theriverjordan’s review published on Letterboxd:
For a movie about heavy drinking, director Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round” has an astounding level of self-control.
Its publicity might have you believe “Another” is an unending alcoholic orgy. The liquor never really stops flowing in the film; but the resulting bacchanal is less the ecclesiastical stuff of the gods, and more a mess made by us mere mortals.
In “Another,” Vinterberg crafts one of the most damning national commentaries this side of “Wolf of Wall Street.” The two could make fascinating partner pictures. One, about the gravitational pull of capitalism - the other, the inescapable black hole of alcoholism - on their respective national consciousnesses.
And while “Another Round” is deeply Danish-Scandinavian in its most pointed commentaries, it is ultimately no more bound to Denmark than “Wolf” is to its particularly American fallibilities.
Mads Mikkelsen, giving one of the most subdued masterworks of a performance from 2020, casts about him a perpetual haze of melancholic imperfection. Together with Vinterberg, the two craft a mirror image of middle-age malaise; so acute — the only way to avoid it is to leave the lights off, and drink another round.
