Best movies like Cabaret

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia.

Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard teaches young Rick Martin everything he knows about playing, so Rick becomes a star musician, but a troubled marriage and the desire to play pure jazz instead of commercial swing songs cause him problems.

Good girls Merritt, Melanie, Tuggle and Angie - all students at mid-western Penmore University - are planning on going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for spring break to get away from the mid-western snow despite not having much money to spend once there. On the drive down, they admit their real purpose is to go where the boys are.

Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.

An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.

Clarinetist Stan has a nightmare about killing a man in a mirrored room. But when he wakes up and finds blood marks on himself and a key from the dream, he suspects that it may have truly happened.

A bandleader, desperate to get his band's instruments out of hock, promises the pawnshop clerk--an aspiring songwriter--that he'll let the band's female singer do the clerk's songs at a local club if he will let the band "borrow" their instruments at night. The clerk's girlfriend, however, thinks that the band singer is after more than her boyfriend's songs.

Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.

Naoto Kiba takes on the task of protecting thug Junpei who embezzled 500 million yen from Okinawa's largest gangster gangs, Soryu-kai.

Masaki, a baseball player and gas-station attendant, gets into trouble with the local Yakuza and goes to Okinawa to get a gun to defend himself. There he meets Uehara, a tough gangster, who is in serious debt to the yakuza and planning revenge.

Nick comes to New York to temporarily live with a jazz musician friend of his late father's named Cal while his mom is in rehab. During his time in the city, he befriends a group of kids who show him what New York has to offer.

Two brothers on different sides of the law go head-to-head.

New York City, 1957. Lionel Essrog, a private detective living with Tourette syndrome, tries to solve the murder of his mentor and best friend, armed only with vague clues and the strength of his obsessive mind.

In the sixties, Eddie and the cruisers was the hottest band around. But the tragic death of its lead singer broke the band up. Only Eddie is not dead. He works as a carpenter in Montreal. His love of music forces him to create a new band which will have to struggle with its anonymity.

With the help of their mentor Felix, a group of the best friends and first-time thieves steal a valuable statuette for a ruthless black market art dealer. After the amateurs botch the delivery of the objet d'art, the dealer kills Felix and forces the remaining four to "find" $1 million within a week's time or face certain death.

When a corrupt American businessman tries to strong arm his way into businesses in Newcastle, England, he is thwarted by a club attendant and his waitress girlfriend.

Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.

When a young woman meets an aspiring saxophonist in her father’s record shop in 1950s Harlem, their love ignites a sweeping romance that transcends changing times, geography, and professional success.

Malcom's done with his life. Only the noise of Crystal Meth gives him a reason to keep going - everything else it has long regardless. Equipped with a bag full of weapons and self-made bombs, he makes his way to the nearby mall to really stir things up. On his personal war campaign, he not only changes his life radically, but also the fate of other people who are in the wrong place at the same time: a teenager whose favorite pastime is smoking pot in his dreary existence, a housewife, where their best days have been left behind, a greedy businessman whose only desire is to increase his wealth and a depressed pervert.

Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a city council member. Evidence about the case leads the D.A. to Tachibana, struggling to go straight after involvement with the mob and a prison sentence for killing the man responsible for the rape and suicide of his fiancée. One of Tachibana's friends is Keiko, the daughter of the dead councilman and the ward of another powerful official. How do these stories connect?

Reynolds plays an ex-soldier-of-fortunish character in Vegas, taking "Chaperone" jobs, fighting with the mob, and trying to get enough money together to move to Venice, Italy.

Will Graham, a former London crime boss who has left his former life to live as a recluse in the forest. Haunted by the blood of those he has murdered, Will wishes never to return. But when his brother commits suicide, following a sexual assault at the hands of a volatile car dealer, Will returns to London to discover the cause of his brother's death and administer justice to those responsible.

An examination, shown through both interviews and performances, of the avant-garde free jazz movement which reigned during the 1960s.

It is the story of Ted Lewis, popular band leader and clarinettist. The music for the film was written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke, except for "St. Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy and "Tiger Rag". The film's title comes from Lewis's catchphrase "Is everybody happy?" The film's soundtrack exists on Vitaphone discs preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, but the film itself is considered a lost film, according to the Vitaphone Project website. A five minute clip from the film can be found on YouTube.

This film is about a famous jazz saxophonist, Izzy, whose life is forever changed after he is accidentally shot.

Muraki, a hardboiled Yakuza gangster, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder. Revisiting his old gambling haunts, he meets Saeko, a striking young upper-class woman who is out seeking thrills, and whose presence adds spice to the staid masculine underworld rituals. Muraki becomes her mentor while simultaneously coping with the shifts of power that have affected the gangs while he was interred. When he notices a rogue, drug-addicted young punk hanging around the gambling dens, he realizes that Saeko's insatiable lust for intense pleasures may be leading her to self-destruction.

