Mr. Turner
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 19, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
94
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
43
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Portland OregonianJeff BakerJul 14, 2015
A movie as bold and deep as a Turner landscape, as sharp as light on water. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaFeb 2, 2015
Mr. Turner is no barrel of laughs. It's a barrel of life - an extraordinary one. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 8, 2015
A life is not plot; plot is not life. By scrupulously sticking not just to the accuracies of Turner’s life as we know them but to the tiniest of details, the chipped mugs on kitchen tables, the pantaloons on a passing merchant, the spray of storm surf across the bow of a ship, Leigh wants us to truly see the world Turner moved through. Only by seeing that world can we see how he saw and painted it. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyKeith StaskiewiczJan 3, 2015
J.M.W. Turner was a master of light and image, but what stands out most about him in Mike Leigh's captivating biographical film is a sound. Playing the renowned Victorian-era English painter, Timothy Spall grunts and expectorates his way through his scenes, chugging along with the phlegmy belch of an old jalopy or, as the film suggests more than once, a snuffling pig. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesBill ZweckerDec 23, 2014
Mr. Turner is far more than merely an explosion of color and toned nuance for the eye. The real reason to make this a must-see of this holiday season is to wallow in the Oscar-worthy acting talent of Leigh’s veteran player Timothy Spall. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 23, 2014
Through it all, Spall is equally enigmatic and transfixing: With his guttural croaks and barks, his Turner is often difficult to understand, but, thanks to Spall’s amazing physical performance and Leigh’s sensitive, information-laden direction, he’s never incomprehensible. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 23, 2014
Performances are still the heart of Leigh’s work, and at the heart of this film is an extraordinary performance by Leigh’s frequent collaborator, the British actor Timothy Spall. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 22, 2014
Leigh's film — one of the year's best — honors its subject in all his tetchy ambiguity. Read full review
100
NPRBob MondelloDec 22, 2014
Turner's painting of the scene, The Fighting Temeraire will, in fact, become his masterpiece. As Mr. Turner is Mike Leigh's — a growling, snuffling, earthy work of art, every frame worthy of framing. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 19, 2014
Perhaps the most awesome thing in Mr. Turner is how Leigh and cinematographer Dick Pope hint at Turner’s paintings in their landscapes — not to make the film look painterly but to suggest what Turner saw before transmuting reality into art. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 18, 2014
When we peruse this movie, we see a superb evocation of Turner’s latter years, during the first half of the 19th century, and a performance that’s symphonic in the sweep of its eccentricities, vivid in the spectrum of its passions. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensDec 18, 2014
Mr. Turner does resemble "Topsy-Turvy" in its meticulous yet vibrant recreation of the past and its ever-expanding thematic amplitude. This is a movie not only about one particular artist, but about art as both a field of human endeavor and an object of shifting cultural and economic value. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 18, 2014
Just as Turner's expressive, enthralling work changed the nature of painting, Mr. Turner, anchored in the rock of Timothy Spall's astonishing, Cannes prize-winning performance, pushes hard against the strictures of conventional narrative and ends up pulling us into its world and capturing us completely. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 18, 2014
Mr. Turner is a mighty work of critical imagination, a loving, unsentimental portrait of a rare creative soul. But even as it celebrates a glorious painter and illuminates the sources of his pictures with startling clarity and insight, the movie patiently and thoroughly demolishes more than a century’s worth of mythology about what art is and how artists work. Read full review
100
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekDec 16, 2014
Leigh, Spall, and cinematographer Dick Pope — who borrows lots of lighting tricks from Vermeer and Ingres and even Turner himself, to glorious effect — have gently atomized Turner's character, breaking it into small, potent fragments that affect us in ways we don't see coming. Read full review
100
Total FilmNeil SmithNov 10, 2014
One great British artist pays tribute to another in a lengthy but rewarding homage that boasts a titanic turn at its centre. Rarely has watching paint dry been so fascinating. Read full review
100
EmpireIan NathanOct 27, 2014
Shimmering with awards potential, Leigh’s glorious picture is a hilarious, confounding, wholehearted and dazzlingly performed portrait of an artist as an ageing man. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMay 24, 2014
Anchored by a masterful performance by Timothy Spall in a role he was born to play, and gilded by career-best effort from DoP Dick Pope, working for the first time on digital for Leigh to bridge the gap between the painting and cinematography, Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 24, 2014
Beyond the troughful of fun tics, Spall makes Turner tenderly and totally human — the effect of which is to make his artistic talents seem even more extraordinary still. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 24, 2014
As ever with Leigh, Mr Turner addresses the big questions with small moments. It's an extraordinary film, all at once strange, entertaining, thoughtful and exciting. Read full review
100
VarietyScott FoundasMay 24, 2014
