Mike Leigh's biopic is so richly detailed that it feels like a documentary. Spall goes for broke in the outsize title role.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 6, 2015

There is little in the way of narrative eventfulness in the film, but Leigh luxuriates in the moments, and provides glimpses of what it takes to be an artist amid the fray.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2015

You leave "Mr. Turner," as with all good fact-based films, wanting to know more about this man and his work - and remembering that beautiful, almost touchable light, on the canvas and on the screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 22, 2015

For modern moviegoers, the earthy "Mr. Turner" may seem like slowly steeped tea with an unpleasant aftertaste. But while some are impatiently waiting for the paint to dry, astute viewers will see a cinematic landscape bloom.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2015

If the past is a foreign country, then "Mr. Turner" is one of the most rhapsodic foreign films you may ever see.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 12, 2015

Mr. Turner is no barrel of laughs. It's a barrel of life - an extraordinary one.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 9, 2015

Mr. Turner, like just about all movies made by Mike Leigh, creates the sensation of being in a vividly realized mini-universe built from the ground up.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 8, 2015

An inspired film, a beautiful exploration of art and creation and difficulty, with Spall's brilliant performance at its center.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 8, 2015

Takes you on a bit of a meander, but you'll find by the end that you've arrived somewhere.

| Jan 5, 2015

Leigh's film, as ever, is a spirited, intimate and funny character study, an artist biopic that avoids the trap of mythologising its subject.

| Jan 2, 2015

Timothy Spall gives an admirably warty and unpleasant performance as Turner, an arrogant and uncompromising man who's annoyed by his celebrity in Britain but shocked when the public turns against his work.

| Jan 2, 2015

A gorgeous, important film.

| Jan 2, 2015

Failure isn't only the province of the lazy and uninspired. No, even the gifted and conscientious must occasionally take a stroll through that blasted landscape, and with Mr. Turner Leigh does it, for 2 1/2 hours. Don't go with him.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 2, 2015

Epic in breadth and length (2 1/2 hours), and gorgeously photographed (digitally) by Bill Pope, Mr. Turner is intimate in incident.

| Jan 2, 2015

Every scene in the film crackles with Mike Leigh's instinct for dramatic comedy and layered theme, but Mr Turner is also startlingly beautiful to behold.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2015

Leigh's process once again yields a compassionate narrative in which subtle glances and asides tell the story as much as the plot itself.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 2, 2015

Leigh's world-building is immaculate: abetted by Suzy Davies' extraordinary production design, Mr. Turner subtly constructs environments that evoke what Turner sees, tonally and spatially, that those around him cannot.

| Original Score: B | Jan 2, 2015

As is usual with any Mike Leigh film -- a style unique and trademarked by now -- his ensemble is a collection of remarkably adept actors who know their characters so well they could stay in character for weeks, continually improvising, as they often do.

| Jan 2, 2015

To use a word often associated with Turner and his art, it's sublime.

| Original Score: A | Dec 31, 2014

Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

| Dec 24, 2014