Let's Get Lost 1988

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: A gripping and affecting film with a striking noirish look (well photographed by Jeff Preiss), but also a rather dumb one that is both enhanced and limited by Weber's pie-eyed adoration of his subject. Read more

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. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: Let's Get Lost, Bruce Weber's haunting documentary about legendary jazz musician Chet Baker, first came out in 1989 and hasn't been easy to catch since. Now reissued in 35 millimeter, the film looks like a pristine time-capsule. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Nothing about this movie settles into normalcy. It's a celebration, a memorial, a tease, a death knell. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: [A] shimmeringly decadent and fascinating portrait of the West Coast jazz legend Chet Baker. Read more

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. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: [A] stark, haunting and often dryly funny portrait of an all-American hipster-heel in twilight. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: The portrait we get is of a flawed genius, a charismatic figure whose gifts for manipulation and self-gratification were as great as his musical talent. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

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. Read more

Jim Ridley, Village Voice: A gorgeous gravestone for the Beat Generation's legacy of beautiful-loser chic. Read more

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. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: Weber is working here out of a highly specialized interest, and what he means to say about his subject comes to us through layers of ambivalence. Read more