To be released tomorrow on DVD

Everlasting Moments presents a paradox: It's a small, graceful epic. Set in southern Sweden during the first decades of the 20th century, the movie picks one face out of the tenement crowd: Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen), impoverished, overworked, saddled with a brutish husband named Sigge (Mikael Persbrandt) and a growing gaggle of children. Then it hands her a still camera and watches as, to Maria's own great shock, her creative fires are lit.

The camera — a small accordion model called a Contessa — is won by Maria in a lottery and packed away at the back of a closet. Years later, she pulls it out only to try to sell it to a local photographer, since Sigge is on strike at the shipyard and spending what little money they have on drink and other women. The photographer, a cultured older man named Pedersen (Jesper Christensen), instead shows her how to work the camera and sends her home to snap a few pictures.

She's good at it. In fact, she's a natural. When a neighbor woman asks her to photograph her dead daughter, the shot Maria keeps for herself is a spooky image of the corpse laid on a table as local children jostle to peer in at a nearby window. The Contessa comes to represent freedom to this shy, self-effacing woman — the possibility of independent life, of a soul-match with the gentle photographer — and this fills her with both joy and fear. It's 1907, after all, and Maria is a 19th-century woman. Certain things aren't done.

Everlasting Moments is beautifully attuned to tectonic shifts in the culture even as it attends to this one small life. We see Maria's marriage and art through the eyes of her oldest daughter, Maja (played by Nellie Almgren as a girl and Callin Öhrvall as a teenager; both have the wide, clear face of a Vermeer subject). Sigge, is a chauvinistic blowhard whose bullying grows more intense as he sees his wife step gingerly into the modern world. Both he and Maja sense what Maria won't admit to herself and what the photographer already knows: Art and independence can never be packed away again.

“Not everyone is endowed with the gift of seeing,” Pedersen tells his pupil, and that's the true subject of Everlasting Moments: seeing, and preserving what is seen. It's a matter clearly close to the heart of director Jan Troell, who at 77 is the reigning grand old man of Swedish cinema. (U.S. moviegoers know him best for his Oscar-nominated The Emigrants and The New Land in the early 1970s; the new film, based loosely on a true story, was Sweden's submission for the 2009 Academy Award.)

Everlasting Moments is quiet, observant, and intensely moving whenever Heiskanen is on screen, and it has a valedictory sweep that feels like a summing up. Troell lovingly re-creates a time when socialism and Charlie Chaplin movies represented the ways forward, and he anchors his social panorama in the meek, stubborn stare of an unnoticed woman possessed with looking at everything. Grade: A

Other recents movies to be released tomorrow on DVD:

The White Ribbon (2009) At a rural school in northern Germany in 1913, a form of ritual punishment has major consequences for students and faculty. But the practice may have bigger repercussions on the German school system and even on the growth of fascism. German writer-director Michael Haneke seems to thrive on frustration in all its forms. His characters are habitually stuck in unpleasantness or awkwardness or even outright peril, with no means of escape or release or even, quite often, any clue as to what is happening to them or why. His films move quietly and obliquely, with long stillnesses and misdirections; they have no obvious “good guys” for us to care about; they obdurately avoid closure or explanation. And his view of humanity is as dark as that of any artist since Goya: We are, per Haneke, a selfish, petty, mean and cruel species, driven by subrational impulses, given to spite and hollowness and malice, indifferent to the effects that our pursuit of our personal needs and desires has on others. For all those cautions, though, Haneke is an indisputable master. In his best films — Caché, The Piano Teacher, the German-language Funny Games — he can draw viewers through a terrifying gamut of emotions, confusions and doubts, imposing the painful experiences of his characters on his audience. You can squirm, for hours, at a Haneke film, then turn off the DVD in relief but find, damnably, that you can’t forget any of it, sometimes for years. It may not be pleasant, but it is most definitely art. The White Ribbon is, in some ways, absolutely prime Haneke and in others a departure. As befits the man who hid a possible solution to the riddle of Caché in an apparently meaningless shot before the final credits, Haneke only hints at what is really happening — which, of course, will drive most audiences batty and is, of course, exactly what he wishes. And while there are clues enough for a reasonable solution to the mystery to be proposed, the characters — particularly our protagonist, the schoolteacher — never seem to pick up on them, and Haneke doesn’t exactly deliver them up unambiguously to the viewer. All of this is packaged in a creamy black-and-white, with impeccable period décor and wardrobe and a cast full of utterly credible performers. Indeed, the tension between the comely and comforting manner of the film and its undecided and beguiling content is, arguably, Haneke’s signature touch. By reeling backward nearly a century to find people like the ones we’ve seen in other of his works, he seems to be affirming his dim view of us. The comfort, insofar as the film affords any, is the knowledge that such adept art can arise from a depiction of such unworthy souls. Grade: A-minus

