Breezes in the heat of summer

Summer serves up a steady diet of one aspiring blockbuster after another, punctuated only occasionally by the promise of something more cerebral. But discerning moviegoers need not despair. Among several art house movies are opening this week in limited release, at least four are worth consideration.

British director Tim Fywell’s debut feature, “I Capture the Castle,” is based on a novel by Dodie Smith, author of “101 Dalmatians,” to which it bears little if any resemblance. The fortress of the title refers to the remote, crumbling British estate to which a writer has moved his family in hopes of breaking his creative block. Money runs out, their benefactor’s American heirs arrive, and plans emerge and go awry. The performance of Romola Garai as the writer’s wise and witty younger daughter Cassandra marks yet another standout for a small British film.

Alexander Rogozhkin’s “The Cuckoo” throws together three strangers who speak different languages with comically illuminating observations of human behavior. At an isolated backwoods hut in Finland at the end of World War II, two enemy soldiers and a woman (a Russian, a Finn and a Lapp) try to make the most of an unusual predicament.

“Northfork,” a sort of modern (set in 1955) frontier fable that premiered in competition at this year’s Sundance film festival, features James Woods, Nick Nolte, Claire Forlani and Daryl Hannah. The third Polish brothers (“Twin Falls, Idaho,” “Jackpot”) film concerns Montana townsfolk forced to move to higher ground because of a giant hydroelectric project and the duplicitous and angelic souls among them. Mark Polish, who co-wrote with director Michael Polish, also appears in the film as part of a father-and-son team overseeing the relocation.

French film aficionados should appreciate director Claude Berri’s “The Housekeeper,” in which Jean-Pierre Bacri and Emilie Dequenne play a recording engineer and the woman he hires to clean his house when his wife dumps him. Needless to say, tension develops, but the result is not entirely predictable.

Having surfaced at festivals over the last 18 months in and out of the U.S., this quartet of very different films -- British, Russian, American and French -- offers respite from blockbuster glut.

Big picnics can be tons of fun, of course, but even between courses of gourmet feasts it’s advisable to pause and cleanse the palate.

-- R. Kinsey Lowe