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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"A Christmas Carol" — The time, not just the season, is ripe for a new version of "A Christmas Carol." When Charles Dickens wrote his classic story, it was a cautionary tale to greedy capitalists of the 19th century (Scrooge recalls his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, as "a good man of business."). Dickens' story is about as sturdy a one as we've got — it would be nearly impossible to mar what might be the finest ghost story this side of "Hamlet." Unfortunately, our 2009 version is defined only by its technology. Animated in 3-D, Disney's "A Christmas Carol," directed by Robert Zemeckis, suffocates from its design. Despite (or because of) Zemeckis' approach to using performance-capture animation, the film comes off oddly inanimate. Jim Carrey, playing not just Scrooge but the three ghosts who visit him, clearly has the zest and range for the parts. But he — like the rest of the cast, including Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes — struggles to break through the film's excessive wizardry. PG for scary sequences and images. Running time: 95 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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