The Warlords (2010) After emerging as the sole survivor in a battle between revolutionary troops and the Qing army, wounded Qing Gen. Ma Xinyi (Jet Li) is nursed back to heath by lovely peasant Lian (Jinglei Xu). After he recovers, Xinyi swears blood brotherhood with bandits Cao Er-Hu (Andy Lau) and Zhang Wen-Xiang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), and the trio wages a seemingly impossible campaign against the revolutionaries.With its thousands of years of bloody history — and tens of thousands of low-cost extras — China has long been a reliable source of battlefield epics. But The Warlords, a China/Hong Kong co-production, is more than just reliable. It's a surprisingly nuanced and sober tale of brotherhood and betrayal. It isn't principally a love story, but that element does give the movie unexpected emotional depth. Jet Li fans may be surprised to see their hero here looking weathered and, frankly, old. The final scene does offer the actor a showcase for his kung fu skills, but his grim, largely internalized determination is more important to the movie's success than any chops or kicks. The Warlords doesn't make fighting look graceful, easy or fun — and that's a mark of its courage. Grade: A-minus

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) Fueled by energy drinks, vodka and nostalgia for their younger, wilder days, a group of aging best friends use a hot tub to travel back in time to 1987, where they get the chance to relive the best year of their lives. The fact that this guys-gone-wild comedy is actually pretty damn funny — in an admittedly dumb-funny way — is as much a surprise as the time/space twist of its title. A perfect collision of high-energy and high-concept, Hot Tub benefits from near-complete lack of inhibition and a total immersion in dude-centered shenanigans. It knows the genres it's riffing on and how to up the ante. And in Rob Corddry's hilariously manic turn, it has the most memorable showcase for a goofball co-star since Michael Keaton in 1982's Night Shift. Though it towel-snaps everything from Peggy Sue Got Married and The Terminator to Back to the Future (Crispin Glover as a weirdo bellboy is a nice touch), what Hot Tub Time Machine savors most is its own insanity. As with the best parties, the cast seems happy to be hosting. John Cusack hasn't been this loose since his own ‘80s movies, and Craig Robinson is great at being a sensitive galoot. But Corddry, the former Daily Show regular and perpetual side player, roars in like the love child of Jack Nicholson and James Carville. He makes the movie his own sure thing. Grade: B-plus

It Came From Kuchar (2010) Director Jennifer M. Kroot examines the works of filmmaking twins Mike Kuchar and George Kuchar and explores the undeniable influence they've had on independent directors such as Atom Egoyan, John Waters and Buck Henry. The portrait that emerges is affectionate and fascinating. The brothers themselves are un-self-consciously talkative, unassumingly odd and frequently very funny. Kroot’s documentary, while more conventional in tone and structure than anything her subjects have ever done, is nonetheless a valuable and intelligent introduction and tribute to their anarchic, uncompromising and absolutely peculiar genius. Grade: B

The Eclipse (2010) In this supernatural thriller written and directed by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, Ciarán Hinds stars as a recent widower who begins to sense that a mysterious presence is sharing his house. Not surprisingly, the film unfolds with the muted allusiveness of the best short fiction and the attention to character of a good play. As cinema, it is less sure of itself, but the trade-off feels fair. Above all, the film is lucky to have one of the better character actors in recent movies in a lead role: Hinds’ great, dour coffin of a face fits the role he plays here. The filmmakers work hard to sustain a tone of quiet watchfulness, and sometimes the story seems in danger of floating away, only to be brought up short by grisly shock tactics. A more experienced director might have navigated the shifts better, but also might not trust his characters and themes to reveal themselves with such lambent grace. The town and surrounding landscapes make a gorgeous setting — the Irish tourist board will be happy — but at its heart The Eclipse is a small, contained ghost story about a haunted man learning to exorcise himself. Grade: B-minus

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) After he discovers that he's the son of the Greek god Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), 12-year-old Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) strikes out to rescue his mortal mother and negotiate a peace treaty between his father, Zeus (Sean Bean), and Hades (Steve Coogan). Punctuated by painful dialogue and high-camp celeb cameos (notably Uma Thurman as a vampy Medusa), the ensuing quest has all the CGI sorcery of a Harry Potter picture, but none of the magic. Grade: C-plus

Don McKay (2010) At the urging of his ex-girlfriend, Sonny (Elisabeth Shue), who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, high school janitor Don McKay (Thomas Haden Church) returns to his hometown for the first time in 25 years and finds himself ensnared in a web of conspiracy, deception and murder. Quirky goes a surprisingly long way before stalling out in this film, an oddball comedy with the knowing, festering heart of a neo-noir. Shue bounces from one narrative right angle to the next with melodramatic vigor, laughing and weeping and tugging at the increasingly bewildered Don, who seems happy to yield. Although an early shot of Don cleaning up a generous pool of blood while on the job broadly foreshadows the violence to come, writer-director Jake Goldberger tends to let his actors do most of the work. There might not be much going on in terms of framing and camera moves, but when you pack your movie with performers like Church, Melissa Leo, James Rebhorn and Keith David, all with faces and deliveries that can slide easily between comedy and menace, you’re holding a full house. Certainly it’s a bit of a self-flattering kick to see Church and the rest of this likable cast revisiting the twisted themes from classic noir. Goldberger has a direct reference to the shopping scene in Double Indemnity during which Barbara Stanwyck plots with Fred MacMurray. You recognize the allusion in this film, smile (or not) and wait for the payoff. The problem is that for the reference to have any meaningful resonance you need to be familiar with the Billy Wilder film, which in turn sets up a level of expectation that Goldberger and the cast can’t meet. If you don’t recognize the reference, well, you might wonder what Don sees in this dame with the wild eyes and endless supply of negligees. The answer is surprisingly moving and suggests that Goldberger once envisioned telling a very different movie. Grade: C-plus

