What should we expect from a movie "based on a true story"?

"I’d assumed it was understood that Hollywood would emphasize the 'story' aspects of history, and that a distortion of real events, on screen, would hardly constitute a lie," Francine Prose, who comes out with a book every time you turn around, and an article every time you take a breath, writes in the New York Review of Books.

And further: "So perhaps the real source of controversy isn’t the question of truth in historical films, but rather the subjects of historical films—and how vexed those subjects are." Commentators have spilled ink (and taken up cyberspace) criticizing Selma and The Imitation Game, but have barely touched Mr. Turner. Fewer people saw the latter, she notes. And fewer people get all het up about inaccuracy in the biopic of a long-dead British landscape painter. Who grunts.