Phoenix rises to challenge

This week sees the release of the two-disc special edition of Walk The Line, the acclaimed biopic of Johnny Cash, along with Disney's re-hashed version of Chicken Little, Woody Allen's first London film Match Point and a confronting insight into Irish poverty.

Walk The Line (two-disc edition)
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 12, £24.99
Review: Nina Caplan
*****

Joaquin Phoenix bravely takes on the mantle of the Man In Black in Walk The Line, James Mangold's terrific Johnny Cash biopic. Johnny's beloved brother dies young; crippled by guilt and a contemptuous father, the young singer sets out to see what handicaps he can add to his allotted load. He marries a spoilt young woman with whom he has nothing in common, has three children with her and then takes up pill-popping and boozing fulltime.

But this screenplay is clever enough to suggest his resulting feelings of airlessness were vital to his music - Cash sang about prisons at every chance, after all. He falls for June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) and their bumpy romance is the story's meat - with T Bone Burnett's soundtrack as gravy. Excellent.

Extras: Mangold commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes, Cash jukebox.

Chicken Little
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, U, £19.99
Review: Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
****

The 'pimp my fairy tale' approach worked magic for Dreamworks's Shrek; Disney's catch-up attempt, Chicken Little, is an unpredictably exuberant kiddie animation. The original adventure is almost too slight: bespectacled little nerd Chicken Little (voiced by Zach Braff) causes widespread panic when he mistakes a falling acorn for a piece of the sky.

The new twist is (and Hans Christian Andersen would be scratching his beard in confusion) that a square of the sky really has fallen out. Because it's an alien space pod. So Little and his gang attempt to save their barnyard world. Everything happens at a Roadrunner pace perfect for high-on-sugar little 'uns, and with enough emotion to ensure parents feel they're consuming more than a savvy, million-dollar marketing strategy with end credits.

Extras: Deleted scenes, game, featurette, karaoke singalong.

Pavee Lackeen
Verve Pictures, 15, £19.99
Review: Nina Caplan
***

British photographer Perry Ogden didn't take an obvious route to the film director's chair; he started by photographing Dublin's despised and penurious traveller community and ended up putting them into a loosely fictionalised film about themselves. Pavee Lackeen means traveller girl and Winnie (Winnie Maughan), ten years old and living with an awful lot of family in a trailer on a dirty Dublin side road, is an unusual heroine. Bullied at school, she is justifiably confused, her limited options in a booming city just beginning to dawn on her.

But she's no angel - stealing sweets and sniffing glue - and nor is this a straightforward tale of woe. There's much kindness but that's no substitute for hope. Although Ogden's semi-doc style can be overbearingly ugly and the dialogue hard to catch, Winnie is brightly, insistently watchable and her predicament genuinely moving.

Extras: Director and writer commentary, Ogden photos.

Match Point
Warner Home Video, 12, £17.99
Review: Nina Caplan
****

Eternal New Yorker Woody Allen made Match Point in England, and this flash of courage has paid off: this is a marked improvement on his last clutch of self-absorbed films. Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is an impecunious, social climbing Irish tennis pro who has the good luck and good looks to attract rich Chloe (Emily Mortimer).

He receives a warm welcome into her family from mum and dad (Penelope Wilton and Brian Cox) but his plans are thrown off kilter by Nola (Scarlett Johansson), the equally scheming American engaged to Chloe's brother, whose charms he finds hard to resist.