A movie about manufactured consensus would be a vital public service. But "Merchants of Doubt" isn't quite that movie.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 9, 2015

...largely preaches to the left-leaning choir with plenty of hissable sound bites and a generally glib tone that undercuts an otherwise understandable sense of righteous indignation.

| Apr 8, 2015

Aside from an eye-opening investigation of useless and harmful flame repellents pumped into furniture, it sticks to climate change without broadening its scope to other examples of corporate spinning, which must be plentiful.

| Original Score: B- | Apr 3, 2015

A compelling expos of professional propagandists, though the movie itself is not agenda-free.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 2, 2015

You leave "Merchants of Doubt," as you do any good muckraking documentary, both fascinated and enraged ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2015

Merchants of Doubt shouldn't be a hard sell. The fact that it is should make you very mad.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 26, 2015

Subtle, it's not. But it is effective.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 19, 2015

That money is the root of all evil is hardly news, but Kenner's documentary is more than just a plaint against corruption. He is, for one thing, a first-rate filmmaker.

| Mar 16, 2015

When "Merchants of Doubt" isn't making you mad, it makes you very simply, and overwhelmingly, sad.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2015

When (and before) the end credits roll, you will probably feel a sense of outrage - and helplessness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2015

To quote one damning corporate memo seen in the film: "Doubt is our product."

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2015

The jury's back in on the PR hacks who sow confusion and manufacture ambiguity in the public debate over climate change: they're guilty of crimes against not only science and their fellow citizens but humanity itself.

| Mar 12, 2015

What Merchants of Doubt makes clearest is that these issues shouldn't be political.

| Mar 6, 2015

The fact that some of these spinmeisters proudly base their method on the machinations of tobacco-industry lobbyists is doubly damning.

| Original Score: B | Mar 6, 2015

The subject of Merchants of Doubt is the catastrophe of global climate change, which is engulfing us even faster than predicted. Kenner doesn't waste time proving, in this terse, brilliantly argued movie, that climate change is happening.

| Mar 6, 2015

This is a huge, unwieldy topic, and the filmmakers do an admirable job of condensing their information and making it comprehensible.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 6, 2015

No matter what you think about tobacco, climate change, or fire retardants, this is an essential film because it addresses the key issue of trust.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 5, 2015

[It] means to make people angry, and to make them think. It will surely do the former. I'd like to think it will do the latter.

| Mar 5, 2015

Informative and infuriating ...

| Mar 5, 2015

In this glossy informational mode of filmmaking, organization is everything, and director Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.) isn't much of a storyteller.

| Original Score: C | Mar 5, 2015