The Crazies (2010) When a plane crashes in a small town, a secret biological weapon is released. As the toxic substance infiltrates the local water system, some residents become gravely ill, while others descend into homicidal madness.Whatever contemporary resonance this film might have had, even with the paranoid wingnut crowd, gets lost in a procession of competent—and sometimes slightly better than competent—shocks. Director Breck Eisner’s last film, 2005’s Sahara, suggested he didn’t have the chops to make a full-scale blockbuster, but he clearly has an eye for eerie compositions and some intriguing ideas about how to create scares. Yet for every inventively staged scene — most notably a nightmarish trip through a car wash — The Crazies throws in a couple of the fake-out shocks and cheap jolts that have plagued modern horror movies for decades. Another problem: The crazies themselves could be a lot more terrifying. Without the rotting ickiness of proper zombies, they just seem like methed-out Iowans looking for a fix. That’s scary, but not scary enough. Grade: C-plus

The Cartel (2010) Director Bob Bowdon takes aim at America's public school system, revealing a self-serving network of wasteful cartels that squander funding and fail to deliver when it comes to academic testing and basic skills. A mind-numbing barrage of random television clips and trash-talking heads, The Cartel purports to be a documentary about the American public school system. In reality, however, it’s a bludgeoning rant against a single state — New Jersey — which it presents as a closed loop of Mercedes-owning administrators, obstructive teachers’ unions and corrupt school boards. Bowdon concludes that increased financing for public schools is unlikely to raise reading scores but is almost certain to raise the luxury-car quotient in administrator parking lots. The evidence may be verifiable (and even depressingly familiar), but its complex underpinnings are given short shrift. Instead Bowdon, a New Jersey-based television reporter, employs an exposé-style narration lousy with ad hominems and emotional coercion. Visually horrid and intellectually unsatisfying, The Cartel demonstrates only that its maker has even more to learn about assembling a film than about constructing an argument. Grade: C

Creation (2010) Paul Bettany stars as Charles Darwin in this drama that captures the scientist in a period of intense mourning — and expansive intellectual discovery — following the untimely death of his young daughter. This interweaving of science and real life sounds suspiciously like a Hollywood plot to humanize that old guy with the long gray beard. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. After all, who doesn't want to know more about the softer side of the man still causing a ruckus at school-board meetings across the land more than a century after his death? But the movie has an appalling narrative structure. Creation is an exercise in the maudlin that would try the emotional patience of even someone who can tear up at the right television commercial (guilty as charged). So, what of the acting? You'd hope for a display of piercing intelligence from Bettany, but the main impression we get is of physical discomfort. Bettany's Darwin always has a chill or a case of the sweats, tummy ache or trembling hands. He has our sympathy initially, but the movie bathes us in such general despair that the natural instinct soon becomes a desire to tell him to buck up. We do believe in survival of the fittest, after all. Grade: C

When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors (2010) Composed entirely of original footage from 1966-71, Tom DiCillo's documentary about The Doors filters truth from myth, reveals new insight into Jim Morrison and his bandmates, and captures the essence of the iconic rock group and the era. DiCillo does his damnedest to make his documentary about The Doors unwatchable, but the subject matter is too compelling — and the vintage footage too electrifying — to be completely worthless. Half the time, there’s no compelling reason to look at the screen during When You're Strange, especially since instead of interviews with the principals, DiCillo has Johnny Depp reading narration that alternates unnecessary play-by-play and banal observations. To his credit, DiCillo doesn’t overlook Morrison’s booze-fueled unreliability issues, nor does he shortchange the qualities that made The Doors special. But aside from the too-broad context of the ’60s youth movement — and brief mentions of how Morrison idolized Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra — DiCillo doesn’t frame The Doors properly. He treats them as though they were sui generis, not part of a whole Los Angeles music scene filled with similar — and in some cases, superior — bands. It’s as though grounding The Doors in reality would detract from DiCillo’s formal strategy: combining fawning recitations from an audiobook with the kind of amateurish fan-made montages readily available on YouTube. Grade: D-plus

Stolen (2010) Investigating the mystery behind the mummified, half-century-old remains of a young boy found in a box at a construction site gives a detective (Jon Hamm) key clues to his own son's disappearance eight years before. The movie plays like a middling episode of Law & Order: SVU, drawn out an extra half-hour and embellished with pretentious literary and cinematic flourishes. The movie flashes back and forth between the present and the late 1950s. The ’50s characters are so sinister that you expect Stolen to turn into a horror film. It finally does, in a scene near the end when Tom encounters a jailbird named Diploma (James Van Der Beek). In outlandish makeup, Van Der Beek suggests a mug shot of an unstrung Nick Nolte with witchy hair and a Hannibal Lecter attitude. Grade: D-plus