Instant Favorite.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The portrayal of Turner by Timothy Spall is nothing short of a masterpiece. It deals with the incredibly complex and famous British painter, Joseph Turner, who is full of faults and haunted by personal demons: a true outsider who is allowed access into the upper class due to his brilliance as a landscape painter. If you want to watch a movie about a real human and the real people around him, see the movie now. Spall is superb.

Exactly what the scriptwriters and director thought they were producing is beyond me. As others have so rightly said this is a series of disjointed scenes, many that have no end or point. The Cinematography is superb and the acting is of a high standard but all of this is wasted on this pointless film. You learn little if anything about Turner. He comes across as an odd man possessed by one type of painting who is also a bit of a pervert. His relationship with his maid and one scene with a prostitute show him to be very odd indeed. But that is all we ever learn about the man. There is no story and although I watched this to the end, in the vain hope something would start to make sense, which it didn't, I was left wondering why this got so much critical acclaim. I can only assume that critics are not like the rest of us and like to see things that are not there to make themselves seem better than the rest of us.

I saw the poster and DVD cover for this British film numerous times, I knew obviously it was about a painter, I've always liked the leading actor, and it was rated highly by critics, so I hoped for something really good, directed by Mike Leigh (Abigail's Party, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year). Basically this film looks at the last quarter century in the life of the great eccentric British painter Joseph Mallord William Turner (Timothy Spall). JMW Turner was affected by the death of his esteemed father William Snr. (Paul Jesson), he is loved by his housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who he takes for granted and occasionally uses for sex, and he forms a close friendship and loving relationship with seaside landlady Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he died. Throughout his life Turner was a controversial artist, travelling across the country painting many great Romanticist landscapes, some paintings also had negative reaction, he stayed with the country aristocracy, visited a brothel, became a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he could paint a snowstorm, and he was both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty. Also starring Karl Johnson as Mr Booth, Another Year's Ruth Sheen as Sarah Danby, Sandy Foster as Evelina, Amy Dawson as Georgiana, Secrets & Lies' Lesley Manville as Mary Somerville, Martin Savage as Benjamin Robert Haydon, Richard Bremmer as George Jones, Niall Buggy as John Carew, A Knight's Tale's Roger Ashton- Griffiths as Henry William Pickersgill, Joshua McGuire as John Ruskin, Robert Portal as Sir Charles Eastlake, Clive Francis as Sir Martin Archer Shee, Simon Chandler as Sir Augustus Wall Callcott, The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet as John Constable, Fenella Woolgar as Lady Eastlake, Peter Wight as Joseph Gillott, Happy Valley's James Norton as Clarinettist and 'Allo 'Allo's Sam Kelly as Theatre Actor. Turner may have been controversial in his time, but he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting, he is renowned for his oil paintings, but also did great watercolour paintings, his most famous painting is "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up", which appeared in the gallery scene of Skyfall, and will appear, with Turner (beating British greats like Sir Charlie Chaplin, Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Beatrix Potter), on the £20 note by the year 2020. Spall gives a wonderfully odd performance as the majestic painter, the supporting cast all do their parts fine as well, this is not a conventional biopic as such, it is deliberately fragmented and sketchy, I admit I found it a little long, and slow in places, but overall it was an interesting biographical drama film. It was nominated the Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music for Gary Yershon and Best Production Design, and it was nominated the BAFTAs for Best Cinematography, Best Make Up & Hair, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. Good, in my opinion!

As Mr Leigh has attempted to promote a cultural and economic boycott, I believe that behavior is appropriate for would-be viewers of his work. Mr Leigh's blatant anti-semitic rants and behavior obviouslyundercut his work. I must pass on patronizing the work of a Nazi bastard. From the look of things, most of the UK is rapidly becoming more accommodating to this nastiness. It won't help their cultural exports nor much else from the UK. If Mr Leigh loves the bloody Muslims so much, why doesn't he move to a Muslim 3rd-world country, and then try there to express his thoughts, and try to get his movies produced there?