The action movie equivalent of the guy who, a couple years on from university, is still concerned with the sort of empty, cock-of-the-walk masculine posturing typically associated with teenagers, Olympus Has Fallen, or “Die Hard in the White House” as the pitch meeting surely went, attempts to graft geopolitical seriousness onto a swaggering siege tale, to ridiculous effect. A slick technical packaging by director Antoine Fuqua can’t offset the lumbering plotting and patchwork quality of producer-star Gerard Butler‘s vehicle — the first of two movies this year in which a Secret Service agent has to rescue the American president from a paramilitary takeover of his highly fortified residence. (The other, Sony’s White House Down, starring Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum, arrives this June). The thrill of the original Die Hard, the filmmakers seem to have forgotten, lay truly more in its brains than brawn. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (FilmDistrict, R, 117 minutes)

Inspired by Philip Shabecoff’s book of the same name, the ambitious documentary A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet takes as its subject the very history of American environmentalism. From the foundings of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club as well as the inaugural Earth Day through the Love Canal disaster, fights for global rain forests and the counter-revolution pushback of industry during the Reagan Administration on to climate change and more, director Mark Kitchell’s wide-ranging yet compelling film — essential viewing for those with a social conscience, and an interest in where we’ve been and where we’re going in the struggle for a better, sustainable planet Earth — showcases a rare and cogent macro-portrait skill unmatched in the arena of this topic since the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (First Run Features, unrated, 101 minutes)