Leigh has made another highly personal study of art, commerce and the glacial progress of establishment tastes, built around a lead performance from longtime Leigh collaborator Timothy Spall that’s as majestic as one of Turner’s own swirling sunsets. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2014
What a glorious film this is, richly and immediately enjoyable, hitting its satisfying stride straight away. It's funny and visually immaculate; it combines domestic intimacy with an epic sweep and has a lyrical, mysterious quality that perfumes every scene, whether tragic or comic. Read full review
91
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanMar 1, 2015
Relaxed editing and well-researched set and costumes give us a firm feeling of the period, and Dick Pope (who has worked with Leigh 10 times) excels. It’s a cliche to say a cinematographer does painterly work, but Pope suffuses the screen with light in the way Turner did his canvases. Read full review
91
The PlaylistOliver LytteltonMay 24, 2014
Mr Turner, though not without flaws, is something of a twilight culmination of Leigh's work, and very much one in which the filmmaker turns his lens on himself, as is so often the case when directors make movies about artists. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnMay 24, 2014
Mr. Turner is a first-rate match of director and subject. Less an explication of the man's genius than an immersion into its essence. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 8, 2015
This isn't a warts-and-all portrayal. More like a warts-and-little-else one. But it is an inspired film, a beautiful exploration of art and creation and difficulty, with Spall's brilliant performance at its center. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 18, 2014
Mr. Turner is a rich, ruthless and profoundly compassionate study of life and love and art, for those who find themselves on its wavelength, but it also presents itself as a challenge. Read full review
90
The DissolveKeith PhippsDec 17, 2014
Leigh’s generous approach to capturing the fullness of Turner’s life, through unhurried rhythms and scenes, makes Mr. Turner memorable. Read full review
90
The New YorkerDavid DenbyDec 1, 2014
Mr. Turner is a harsh, strange, but stirring movie, no more a conventional artist’s bio-pic than Robert Altman’s wonderful, little-seen film about van Gogh and his brother, “Vincent and Theo.” Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 28, 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. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzDec 22, 2014
Filmmaker Mike Leigh's biography of the landscape painter J.M.W. Turner is what critics call "austere" — which means it's slow and grim and deliberately hard to love — yet it's fascinating, and the performances and photography are outstanding. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickDec 18, 2014
Timothy Spall, a character actor best known as Wormtail in the “Harry Potter’’ series, delivers an Oscar-caliber tour de force as eccentric British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner in the exquisite Mr. Turner. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 17, 2014
Leigh embraces the contradictions in Turner. And in tandem with cinematographer Dick Pope, a master of light, he shows us the world as Turner sees it. The effect is harsh and ravishing. Leigh's beauty of a movie touches the heart not by sentimental gush but by the amplitude of its art.​ Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChris CabinSep 8, 2014
An astute summation of Mike Leigh's glum view of humanity, but also a challenge to this disposition and his own pessimistic perspective. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 17, 2014
Given the material, it’s fitting that Mr. Turner is the director’s most visually ravishing movie. With cinematographer Dick Pope behind the lens, every shot is gorgeous enough to hang in a museum. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMar 6, 2015
In the end, Mr. Turner ends up being the best kind of period drama. That is, it is a transportive one, whisking audiences away to a distinct time and place, while also providing no small amount of insight about its subject. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 17, 2014
Spall is best known for his supporting performances (Winston Churchill in “The King’s Speech,” Peter Pettigrew in the “Harry Potter” films). But he’s among the highest class of character actor, able to make a role of any size his own. Leigh has given Spall the gift of a lifetime in J.M.W. Turner. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleMay 24, 2014
In arguably a career-topping performance, Timothy Spall plays the cantankerous painter as a complex, grunting, snarling and utterly single-minded creature. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 23, 2015
The film is intricately composed using the shadows created by natural lighting and some of the most astonishing sunsets and landscapes ever captured on screen. Pope's work is immersive and allows viewers to become engaged in a story that occasionally moves a little too slowly. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJan 15, 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. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 19, 2014
It’s a painfully uneven movie, but its best moments are ravishingly good. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreDec 6, 2014
And as long as it is, it would be a pity to cut one moment of Spall’s immersive, utterly convincing portrait of this common man with an uncommon gift. Read full review
75
HitfixGuy LodgeMay 24, 2014
Mr. Turner's passions and neuroses feel more peculiar to Leigh and his own work. It's tempting, even, to view the film as biopic-as-self-portrait, revealing shades of one life through another. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedDec 17, 2014
Mr. Spall, winner of the Cannes and New York Film Critics Circle best-actor awards, does his best to bring an unpleasant character to life — grunting and snorting like a boar ready to charge, spitting on his canvases and dragging around with a constant wince like a fat baby with colic. With all due respect, he’s too repulsive to watch for 150 minutes. Read full review
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