Jersey Boys

The rise and fall of the 1960s singing group the Four Seasons, as directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (based on their Tony Award-winning jukebox musical). The movie could stand to be at least 20 minutes shorter, and there's a pileup of endings in the last scenes. Also, it suffers from a Catch-22: Almost nobody who wasn't there remembers or cares about the Four Seasons, while those who were will be annoyed by the movie's many anachronisms and false notes in the period look. Still, the music is first-rate and the acting even better, including star-making performances by John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli and Vincent Piazza as Tommy DeVito. Erich Bergen and Michael Lomenda, also excellent, play the other two Seasons, and Christopher Walken adds heft as a benign mob boss.