Vincent Piazza, Erich Bergen, John Llyod Young, and Michael Lomenda in Jersey BoysJERSEY BOYS

Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood's film version of 2005's still-running Broadway smash, is a big, bizarre, cornball, clever, terrible, wonderful movie. It's hard to fathom what, beyond its inherent appeal, made Eastwood want to take on the project; this bio-musical about 1960s pop sensations the Four Seasons seems so clearly designed for Scorsese that's it's almost some kind of joke that it instead wound up in the hands of a man who, stylistically and temperamentally, is Scorsese's polar opposite. Yet somehow, astonishingly, the damned thing works. Its parts may be stronger than the whole - at least if you're allowed to cherry-pick the parts - but the film is affecting and entertaining and alive, and exudes more sheer joy than any other title on Eastwood's 43-year directing résumé.

Allison Miller in Devil's DueJanuary 17, 10:05 a.m.-ish: If it's January, it must be time for our annual demonic-possession thriller in the guise of a "documentary," and yet it still seems strange to be watching Devil's Due. The devil may be, but a mere two weeks after the release of the latest Paranormal Activity, were we audiences really due for another of these things?

Taylor Schilling and Zac Efron in The Lucky OneTHE LUCKY ONE

Every time I leave a movie version of some Nicholas Sparks novel, I'm relieved if it's not, thus far, the worst movie version of some Nicholas Sparks novel. It's to The Lucky One's good fortune, then, that 2008's Nights in Rodanthe still scrapes the bottom of that particular barrel, because otherwise we might've had a new champion.