Tim's Vermeer 2013

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: [A] highly entertaining documentary ... Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: "Tim's Vermeer," a fascinating documentary by the comic magicians Penn & Teller, has a way of arousing passionate feelings while provoking fresh ideas about the porous border between technology and art. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "Tim's Vermeer" is about many things - art history, technology, painting technique, beauty - but ultimately it's a beguiling study of fascination. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Penn and Teller's uncanny crowdpleaser begs the question, is it still a masterpiece if an amateur could do it? Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, AV Club: It's a cool hypothesis, catnip for art-history buffs, but it can't quite sustain feature length. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "Tim's Vermeer" is a movie for people who like to think, who like to ponder the big questions surrounding art and the act of creation. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Some movies are great because of their artistry; "Tim's Vermeer" achieves greatness - OK, semi-greatness - by placing the act of artistic creation itself under a microscope. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Tim's Vermeer" is a diverting 80-minute account of one man's mission to explore the Vermeer optics theory in detail. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: What Tim's Vermeer is really about is two geniuses, of very different sorts, communing across time and space. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Unexpectedly dazzling. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: An exquisitely fun documentary that hits on a profound aesthetic question, one first posed in 2001 by David Hockney: Did the 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer use optical devices to achieve his visual poetics of light? Read more

William Goss, Film.com: The most fun you'll have watching paint dry all year. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: A captivating look at a high-tech inventor who presumes to replicate the work of a great painter. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: The film - an ode to craftsmanship - establishes without a doubt that many of the traits we reserve for other fields - dedication, ingenuity - are also inherent to the artistic process. Ta-da. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: A fascinating new documentary about art, obsessions, ideas and answers. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: As mechanical as the procedure it depicts. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The movie's painstaking attention to detail certainly puts you in mind of Vermeer's own, but even halfway through its short length it's easy to get restless. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: The process of putting those three-dimensional objects on canvas in natural light is so fascinating that no one's going to make jokes about watching paint dry - though at one point the film is literally about watching paint dry. And then applying varnish. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The result is cool and semi-comical, but also serious. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: Shooting in unattractive, hard-edge digital, Teller condenses Mr. Jenison's years-long pursuit into 80 glib, alternately diverting, exasperating and tedious minutes. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: Teller, the quiet half of the iconoclastic magic act Penn and Teller, crafts a captivating documentary portrait of the artist as a tinkerer. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Tim's Vermeer is film as forensics, bringing math and science to bear to solve an art-world mystery. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Art purists can relax since [inventor Tim] Jenison, a video wiz with little talent for painting, never really challenges Vermeer's genius for conception and composition. Technology is the thing at issue here. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: You might think that following this insanely ambitious DIY project would be like watching paint dry. Wrong. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: We should never forget that Penn and Teller are professional bamboozlers, and their attempt to re-frame the definition of genius might be nothing but smoke and mirrors. Read more

James Adams, Globe and Mail: Mostly it is fascinating and compelling. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The result astonishes. A fascinating, funny and inspiring story. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: Tim's finished Vermeer may resemble the real thing, but Tim's Vermeer never tackles the true mystery of why the latter is actually incomparable. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: A fascinating documentary that poses a compelling aesthetic query: did 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer use optical devices to achieve his gorgeously photo-realistic, light-filled artwork? Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: The charm of the whole enterprise wears off even before this movie's trim 80 minutes are up. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: Do we even want to see a movie arguing that the work of one of the greatest artists of all time could be re-created by a dude with some mirrors and no actual ability to paint? I'm not sure. But Tim's Vermeer has more on its mind than that. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: "Tim's Vermeer" makes a convincing case that Vermeer could have painted the way Jenison says he did. It also makes a pretty powerful ancillary point: that some people are both geniuses and geeks. Read more