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Capsule reviews of films opening this week:
"The Box" — Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a moral dilemma: Press a button on a mysterious container and they'll get $1 million, but someone they don't know will die. What button, on whose box, did writer-director Richard Kelly push to get the money to make this awful, preposterous thriller? Diaz and Marsden play a couple offered the box, button and deal described above by a grotesquely disfigured stranger (Frank Langella). Adapting this mess from a Richard Matheson story that was the basis of a 1980s "Twilight Zone" episode, Kelly roams ponderously beyond that tale's snappy ending, into an installment of "The X-Files" in its post-Mulder death throes, when the show turned to rot. Kelly piles on government conspiracies, abductions, mobs of automatons controlled by forces beyond human comprehension. The hammy dialogue and hammier performances eventually start to provoke laughs as the movie shambles toward its overdue demise. PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence and disturbing images. Running time: 115 minutes. One star out of four.
_ David Germain, AP Movie Writer
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