I Called Him Morgan

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Collin and company are after climate, not weather. They steep us in our awareness that Morgan and his New York have been lost, that our glimpses of it must either be through memory or hazed-up photography — or the music itself.

The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij

An intriguing exposé of a gripping story.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

Director Kasper Collins imbues this documentary with an ambiguous, unsettlingly empathetic emotional force.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

It’s mesmerizing, too vivid to be evanescent, too precious to hold.

The Playlist by Gary Garrison

More than anything else the film becomes a celebration of these two lives and the era of music that both created and destroyed them.

Variety by Guy Lodge

It’s fitting that Kasper Collin’s excellent documentary I Called Him Morgan, a sleek, sorrowful elegy for the prodigiously gifted, tragically slain bop trumpeter Lee Morgan, is as much a visual and textural triumph as it is a gripping feat of reportage.

The Guardian by Jordan Hoffman

Kasper Collin’s I Called Him Morgan isn’t just the greatest jazz documentary since Let’s Get Lost, it’s a documentary-as-jazz.

The New Yorker by Richard Brody

The backbone of Collin’s film is the sole audio interview with Helen Morgan, made in 1996, shortly before her death. The story that she tells combines with the story that Collin builds around it to provide a revelatory and moving portrait of a great musician.

Screen International by Sarah Ward

Collin attempts to do more than recount facts; if he can’t always wholly capture the figures at the film’s centre, he can convey a sense of the time and place that Lee and Helen inhabited.

The Film Stage by Tony Hinds

I Called Him Morgan hooks you from the first moments and glides effortlessly toward an emotionally impacting and enigmatic conclusion.