question: Herbie: Fully Loaded is a decent kids movie that is pretty undemanding for adult viewers.

numbered reviews: 1. This Herbie is loaded all right. Unfortunately, it's with spare parts from dozens of other equally mediocre underdog sports films.
2. I personally did not hoot or chortle or chuckle or holler or wonder, not once.
3. It's a silly, fun, non-offensive, fluffball of a movie...
4. [Robinson's] fun permeates the entire film, and it's irresistibly infectious.
5. Fully Loaded adds up to little more than a cynical marriage of marketable commodities -- Lohan, NASCAR and the durably profitable Bug himself.
6. While Fully Loaded doesn't have much for grown-ups who think characters need dimensions or a good story requires an unexpected turn or two, it offers a nice pit stop of nostalgic memories.
7. As serviceable an introduction as any to the notion of a sentient set of wheels.
8. Five credited writers have managed to complete the script without a single surprise and with a couple of odd omissions.
9. But for all this pretense toward plot, really, Herbie's point is NASCAR and commercial tie-ins.
10. A paint-by-numbers script means that Herbie: Fully Loaded, despite its dying to please four-wheeled star, often comes up flat.


question: Lacking scares or psychological insight, Captivity is a distasteful entry in the 'torture porn' subgenre.

numbered reviews: 1. A spirit-sapping exercise in female degradation fantasy.
2. Does exactly what it says on the tin, grabbing viewers unawares and keeping them in its thrall for an hour and a half of non-stop, heart-pounding exploitation kicks.
3. The film's clunky point-of-view shift and obviously re-shot climax are likely to have you choking in disbelief.
4. Torture junkies should remember it's only four months to Saw IV -- so you can afford to avoid Captivity.
5. A film of two halves, while the first is original, bleak and psychologically disturbing, the second couldn't be more conventional if it tried. By the end, we're the ones feeling like we've been drugged and duped - into watching this nonsense.
6. Joffe and his screenwriter Larry Cohen deserve a little credit for pointing up the psychological horrors where they can, but Captivity is still a grubby, exploitative film with an extremely guessable twist and universally dull performances.
7. The film itself is a very sorry and unthrilling piece of nastiness, peddling some pretty crass nonsense about what it imagines to be female psychology.
8. Roland Joffé's feeble attempt to swing with the latest horror-flick fashion for gratuitous sensation is embarrassing
9. The film itself is sordid, unpleasant viewing, as promised, yet more tedious than terrifying.
10. Some inventive individual moments aside, Captivity is off-puttingly derivative and clumsily written.


question: As fascinating as it is provocative, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks presents another documentary triumph for director Alex Gibney, as well as a troubling look at one of the more meaningful issues of our time.

numbered reviews: 1. The range of Gibney's subjects, the rigour of his research and the complexity of his questions make We Steal Secrets breathlessly compelling, but it's the moments of psychological probing that haunt the most.
2. This thorough, engrossing film shows how idealistic Aussie hacker Julian Assange took on the might of the US, exposing their military and diplomatic misconduct, then allowed his own murky personal life to tarnish his credibility.
3. In truth, there's little in Alex Gibney's film that won't be familiar to attentive news watchers, but this skilled documentarian has mastered the art of condensing a vast and complex amount of information into a gripping and entertaining package.
4. This is an expertly organised documentary; Gibney's always are.
5. This is saying something important. Check your Facebook settings.
6. With a subject matter that oddly feels both timely and out-of-date, this documentary is packed with telling details about WikiLeaks, Although it gets muddy as it delves into the lives of founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Bradley Manning.
7. A thorough and decently intentioned work, though it accepts a little too glibly the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger line against Assange: that he is a fascinating radical who simply became a paranoid authoritarian.
8. We Steal Secrets is much concerned with conspiracy theories and may well wind up fuelling new ones.
9. Alex Gibney adds to his forensic examinations of Enron and Abu Ghraib with another fine documentary.
10. Noxious government activities may warrant exposure, but Gibney points out that the whistleblowers can be pretty flawed too.


question: The Corporation is a satisfyingly dense, thought-provoking rebuttal to some of capitalism's central arguments.

numbered reviews:
1. There's at least one great hour of filmmaking in The Corporation.
2. Far too often, watching The Corporation is like watching someone deliver a lengthy book report, with constant repetition of themes and an unfortunate tendency to state the obvious.
3. A polemic that's alternately depressing, enlightening and alarming, but it's also unwieldy and unfocused.
4. Utterly fascinating, an exhaustive and engaging study of business as it has evolved since the Civil War.
5. This documentary's extra-long running time and a narrator who sounds like a sedated Star Trek computer won't win many converts.
6. The rare movie that sets out to alter the audience's consciousness -- and succeeds.
7. A staggering number of interviews and piles of footage both stock and new provide insight and provoke thought, and the whole thing's pretty darn entertaining, too.
8. Corporations are out to get you, and you need to be afraid. You need to lock your back door at night and keep a gun under your pillow.
9. The most fascinating interviews are the ones that make you scratch your head and ask, 'How do these people sleep at night?'
10. This is all rigorous, challenging stuff.