Capsule reviews of films opening this week:

'The Box' (PG-13)(out of four)

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.

'The Men Who Stare at Goats' (PG-13)(out of four)

A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov's romp based on Jon Ronson's amusing nonfiction book about the U.S. military's research into psychic warfare and espionage.

First-time director Heslov crafts a hit-and-miss fictional narrative ornamented with some of the brighter anecdotes Ronson uncovered about efforts to create warrior monks who try to walk through walls or glare animals to death.

Clooney plays a prodigy of this New Age militarism, with Jeff Bridges as his Dude-like mentor, Kevin Spacey as a psychic rival and Ewan McGregor as a reporter uncovering the story amid the war in Iraq. The movie opens with the promise of a Catch-22 or Strangelove-style satire, but while it maintains much of the book's drolly incredulous spirit, the dots of absurdity just don't connect that well.

With "Star Wars" vet McGregor on hand, the repeated Jedi knight references are jarring.

'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire' (R)(out of four)

Director Lee Daniels assembles some of the unlikeliest ingredients -- Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique and a lead actress plucked from an anonymous casting call -- to create a wondrous work of art.

The film isn't easy to watch and will test your tolerance for despicable behavior as a long history of physical abuse and incest unfolds involving an illiterate, obese Harlem schoolgirl.

Yet "Precious" -- both the film and its grandly resilient title character -- will steal your heart. Daniels crafts a story that rises from the depths of despair to a place of genuine hope. Gabourey Sidibe offers a phenomenal screen debut as Precious, who makes an utterly believable and electrifying rise from an urban abyss of ignorance and neglect.

The normally lowbrow Mo'Nique delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Precious' viper of a mother, while great support is provided by Paula Patton, Lenny Kravitz and Carey in a small but honest role. This is great American cinema.