Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Though it's the weakest of the three panels that form Kaurismaki's trilogy, which began with Drifting Clouds in 1996, it's still worth seeing.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 3, 2011

Un relato crudo, probablemente desconcertante y extrañamente tragicómico, sólo para seguidores incondicionales del director, que repite su estilo sin sorpresas.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2008

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2007

Kaurismaki creates some beautiful frames, carefully composing his affectless characters against the rooms' colors, but there's something wrong with your story when people are upstaged by the decor.

| Oct 16, 2007

It's a deceptively satisfying, almost magical achievement, like being stranded in a desert yet never going thirsty.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 21, 2007

A wholly satisfying comic-existential bit of fluff.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 12, 2007

It's exactly the picture he wanted to make; that's for sure. But in this case that's not quite enough.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2007

Kaurismäki's spare style and economical storytelling are well-suited to this particular story about loneliness, as the director never muddies the frame with sentimental dross or lugubrious inclinations.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2007

Kaurismäki is self-consciously tapping into the raw pathos of an earlier time in cinema (the pain and loss that often accompanied Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp, for example). The idea works, though it is finally wearing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Aki Kaurismaki's gloomy take on film noir... is pure Kaurismaki, done in the director's inimitable deadpan and surreally dispassionate style and grim sensibility.

| Original Score: B | Aug 2, 2007

The director's existential sarcasm is muted here.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 23, 2007

There is an admirable rigor here and even a brief touch of sunshine, but almost none of the humor that marks [Kaurismaki's] best work.

Full Review | Jul 15, 2007

So dry it's parched, this study of a passive loser whose life just keeps getting worse is basically a series of noir cliches clothed in arthouse anomie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 13, 2007

The distance Kaurismki creates belies his deeply humanistic streak. He engages characters in the direst of situations not to see them suffer but to search for hope.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2007

The downbeat tone of Lights in the Dusk just escapes offense and self-parody due to Kaurismäki's careful, subtle craftsmanship.

Full Review | Jul 11, 2007

Another weird, frigid tale by Kaurismaki.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 21, 2007

Lights In The Dusk plays out in the expected Kaurismäki style, with flavorful musical interludes, great affection for the city's outcasts, and lots of bleakness chased by the faintest sliver of hope.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 16, 2007

Stripped of much of the director's trademark deadpan humor and saddled with such an extremely passive protagonist, getting through the drama becomes an exercise in patience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 15, 2007