Adapted from a bestseller by Jodi Picoult that I hope to never read, My Sister's Keeper starts with an intriguing premise. Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric conceive a child to keep her leukemic older sister (Sofia Vassilieva) alive through transfusions and transplants. But when Anna (Abigail Breslin), 11, hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue for the right to her own body, all hell breaks loose. So does the movie. Though the actors give it a go, notably Diaz, who plays the "crazy bitch" mom with no-bull restraint, director Nick Cassavetes shifts to Notebook mode and jerks tears at every turn. Almost everyone Anna encounters has his or her own tragedy (cancer, epilepsy, a dead child). And each story is set to treacly songs (cue "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries") that make the blood curdle. The infuriating cop–out ending reduces the premise to mush. I wanted to scream. Here goes: Arghh!

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."