Planes, car races lead DVD releases

An airborne thriller starring Jodie Foster leads off this collection of newly released DVDs.

• "Flightplan" (Touchstone, 2005, PG-13, $29.99). Foster is great in this intense yarn, and her steely performance holds the film together, even when the plot threatens to implode near the end. She's a burned-out aircraft engineer who's been recently widowed and is traveling with her young daughter on a long flight in a plane she helped design.

But after napping, she awakens to find her daughter gone and no one on the plane seems to have seen her. Soon she's at odds with the flight crew and an air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) while searching frantically for her child. But she's eventually accused of being delusional and the existence of her daughter is in doubt.

The resolution is tenuous, but the film is, on the whole, an entertaining ride, with Foster in peak form.

Extras: Separate widescreen and full-frame editions, audio commentary, making-of featurettes, language and subtitle options (English, French, Spanish), chapters.

• "Educating Rita" (Columbia, 1983, PG, $14.94). Spunky British actress Julie Walters first caught our attention in this adaptation of a popular English play. The film is quite talky, and a bit stagey in places, but it's also quite charming. Walters is wonderful as a woman who feels cloistered in her domestic life, so she changes her name from "Susan" to "Rita" and attends a university, where she's taken under the wing of a burned-out, alcoholic literature teacher — brilliantly realized by Michael Caine.

Extras: Widescreen, language and subtitle options (English, French), chapters.

• "Down and Derby" (Excel, 2005, PG, $26.99). Utah filmmaker Eric Hendershot is behind this kids film about some neighborhood fathers getting a little too enthused about their kids' Pinewood Derby toy-car competition, driving each other and their wives to distraction. It's no earth-shaker, but it's a pleasant enough family film, with life lessons being learned. Greg Germann has the lead as an overzealous father, Lauren Holly is his long-suffering wife and the late Pat Morita shows up for a few scenes. And there are lots of local actors in support.

Extras: Widescreen, deleted scenes, featurette, trailers, optional English subtitles, chapters.