How do people interact with music in their daily lives? For some it's an escape, a distraction from routine. Some people use music as a means to express themselves in ways that other communication doesn't allow them. For others it's simply noise in the background of their life. John Turturro calls his third outing as a writer-director Romance & Cigarettes a "homemade musical," and it offers a look at how music functions, particularly as escapism, for a working-class New York neighborhood.

While other musicals have had working-class characters, the fact that the stories were about the working class didn't affect the style of their presentation. They still had the talented singers, skilled choreography, and slick production of any other musical. Turturro takes the fact that his characters are working-class and seemingly makes Romance & Cigarettes with the idea of What if the working class made a musical? Several members of the cast have musical or dancing talents: Susan Sarandon appeared in the 1975 cult classic musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Kate Winslet has sung in many of her films and even released the single "What If"; Christopher Walken was originally trained as a dancer; and Mandy Moore is, of course, a pop singer. However, with the exception of maybe Walken, none of these actors are known as musical theater actors, and lead James Gandolfini has no musical or dancing experience that I can tell. Carrying a tune seems to be the extent of Gandolfini's talents. The lack of professional training amongst the leads and much of the supporting cast gives the musical numbers a delightfully raw yet heartfelt quality. While Turturro does employ professionals as background dancers for some of the numbers, he also recruits actual firemen and shop workers to dance in some chorus lines, which further creates the impression that this is what it might look like if a working-class community suddenly burst into song and dance. There's a lack of polish that's both refreshing and inviting.

Gandolfini plays Nick Murder, an overweight bridge construction worker with cataracts, who is cheating on his wife Kitty (Sarandon). When she discovers the affair, Kitty calls on her cousin Bo (Walken) to help her find Nick's mistress, a dirty-mouthed sexpot named Tula (Winslet). All of the characters feel trapped in their their respective lives. Turturro includes a lot of footage of planes taking off overhead, trains running, but none of the characters are ever on them. Nick spends his whole day sitting on a bridge, something that's supposed to get people from one side of something to another, and yet he doesn't go anywhere. The characters can't seem to make it out of their neighborhood. The Murders' three daughters, two of whom look to be in their 30s, still live at home. The "cool guy" on the block is pushing 30 as well and is trying the same moves he used to pick up older sister Connie to seduce teen-aged Baby. Nick is developing cataracts, losing his eyesight and he feels limited by his failing body, which is why he responds to Tula, who is frustrated by her job selling lingerie to rich, bored housewives, when she says that she thinks he's sexy.

With the exception of a couple snippets performed by the Murder daughters, none of the music was written specifically for the film. All of the songs are pop tunes, mostly from the 1960s and earlier, and most aren't very familiar. "Piece of My Heart" and "I Want Candy" were the only ones that I recognized. Many of the songs are used for fantastical music and dance numbers, but some of them are framed as part of everyday life, demonstrating how music interweaves with the day-to-day. Though it does turn into more of a musical number, "Piece of My Heart" as well as another gospel-sounding song are performed by a church choir, and for many people music allows them to express their faith and communicate with god. When Nick is talking on the phone with Tula, he turns on the radio to afford them some privacy. The Murder daughters and Fryburg are in bands, hoping that music might be a means for them to find fame. And when Nick is trying to court Kitty after dumping Tula he sings her a song, both reminding Kitty of a shared experience and expressing his feelings in a way he might not be able to with just words. As for cousin Bo, he obviously idolizes Elvis Presley, a persona that he borrows perhaps to escape his daily life but definitely because it makes him feel good.

Across the board the acting is very solid, but Kate Winslet pretty much steals the movie, affecting what I'm told is a fairly credible Lancashire accent to play dirty-talking, foul-mouthed Tula. She also proves herself to be a pretty good dancer as well. Steve Buscemi also has a memorable but smaller part as Nick's co-worker Angelo. I found it odd that Mary-Louise Parker and Eddie Izzard have such small parts, and I suppose it's a testament to Turturro that they appear in the film. While I can find no fault with his acting, James Gandolfini was a drawback for me because I'm not a big fan of his work. But despite his size, Gandolfini gives a very gentle, non-threatening quality to Nick that surprised me.

The film feels a little uneven in regards to tone, beginning as light entertainment but ending on a very somber note. If Romance & Cigarettes were a boat, one end would be heavier the other, which would cause the boat to sink. I like that the trajectory of the film isn't toward a idyllic, happy ending, but Turturro needn't kill anyone. And while I like Bo, I find the inclusion of his character puzzling seeing as he doesn't have a character arc. I think Turturro included Christopher Walken because of his undeniable dancing talent, but I would have preferred he cast Walken as Nick and cut Bo's storyline. I think Bo cuts into Kitty's character development.

