Critic Reviews

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  Slowly, surely this composite portrait of Chet then and now (or in 1987, when Weber shot the film) reveals its own depths.

• Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times

  Let's Get Lost is an atmospheric black-and-white portrait of a jazz trumpet player, an exemplar of West Coast 'cool jazz' in the age when rapid-fire bebop was hot, whose life, career and face were ruined by his various addictions.

• John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press

  There are moments in Let's Get Lost when, if you squint just a little, [Chet] Baker is a ghost image of his former self, the 1950s musical equivalent of James Dean.

• Desson Thomson, Washington Post

  Watching Let's Get Lost, shot in a liquid black-and-white, we are lost in a monotonal, gorgeously shot reverie about Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter whose alabaster-smooth, pretty face and plaintive tones broke hearts.

• Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

  First released in 1989, Let's Get Lost -- shot in the high-contrast black-and-white that's a hallmark of Weber's still photography -- is well worth revisiting on the big screen.

• Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

  Yes, it's about Baker, obviously, but a Baker who's somehow both much more and much less than the man seen on screen.

• , Total Film

  plays like an elegy for the demise of the cool, thick with the small-hours allure of addiction and infatuation but smart enough to see clearly.

• Ali Catterall, Film4

  A wide-eyed love letter to a jazz great, very much of its time, sporting stylish visuals and a sublime soundtrack.

• David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

  This is simply the finest jazz documentary ever made.

• Richard Knight, Windy City Times

  A beautiful film - as flawed as its subject, and all the more fascinating because of its odd lapses.

• Tricia Olszewski, Let's Not Listen

  The film, shot in black and white, doesn't follow a linear storyline. But the message of his jet-setting lifestyle and, more crucial, the naturalness of his gift is clear.

• Beth Accomando, KPBS.org

  Weber's documentary serves up an exquisite fusion of filmmaking style and subject matter to serve up a film that captures the essence of cool.

• Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Daily News

  It's a perfect meeting of filmmaker and subject, with Weber playing the role of the obsessed fan who, like everyone else who ever came into contact with Baker, gets burned by a man who literally made art out of inwardness.

• Chris Hewitt (St. Paul), St. Paul Pioneer Press

  It's a stunner, and it's not like any film you've ever seen.

• Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  Although it offers an invaluable record of a self-destructive artist at the end of his life, it is also a repellent exploitation of this artist's decline.

Read all 15 critic reviews