Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
The gap between the celestial art of the great English romantic painter Joseph Mallord William Turner and the brutish details of his life is vividly explored in Mike Leigh's tragicomic movie Mr. Turner.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Despite his own failings and faults, Leigh and Spall's Turner is a man consumed by the search for truth and beauty, even in the midst of the less than pretty truths of his times.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It's a painfully uneven movie, but its best moments are ravishingly good.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Writing about Mr. Turner a few weeks after seeing it, I feel a craving to be again immersed in its world, which is rich with colors, textures, and, it sometimes almost seems, smells .

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Epic in breadth and length (2 1/2 hours), and gorgeously photographed (digitally) by Bill Pope, Mr. Turner is intimate in incident.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Keen observer Mike Leigh brings his hawk's eye to a vibrant rendering of J.M.W. Turner, the celebrated British "painter of light."

Name : Keith Staskiewicz / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
To use a word often associated with Turner and his art, it's sublime.

Name : David Denby / Alias : New Yorker
"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."

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
Timothy Spall - best known to mainstream audiences as Wormtail in the Harry Potter series - delivers an Oscar-caliber tour de force reminiscent of Charles Laughton

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
This is less your standard-issue biopic than a foray into the mystery of human feeling.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The sprawling, loosely structured 2 1/2 hour drama has some of the year's most stunning visuals, many of which appear as artfully composed scenes in Turner's work.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Timothy Spall - a veteran of Mike Leigh's films - plays this eccentric, determined London bohemian like a bronchial, cantankerous, randy old toad with backache.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Any expectations of reverential biography are quickly dispelled by Mr. Leigh's sharp, scintillating script and Mr. Spall's uncanny daring.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Leigh shows us the world as Turner sees it-harsh and ravishing. His beauty of a movie touches the heart not by sentimental gush but by the amplitude of its art.​

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
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.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
J.M.W. Turner, arguably the greatest of British painters, was an uncommonly difficult man, and "Mr. Turner," the exceptional film Mike Leigh has made about him, does not do things the easy way either.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Spall may make a grotesque of Turner - piggish, rutting, whoring - but he finds such incandescence in the world around him. And director Mike Leigh lets you see that incandescence as Turner saw it: Everywhere.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
I can't say enough about the power of Spall's performance.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Without a speck of pomposity Leigh's film - one of the year's best - honors its subject in all his tetchy ambiguity.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
Mike Leigh takes on the topsy-turvy life of J.M.W. Turner in an exquisitely detailed, brilliantly acted biopic.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It's not a pretty portrait of the artist. But it is a real one.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
Leigh and lead Timothy Spall make full use of their canvas, creating a sprawling portrayal of a wonderfully messy personality.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Mr. Turner manages to illuminate that nexus between biography and art with elegant understatement.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
With his incomparable Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh continues to make other directors look simpleminded.

Name : Sasha Stone / Alias : TheWrap
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.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
A portrait of the artist as visionary oddball, for whom life was an endless source of both beauty and the irritating distractions blocking his view of said beauty.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
"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.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Mr. Turner" is a rich portrait of England at a particularly scabrous period.

Name : Katie Kilkenny / Alias : The Atlantic
A gorgeous, important film.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A vacuous endurance test about an abstract loser.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
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.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Mr. Turner" is a mighty work of critical imagination, a loving, unsentimental portrait of a rare creative soul.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Thanks to this brave and gutsy actress' overwhelming candor and sincerity, you go away feeling educated, enlightened and more compassionate than you can possibly imagine.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
If only the movie were as good as [Moore] and Stewart are.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out New York
The rare film possessed with the courage required to shine a light into that abyss knowing full well that down is the only way out.

Name : Deborah Young / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The toll the disease takes on the life of a brilliant linguistics professor is superbly detailed by Julianne Moore in a career-high performance, driving straight to the terror of the disease and its power to wipe out personal certainties and identity.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Losing your mind is a terrible thing to watch, but the splendid acting in "Still Alice" makes it worth the pain.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
Glatzer and Westmoreland don't need to stack the emotional deck on Alice's behalf . They just leave the camera on Moore's beautiful but increasingly faraway face, and our tears come on their own.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Still Alice is a movie that addresses a nightmarish circumstance with calm, compassionate sensitivity.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Still Alice is rarely anything short of compelling, in part because its sense of progression and scale offers such a distinctively unsentimental take on the terminal-countdown tearjerker.

Name : Elizabeth Weitzman / Alias : New York Daily News
"Still Alice" is hampered by both an unimaginative script and ordinary direction, but it's a serious Oscar contender. Why? Because Julianne Moore is in the lead.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Simultaneously rawly realistic and airbrushed.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
With a combination of power and grace, Julianne Moore elevates "Still Alice" above its made-for-cable-television trappings, and delivers one of the more memorable performances of her career.

Name : David Thomson / Alias : The New Republic
Julianne Moore is extraordinary at revealing the gradual loss of memory and confidence, and at showing the hulk of physical persistence that remains after intellect and reference have gone.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
It's a way better movie than it ought to be, but not good enough to escape its pulpy, mendacious roots.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
Julianne Moore guides us through the tragic arc of how it must feel to disappear before one's own eyes, accomplishing one of her most powerful performances by underplaying the scenario .

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Moore has been a fine actress for a long time and "Still Alice" gives her a remarkable role, and the space to truly live it.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Moore's portrayal of 50-year-old Alice Howland, adapted from Lisa Genova's 2007 novel, is one of the best of her career.