New DVDs

DONALD CLARKEand MICHAEL DWYERreview this weeks DVD releases.

CITY OF EMBER ★★★
Directed by Gil Kenan.
Starring Bill Murray, Saoirse Ronan, Harry Treadaway, Tim Robbins, Toby Jones, Martin Landau, Toby Jones, Mary Kay Place, Marianne Jean-Baptiste PG cert

Ronan and Treadaway have adventures in a gloomy, dystopian city run by sleazy Mayor Bill Murray. At a confusingly brisk 95 minutes, City of Emberfeels rushed. But the picture – filmed entirely in Belfast – is rich with eccentric performances from its stellar cast, and overstuffed with seductively musty production design. Worth a glance. DONALD CLARKE

EAGLE EYE ★★
Directed by D J Caruso.
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie 12 cert

LaBeouf, an underachieving copy-shop employee, is framed as a terrorist and drawn into a plot to assassinate the president. Eagle Eyeis undeniably an entertaining piece of work. But the films solution to its (frankly insoluble) conundrums is so absurd the final act works only as comedy. DONALD CLARKE

LINHA DE PASSE ★★
Directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas.
Starring Sandra Corveloni, João Baldasserini, Vinicius de Oliveira 15 cert

This evidently sincere, socially concerned drama dwells on the hard lives of a pregnant single mother and her four teenage sons in Sao Paolo. It's worthy but disappointing, and crucially lacking in narrative precision and emotional engagement. MICHAEL DWYER

INCENDIARY ★
Directed by Sharon Maguire.
Starring Michelle Williams, Ewan McGregor, Matthew Macfadyen, Sidney Johnston 18 cert

From the director of Bridget Jones's Diarycomes an implausibly contrived tale (based on a novel by Chris Cleave) in which Williams gamely struggles to transcend an overwrought script. She plays a woman wracked with guilt and grief for being with her lover (McGregor) when her husband and son are killed in a suicide bombing. MICHAEL DWYER