Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

sir-mauri I grade movies on my overall experience and reaction to a film. Those stories that educate me, intrigue my mind, spark the imagination, or make me want to immediately talk about the film leaving the theater-- always earn my highest marks. 'Tim's Vermeer' meets all of those traits and many more. It may have been a Dutch who inspired art through the help of a lens; but it was an American who broke the code on the 350 year-old mystery of how Vermeer did it. This spectacular documentary will leave you better off for seeing it and more appreciative of the genius behind the art--and the technology. My favorite kind of documentary where you laugh, you learn, you love, you stare fascinated at Tim's devotion to detail and you become fully invested in the complete and total mystery of Vermeer himself. Can't wait to share this with friends and family.

lasttimeisaw This USA comedy/magic duo Penn & Teller's passion project is an intriguing documentary attempts to reappraisal the fine line between an artist and an artisan, through Tim Jenison, a successful American inventor, engineer, but an amateur of painting, who pulls his back into precisely duplicating Dutch Golden Age luminary Johannes Vermeer's masterpiece THE MUSIC ROOM with the help of a simple optic gizmo which he believes Vermeer also secretly utilized, or at least in a similar way in his creation. Vermeer was perversely cagey about his painting technique, there is no extant documents where one can sieve through to find any evidence, the only stratagem is from his oeuvres, mostly depicting domestic interior scenes, as the watchword of the film is "every paint is a document of its own". So Tom's hypothesis, which also bolstered by books such as British artist David Hockney's SECRET KNOWLEDGE and VERMEER'S CAMERA written by British architecture professor Philip Steadman, is bold and contentious, if he successes in producing a Vermeer-calibre painting through his experiment, does it debase Vermeer from a masterful artist who is celebrated for his divine treatment of light and capturing a beguiling verisimilitude of reality, to a mere inventor who laboriously but accurately duplicating real-life image onto the canvas thanks to an ingenious gadget borne out of a scientific discovery? Maybe, the art firmament itself has been longly misjudged as this venerable, superior godsend reflecting human's uttermost self-importance has been proverbially and obstinately holds a dismissive slant towards the progress of modern science, where subjectivity always trumps objectivity. The film is conventionally arranged in a simple and linear narrative centers on Tim's painstaking process, spanning over 5 years, from the exhaustive preparation of the paraphernalia which should be exclusively limited within 17th century's knowledgeability, to the reproduce of the entire tableaux exactly like that in THE MUSIC ROOM, until his four-month-long endeavor to create his own Vermeer, certain longueur is inevitable, since his technique is plainly a one-trick-pony and extremely time-consuming (plus, none too many galvanizing vignettes are included), but Conrad Pope's soothing score always comes timely to diffuse the lurking fatigue. When Tim finally finishes his work, circumscribed by film's inherent attribute, audience doesn't have the access to make the judgement by one's own eyes through the screen, so it is somewhat a bit disappointing, the film doesn't include the appraisal from a more canonical collective of voices apart from Steadman and Hockney, nevertheless, it surely tallies with the fact that Vermeer's output is not as prolific as others, by this method, he could maximally produce 3 pieces a year. Due to the fact that any concrete proof is simply not available, this documentary cannot make Tim's viewpoint indisputable, although, in the eye of an art layman, it is remarkably persuasive, or maybe that is not the whole point at all, after all, it is Tim's strenuous perseverance, questioning inclination, scrutinising method and can-do attitude feels more affecting and encouraging in the end of the story.

john32935 This is an extremely well-made documentary about one man's curiosity, his relentless pursuit of an answer, and ultimately the possible solution of one of the art world's mysteries. But is that enough to recommend watching this movie? Not really. At times, this movie is as exciting as literally watching the paint on the canvas dry.I applaud the dedication of the subject to re-create the exact supplies, tools, and environment used by Vermeer. However, his efforts to demystify the artist's creation does not do anything other than to propose that the art is nothing more than a something that can be created by a dispassionate exercise of skills. What his recreation misses is the art of creating a scene, the passion of a painter to express something original, and the genius of capturing it all.To view my other movie reviews, please visit:https://nomorewastedmovienights.wordpress.com

Sergeant_Tibbs Penn & Teller are most well-known for their entertaining and often edgy magic act. While Teller's documentary Tim's Vermeer is unrelated to his own work, though Penn and himself are active participants in the project, it does have a type of magic involved. The film follows wealthy inventor Tim Jenison's attempts to re-create a painting by Johannes Vermeer using methods that he theorises that Vermeer most likely used. Jenison is no painter, but he has a mechanical mind. To many, Vermeer represents when art started to become more realistic and three dimensional, almost like a photograph. While some art historians believe that he used optics such as a camera obscura to project an image onto a canvas, others implore that it was from sheer talent. It's a hot debate in the art world and one that Jenison is deeply involved in outside of his primary interests and business in contemporary computers, cameras and television. The film thus studies the relationship between art and technology and how creative expression can be manufactured by machines, though it can be argued that through Jenison's obsessive attempts to re-create a Vermeer he in turn learns the skills in order to do it, rather than prove his theory of being able to re-do it in a clinical objective way. Jenison is a fun figure to watch, he's thoughtful and practical with a sense of humour about his preoccupation. He's kind of like a mix between Dan Harmon and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sometimes the mission does seem quite frivolous when this time and money could be put into more productive and urgent matters but it does somewhat justify itself. However, while it has all the ingredients for a great doc, Teller's direction just can't keep up. It suffers from choppy editing, a really rough production and a lack of structure. Perhaps a finer editor would have improved it significantly, but Teller's work makes it a much cheaper picture. Still very much worth the watch.7/10