friends, and acquaintances.  The horror the Holocaust creeps around the edges of the film here giving it a solid dramatic impact.  The tenuous relationship of the sisters at this point makes compelling drama – almost compelling enough to make you forget there aren’t enough of the best parts of Twin Sisters.

7 of 10
B+

Friday, February 03, 2006

NOTES:
2004 Academy Awards, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Foreign Language Film” (Netherlands)

Updated:  Wednesday, February 19, 2014


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.