Disservice to an icon.

Mr Turner was a hash of events with no direction or structure. As if Leigh looked up ’20 things you should know about Turner’ on Wiki and made a hodgepodge of disjointed episodes based on them.
Then he went fishing for gratuitous cringes and wows. Cringes in lingering noisy death scenes, ongoing sick, wet noises from the bronchial tubes, a few big gorbies spat onto the canvas and the worst case of psoriasis ever seen. And Turner grunting out a Purcell song (his favourite composer did you know?) In a film like this, at least cringing ensures alertness.
Then for the wows. Some kicks for pseudo art snobs, whack in a cavalcade of 19th Century celebrities including Constable, Hayden, George Jones and Mary Somerville who gave us an interesting if completely irrelevant lesson on UV light. Oh heck, why not throw in Queen Victoria herself?
JMW Turner did not have the refinements of a gentleman, but Leigh unfairly depicts him as a man barely capable of a comprehensible response and a predisposition for frequent guttural noises as from a randy moose or a wounded warthog. Assumptions about his sexual techniques were also based on the former.
Spall’s performance is nothing special. It takes more than a few teary scenes and grunts to qualify for acting, as a human being anyway.
The good bits were the cinematography, the evocative city and rural scenes, the artworks of course, and the riveting performance of Joshua McGuire as John Ruskin, art critic, another blow-in celebrity.
Dragged out for nearly 2.5 hours, the film seems to be desperately seeking ‘epic’ status.
Ironically, Mike Leigh has just been awarded the BAFTA Fellowship. On the same night, Mr Turner, having been nominated for only four technical awards, won nothing.