Two pop culture artifacts from the '50s and '60s serve as the jumping off point for a pair of low-budget dramas that are slipping into theaters this holiday weekend amidst more high-profile fare. On the Road is the long-in-the-works movie version of the seminal Jack Kerouac novel of the same name, the book that has launched a thousand soul-searching road trips in the five decades since its publication in 1957. Set a mere seven years after Kerouac's Beat Generation anthem hit shelves, Not Fade Away -- the feature film debut of The Sopranos mastermind David Chase and the first thing he's made since that show went off the air five years ago -- begins with the arrival of the British Invasion on these shores and the immediate impact groups like The Beatles, The Yardbirds and, particularly, The Rolling Stones has on the life of a suburban Jersey boy, modeled loosely after Chase himself. While both films do a fine job recreating their respective eras, only one really gets past the period trappings and tells a universal story that will resonate equally with viewers who were alive at the time, as well as their descendants.

For Drama Club nerds of a certain age, Les Misérables -- which premiered in London in 1985 and Broadway the year after that -- was likely a formative theatergoing experience, a mega-musical that married soaring anthems with elaborate stagecraft, giving it a grand sense of scale that blew the roof off the theater. You didn't just watch Les Miz... you became part of its world. In retrospect, it's easy to slam the musical for helping to launch the still-ongoing era of Blockbuster Theater, where budget-swollen shows frequently put more effort into the spectacle than the songs and story (looking at you, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark). But almost three decades on, Les Misérables, adapted from Victor Hugo's sprawling 19th-century tome, remains a case where all of the elements are in harmony with each other. On their own, songs like "Who Am I?", "Stars" and "One Day More" are stirring; when paired with the revolving turntable set, the intricate lighting design and the building of the barricade, they become transcendent.

While this remake of the 1976 cult classic focuses on the titular Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) and her sister (Carmen Ejogo), it's hard to ignore the presence of Whitney Houston as the matriarch of the family, Emma. Her screentime is fairly limited, but given that this is her final movie, it makes her a lot harder to ignore. Unfortunately, this is far from her finest cinematic performance; she's very stilted in her delivery throughout, although the crowd that I saw the film with didn't seem to mind. Even her big gospel number wasn't mind-blowing -- just solid, but not chill-inducing. Still, it earned applause from the people in attendance. So for all you devoted Whitney fans out there, go, enjoy and just don't think too much about it... though you'd be better off watching The Bodyguard again. For everyone else? I'd say give this movie a pass, as Jordin Sparks's turn is not going to land her an Oscar, like fellow American Idol alum Jennifer Hudson managed to do with Dreamgirls.