AVClub: Sports fans hoping for the thrilling saga of a football team’s journey from Cleveland to Los Angeles to Anaheim to St. Louis and then back to Los Angeles again will be disappointed to learn that Rams is quite literally about rams (and sheep). Lots of ’em. The title does also have a blatantly metaphorical aspect, however, as most of the film’s head-butting is performed by two craggy, middle-aged shepherds. That wry yet combustible comedy of orneriness, wedded to striking remote landscapes and forbidding weather, could make Rams the first Icelandic arthouse success in America since Cold Fever back in 1996—and that one featured the likes of Lili Taylor and Fisher Stevens, plus a Japanese lead actor. Rams, by contrast, is all Iceland all the time, and while it failed to snag a foreign-language Oscar nomination (after winning the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes last year), it does its country proud.