I like that Turturro includes men and women of all shapes and sizes in his cast. Even playing the sexpot, Kate Winslet has a little heavier body type than usual because she had recently given birth to her son Joe. He also presents some refreshing portrayals of gender. None of men are stereotypically masculine and Nick is even a little feminized. Men are criticized for being oversexed, but Turturro shows through Nick that they can be redeemed. The women also seem to have control over their bodies and their sexualities, which is more significant than it may sound. Romance & Cigarettes may not be a perfect film, but from script to style to music it is definitely unique. And sometimes that's really all I ask for in a movie.

The Blues Brothers, born out of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live, is two parts musical, two parts action movie, and one part comedy.

The musical parts are fantastic, original performances by R&B legends Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, James Brown, and John Lee Hooker as well as The Blues Brothers Band. Charles, Franklin, and Calloway also get a chance to act and are pretty entertaining, especially Ray Charles as the gun-totin', bilking music store owner.

Most of the comedy works as well because the humor is pretty low-key. Screenwriters Dan Akroyd and John Landis mostly go for chuckles instead of belly laughs though some of the gags are fairly absurd, like the Blues Brothers continually picking themselves up and walking away from explosions without ever considering that maybe someone is trying to kill them. And, of course, the "We're on a mission from God" line has become a classic.

The action pieces consist mainly of car chases, since Elwood is made out to be something of a stunt driver and the Blues Brothers have a knack of pissing off one of group of people after another. There are some impressive car chases in this movie, one inside a shopping mall and one involving at least a dozen-car pileup in the streets of Chicago. They are intricate, destructive, and grandiose in scale.

But even though the three elements of the movie might work well on their own terms, in combination they turn into a big, silly mess. I admit that I didn't like a lot of the action and the comedic subplot of Carrie Fisher trying to blow up Jake because I don't like seeing a lot of destruction. My practical nature kicks in and I start thinking, "What a waste! And who's going to clean this mess up"? The Blues Brothers follows the formula of a lot of silly 1970s comedies that I like, such as What's Up, Doc? and Foul Play, but in comparison to those this movie is pretty long. The studio release was 2 hours, 13 minutes and there is an extended version available on DVD. For me, there just wasn't enough plot to sustain that long a running length and I found myself getting bored. Though I admit that Jake and Elwood Blues are iconic characters, I think The Blues Brothers is something of a niche film, appealing the most to adults who witnessed the creation of The Blues Brothers on SNL and the original theater release of this film. But it's a fun enough popcorn movie that features some wonderful performances by R&B greats.

I knew that RENT was in trouble from its first scene, a rendition of "Seasons Of Love" (whose chorus consists of singing "How about love?" a bunch of times) set in an empty theater. Note to director Chris Columbus: the goal of making a musical film is not to duplicate the experience of watching a stage musical. That's why we have film and theater. There's both, you see, because they are different.

But RENT's problems go deeper than a misguided director's attempt to recreate a theater atmosphere in a movie. None of the characters leave much of an impression, because actual characterization has been reduced to mere labels. Mimi? Heroin-addicted stripper. Tom? Anarchist, HIV-positive, um, professor? Grad student? Something academic. I'm still unsure. Mark? Jewish filmmaker. Roger? HIV-positive, former addict musician... You get the idea. These peoples' passions, fears, attitudes, and motivations remain largely unexplored, reducing them to one-dimensional caricatures. At the end of the film, I didn't feel as though I really knew any of these people nor had much investment in their fates.

If a character succeeds at distinguishing themself from the pack, it's usually due to an actor being likable rather than having the opportunity to show much depth. Tom has almost nothing of a storyline, but Jesse L. Martin is charismatic so he is enjoyable to watch. I like Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson from other work, so I had more interest in their characters, though I struggled to remain interested in Dawson's storyline for which I fault the script and a miscast romantic foil rather than her. Idina Menzel is the only actor previously unknown to me who really caught my attention with her energetic and fairly nuanced performance as Maureen.

Thoms and Dawson are the only actors who did not appear in the original stage production, so many of the actors have been occupying these characters' skins for years. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they can make the transition to the big screen. While Adam Pascal is the only actor carried over from the play who seems completely out of his element, Anthony Rapp and Wilson Jermaine Heredia are only decent, and Taye Diggs is fine but unexceptional in his very small role. Pascal offers at best a lukewarm performance as Roger and fails to generate much screen presence. But as I said, I think Martin and Menzel are good, the former perhaps benefiting from his years on Law & Order. The chemistry amongst the ensemble is pretty good – the cast fares better when they are all together – but it fizzles between some of the pairings. Thoms and Menzel have great chemistry, making Joanne and Maureen one of very few fictional couples who manage to seem like they would have some fun in the sack without the inclusion of a sex scene. Martin and Heredia never really sell the romantic aspect of their relationship but do seem genuinely affectionate. Pascal and Dawson, however, couldn't generate heat with a flame thrower.

I cannot say much that is positive about Jonathan Larson's music and lyrics. Granted, most of the songs are catchy and fairly memorable, but I find the lyrics poorly written, often saccharine, mostly melodramatic, and in some cases laughable. They offer some modest character moments, but Joanne is the only one who actually gets some character development out of a song (and, indeed, in the entire film) when she walks down the stairs singing, "Take me for what I am," shedding her insecurities about needing and keeping Maureen. The music sounds straight out of the early nineties, which may not be inappropriate given that the story is set in 1990, but the music does really date the musical, which I found to be detrimental. Larson based RENT on Puccini's opera La Bohéme, which might explain the melodramatic tenor of many songs. But that operatic emotion never really gels with the grim realities of addiction and AIDS that color the film, resulting in an uneven tone and giving an artificial quality to the weightier scenes.

Part of me wants to love RENT, because it's the only musical that features HIV-positive characters, lesbians, gay men, even a drag queen. But even though those types of people might make up my community, it doesn't mean that I find these characters relatable or even recognizable. Visibility in the media does matter to marginalized groups, but I'm still not going to embrace every shallow, inadequate portrayal that comes along.

Liza Minnelli is a name that I've certainly encountered throughout my life, but it's one that has never really conjured a very clear picture. I had falsely summated, from comments made about her, that Ms. Minnelli's modest and short-lived celebrity, generated mostly by her famous, tragic parentage, had faded, and that most references to her had become relegated to drag shows and comedy sketches about washed up celebrities. I also remember being more than a little terrified that one of her husbands was really a ventriloquist dummy come to life. Yes, like that Buffy episode only actually frightening. When she appeared as "Lucille Two" on Arrested Development, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Ms. Minnelli, but Cabaret is obviously her signature performance.

Cabaret is a musical unlike most musicals in a couple of aspects. Most noticeably, it is not a musical designed to make the audience feel good. While musicals have certainly tackled weightier topics, even the rise of Nazi Germany (The Sound of Music), most fall into the romantic comedy genre or at least end on an optimistic note. When Cabaret's final credits start to roll, the only feeling that really lingers is despair. Secondly, the songs are actual musical performances within the story and serve more to establish the cultural backdrop than to develop the characters or to define relationships.

Most of the songs are performed in the cabaret and feature content that underscores an aggrandizement of ambiguous and unrestricted sexuality and a general feeling of mirth and merriment, despite the tumultuous political climate. Two of the performances even use references to the rising Nazi party and antisemitism as punchlines. One song stands in strong counterpoint to the rest, though it too is presented as a musical performance. As Brian and Max share a meal together, a Nazi youth sings "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", which turns a song full of hope and affirmation into a chilling promise of Hitler's Third Reich.

New York Times critic Ben Brantley commented about Ms. Minnelli that "her every stage appearance is perceived as a victory of show-business stamina over psychic frailty... She asks for love so nakedly and earnestly, it seems downright vicious not to respond." Indeed, this quality of wanting to be loved is what makes her portrayal of Sally Bowles so powerful. Assumingly because of Sally's cool relationship with her father, she constantly looks for someone to love her or at least give her some affection for a little while. The cabaret provides a venue where she can, in a socially acceptable way, ask dozens of strangers nightly to love her, and indeed the environment encourages the patrons to love her and find her attractive. Sally thinks for a minute that she can find more permanent love in her relationship with Brian, even though and perhaps even because Brian might be gay, but ultimately she buys into what the cabaret sells: a constant source of frivolity and "divine decadence" to distract her from the troubles and hardships of daily life. Minnelli plays Sally with a perfect combination of believable vulnerability and a certain amount of artifice. As Brian says, "Aren't you ever gonna stop deluding yourself, hmm? Handling Max? Behaving like some ludicrous little underage femme fatale? You're... you're about as fatale as an afterdinner mint!"

For his part, director Bob Fosse accentuates the discongruity between the life of the cabaret and life outside the cabaret through visual cues. He films scenes in the cabaret at odd angles and unflattering close-ups, which in combination with the exaggerated stage make-up makes the world of the cabaret carnivalesque: garrish and off-putting while simultaneously fascinating. Fosse also films both the patrons and performers of the cabaret in still portraits and reflected in uneven surfaces, suggesting an artificial and distorted quality to life inside the Kit Kat Klub.

I have not seen the play version of Cabaret, though it has enjoyed a successful revival under the direction of Sam Mendes in recent years; however, I read that the Brian-Sally-Max love triangle was not part of the original play. I think that it is a lovely addition to the story, adding a rather unexpected twist. The sexual tension between Max and Brian is certainly evident, though subtly played by both Michael York and Helmut Griem, but I never expected that it would become an important piece of the plot. However, screenwriter Jay Allen does not use Brian's homosexuality or bisexuality to turn Cabaret into the typical coming out story or confrontation of homophobia. Brian's admission of an affair with a man only has a more significant impact on Sally because it reveals that they are cheating on each other with the same person.

My only disappointment with Cabaret was that the film version does not include "Don't Tell Mama", a song from the play that I really enjoy. But the film does feature probably the best "Honey, I'm pregnant" scene ever captured on film.

The men look bad. The women look bad. Only Jane Powell escapes this movie unscathed.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is hardly an evolved movie, but my feminist sensibilities weren't nearly as offended as I thought they would be. Even though I don't like them, I can't really fault Stanley Donen for the film's representations of gender and gender roles reflecting the dominate social constructions of the 1950s. The enforcement of gender roles is definitely integral to the plot, but this film is largely an exploration of class.

The film begins in Oregon in 1850 with Adam Pontipee arriving in town to sell his beef, buy some supplies, and find himself a wife. Ignoring warnings that all of the women in town are spoken for due to the high ratio of men to women in the West, Adam takes a stroll around town and runs into Milly, the cook for the local bar. Adam sees a practical, pretty woman who can cook and clean, but Milly falls in love with Adam at first sight. Milly's idealized notions of wedded bliss are immediately confronted with reality when she arrives at her new husband's farm to be greeted by his six brothers, whose manners and hygiene are somewhat different from the townsfolk's to which she is accustomed. Milly quickly begins to teach her new brothers-in-law how to "act like gentlemen" so that they can court some wives of their own.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers lends itself well to a Freudian interpretation. The town and the "deep woods," where the Pontipee brothers live, act as opposing forces, representing the superego and the id. Having grown up in the deep woods, the Pontipees lack a developed ego, due to little exposure to the superego (the town). Moving from town to the deep woods, Milly acts as an agent of the superego and exposes the Pontipees to the cultural structures that have regulated her behavior.

As in much of American storytelling, women appear here as the socializing force, with Milly and "the brides" possessing a little more "super" in their egos. All of the men, even the townsfolk, are portrayed as ids barely held in check by the ego, as the brawl at the barn raising demonstrates. Some men simply suppress the id better than others.

The scene I find most interesting, and embarrassing, is the one in which the women result to catfights after insinuating that some amongst them had been mooning over the brothers. The fights come after they had been stranded in the deep woods for two months, two months during which the girls only had contact with the id (the deep woods) and no connection with the superego (the town). Even though they are women possessing better-developed egos, prolonged exposure to the id affects their behavior, causing them to behave much like the brothers at the beginning of the film.

As musicals go, Seven Brides is fairly entertaining. The songs are catchy enough, but quickly forgotten once the credits roll. Michael Kidd's choreography is the highlight and, arguably, the focus of the film, given that all of the actors, with the exception of only a few, were hired for their dancing abilities. Kidd creates unique musical numbers out of mundane frontier tasks, such as chopping wood and, most famously, barn raising. (Note: I don't think I'd really understood what a barn raising was until I saw this movie. I thought it was just a dance, a metaphorical "raising" of the barn.)

Jane Powell deservedly receives top billing for her portrayal of Milly, which grounds the film. A young, pre-West Side Story Russ Tamblyn also stands out as Gideon. I was happy to see Tommy Rall, though disappointed that his marvelous hoofing skills weren't able to be showcased in this film. I was surprised to learn young Julie Newmar, the original Catwoman, played the unfortunately named Dorcas. I have seen Howard Keel twice now as a leading man — first in Kiss Me, Kate — and I have mixed feelings about his ability in this arena. Milly spends more time with the brothers than with Adam, so Keel is missing during large chunks of the film and frankly I don't really miss him. Keel is a fairly generous actor and freely allows other actors to make the most of their screen time, which sometimes results in his failing to make more of an impression. With the case of both Kiss Me, Kate and Seven Brides, I'm left remembering more of the secondary characters than Keel's.

Ultimately, I have mixed feelings about Seven Brides. I'm too much a feminist to enjoy the story too much, but I was fairly surprised that the women have as much agency as they do in this film. If the film had concluded with the women explaining to their fathers that they choose to marry the Pontipees instead of a mass shotgun wedding I would have been more mollified. However, as a piece of entertainment, Seven Brides, with the help of Michael Kidd's unique choreography, does satisfy.