MR. TURNER ✪✪✪✪✪

Drama (M, sex scenes). ‘‘English painting’s renowned master of light, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), gets a suitably illuminating screen biography in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, an ecstatically beautiful and exquisitely detailed portrait of the artist as a cantankerous middle-aged man whose brilliance with the brush overshadows his sometimes appalling lack of social graces. Returning to the large-canvas period filmmaking of his 1999 Gilbert & Sullivan bio Topsy-Turvy, 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.’’ – Variety.

Portrait of an artist: Timothy Spall is majestic as the cantankerous JMW Turner in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner.