roundup

An unhappy nine-year-old living in the wilds of Texas with her junkie dad creates an elaborate fantasy world in Terry Gilliam’s 2005 feature TIDELAND (out now, Blu-ray). The new extras on this HD debut include a commentary by the director and his co-writer. We said: “Gilliam’s attempt to craft a demented gothic fairy tale about childhood innocence rapidly falls to pieces… a non-stop cavalcade of overplayed strangeness that’s painful to watch.” Dreamlike strangeness is the order of the day in 1967 Czechoslovakian New Wave film THE MIRACULOUS VIRGIN (20 August, Blu-ray/DVD), which comments on the Slovak surrealist movement of the ’40s as various male artists and poets become infatuated with a female student. The non-sequitur structure is baffling, but it’s beautifully photographed, with no shortage of striking imagery: a painter jumping through a mirror; women sitting on stocking-legged stools; a draped sculpture bursting into flame. Finally, expect rapid-fire “top bantz” in FANGED UP (out now, DVD/download), a British horror-comedy starring rape joke-cracking “comedian” Daniel O’Reilly (aka Dapper Laughs) as a Cockney wide-boy who ends up in a prison run by vampires. The humour’s hit and miss, but some half-decent character work, OTT performances by the likes of Misfits’ Lauren Socha and some inventive gore mean it’s a step above Lesbian Vampire Killers. Finally, Netflix-phobes may like to know that season one of The Expanse is now available on disc; American Horror Story: Cult follows suit on 27 August.