Fare Change

If you’ve grown tired of summer movies featuring men in black, men in loincloths, men in bat suits, rampaging dinosaurs and aliens, you might check out these art-house and foreign films currently available on video.

A definite must-see is 1972’s “Bleak Moments” (Water Bearer, $60), which marks Mike Leigh’s (“Secrets & Lies”) feature film directorial debut.

Leigh imbues this haunting drama with his trademark realism and humor and elicits a touching performance from Anne Raitt as a bored secretary--with a penchant for sherry--who has grown tired and frustrated with taking care of her 29-year-old retarded sister. Eric Allan plays a sexually repressed schoolteacher with whom Raitt has a brief fling, and Mike Bradwell is amusing as an eccentric guitar-playing hippie who briefly is a tenant in her garage.

Water Bearer also has eight of Leigh’s early telefilms on video ($30 each): “Abigail’s Party,” “Four Days in July,” “Grown Ups,” “Hard Labour,” “Home Sweet Home,” “Kiss of Death,” “Nuts in May” and “Who’s Who.”

Home Vision’s latest releases include two films by the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who recently celebrated his 79th birthday.

Harriet Andersson, Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand headline 1955’s “Dreams” ($30), which was named one of the top foreign films of that year by Time magazine. Though “Dreams” is minor Bergman, it’s still an interesting, well-acted drama about the loves, dreams, ambitions and desires of a model-agency owner and one of her top models.

Bergman’s 1980 film “From the Life of the Marionettes” ($30) was made while he was in exile in Germany. One of his most disturbing and shocking films, “Marionettes” focuses on a troubled couple, Peter and Katerina (who both appeared in Bergman’s classic “Scenes From a Marriage”), who are trapped in an antagonistic, loveless marriage. Peter, who dreams of killing his wife, ends up brutally murdering a prostitute, also named Katerina. Robert Atzorn, Christine Buchegger and Martin Benrath star.

To order the Bergman films call 800-826-FILM.

New from Fox Lorber are two foreign-language classics ($30): Costa-Gavras’ “Z” and Lina Wertmuller’s “The Seduction of Mimi.”

“Z,” from 1969, was the first foreign-language film since 1938’s “Grand Illusion” to be nominated for the best picture Oscar. The heart-pounding political thriller, which won Oscars for foreign film and editing, is based on the 1963 assassination of Gregorios Lambrakis, a Greek doctor and humanist. Yves Montand, Jean-Louise Trintigant and Irene Papas star. The digitally remastered print is being offered in the letterbox format.

The 1972 Italian import “The Seduction of Mimi” is a hysterical farce about a Sicilian laborer (beagle-eyed Giancarlo Giannini) who gets himself in political and sexual trouble. You won’t believe the classic scene in which Giannini seduces an extremely obese woman. Mariangela Melato also stars. Wertmuller won the best director award at Cannes for “Mimi.” The film was later remade in the U.S. as “Which Way Is Up?” with Richard Pryor.

Also new from Fox Lorber is the provocative French film “Bye-Bye,” which received the Youth Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The drama, depicting modern-day tenement and street life in Marseilles, was directed by Karim Dridi.

And for those who watch strictly escapist fare during the summer, Warner Home Video has just released three of the campiest, cheesiest sci-fi flicks from the ‘50s ($15 each): “Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman,” “Queen of Outer Space,” which stars Zsa Zsa Gabor, and “World Without End.”