ROUND UP
Two animated comedies to clue you in on first. A family on a cross-country road trip must contend with a robot uprising in THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES (Blu-ray/DVD, out now). We said: “Every second is drenched in so much visual information you’ll still be spotting jokes on your 20th viewing.” Yes, you could stream it on Netflix, but the Blu-ray version is an extended cut (40 minutes longer!), and comes with a decent spread of bonuses, including a commentary track, a short, eight deleted scenes, and kid-friendly featurettes on making cupcakes and sock puppets. A nerdy kid from a poor family is given an eccentric, malfunctioning robot in RON’S GONE WRONG (Blu-ray/DVD, out now), co-written by The Day Today veteran Peter Baynham. We said: “While not as visually interesting or polished as Big Hero and The Mitchells vs The Machines, it more than makes up for that with a sharp, unmistakably British edge.” Bonuses include a light-hearted chat between voice actors Jack Grazer and Zach Galifianakis about their differing attitudes to technology. SEANCE (Blu-ray/DVD, 10 January) is the latest horror movie to shift from Shudder to shiny disc. A pack of bullies at a posh girls’ school hold a seance to summon the school ghost. Splashy gore ensues, naturally. First-time director Simon Barrett previously wrote You’re Next and The Guest, so we had high hopes for this one, but our reviewer was unimpressed. We said: “The dialogue’s flat, the visual style drab, the misdirection seriously half-arsed.” Yikes.