After yakuza boss Kurata dissolves his own criminal empire, a rival kingpin offers a position to Kurata's top operative, Tetsuya "Phoenix Tetsu" Hondo. When the fiercely loyal Tetsu declines, Otsuka taps unstoppable Tatsuzo the "Viper", a ruthless gun-for-hire, to assassinate him. As the Viper trails his target through the countryside, the agile Phoenix Tetsu grows concerned that one of his former associates has betrayed him.

Saxophone player Clyde meets a woman named Flowers, and teaches her to dance. He later discovers that gangster boss "Blackjack" is also in love with her. "Blackjack" is also battling gang boss Mike Luego in a violent turf war.

Darren McGavin is David Ross, a private investigator playing a game of follow the money. A simple case of embezzling turns bad quickly when bodies start dropping and the savvy P.I. is the primary suspect in an attractive woman's death. This NBC TV movie served as a pilot for the later series.

After she's been attacked in her apartment, Cathy starts reliving the event in her dreams. She seeks help at a sleep disorder research center, but in doing so she encounters some unexpected results.

Buddy Rogers and Marian Nixon playing the grown children of feuding German-Americans Frank Morgan and Joseph Cawthorn. Romance blossoms between Rogers and Nixon, while Morgan and Cawthorn continue muttering Teutonic imprecations at one another.

When a young Yakuza torments the customers in a rival crime family's nightclub, it is not long before his dead body is found. Soon, inter-family retaliation follows, resulting in the death for a prominent crime boss. Devastated by this turn of events, the temperamental Kenzaki vows to avenge his boss's death and, as bloody violence ensues, the body count reaches excessive proportions.

Drummer Stanley Maxton moves to Los Angeles with dreams of opening his own club, but falls in with a gangster and a nightclub dancer and ends up accused of murder.

A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings “walks like a dead man”. Kashiwagi runs into Date, a former correspondent in the Vietnam War. There, Date discovered hell and something snapped in his mind.

New York: Every night the mysterious "Night Owl" goes on the air with her moody radio show. She seems to have an inexplicable influence on some men; several of Julie's friends commit suicide while listening to her voice. She fears for her husband Harry, who becomes more and more distant from her.

A chronological look at the life and career of jazz musician, composer, and performer Dave Brubeck (1920-2012 ), presented through contemporary interviews, archival footage of interviews and performances, and commentary by family, fellow musicians, and aficionados. Emphases include his mother's influence, his wife's invention of college tours, his skill as an accompanist, the great quartet (with Desmond, Morello, and Wright), his ability to find musical ideas everywhere, his orchestral compositions, his religious conversion, and his unflagging sweet nature.

A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life.

A gambling hall owner relocates from New Orleans to Chicago and entertains his patrons with hot jazz by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, and others.

This Japanese melodrama chronicles the exploits of a geisha's beautiful daughter. The daughter is the geisha's pride and she spares nothing to insure that she has a bright future. But the hard-working young woman's dreams of becoming a dressmaker are shattered.... She then becomes a nightclub hostess who plays cards with male patrons using her body as the prize.

This lively film is an unforgettable portrait of legendary vocalist Betty Carter, one of the greatest living exponents of jazz. Uncompromised by commercialism throughout her long career, she has forged alternative criteria for success — including founding her own recording company and raising her two sons as a single parent. Parkerson's special film captures Carter's musical genius, her paradoxical relationship with the public and her fierce dedication to personal and artistic independence.

Shimada is a student of U College. When the college's baseball team wins the day, he and his friend Ito drug two girls they met at the game.

With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.

Despite his efforts of living a normal life as a banker, the life of Toru, the only son of the Yubari Family, becomes disrupted by trouble brought on by his father. When his father’s battle against his rival group the Miike Family ignites, Toru becomes more involved in the turf war than he wished for.

Biopic about jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe (Ko Machida) and his wife, noted writer Izumi Suzuki (Reona Hirota).

When a short-tempered mobster and his gang of thugs try to shake down a neighborhood bar, they're soon confronted with the wrath of its owner - a mysterious southern mother with a dangerous past.

After Shogo Ogami’s death in Hiroshima, Detective Shuichi Hioka successfully implemented Shogo Ogami’s plan, which was to control the yakuza to prevent further gang wars and save innocent people from getting harmed. Shuichi Hioka manages the criminal organizations, but, due to one evil person who gets released from prison, the situation drastically changes.

Toronto jazz saxophonist Dezi Williams is withdrawn from his band and tries to spend his days in solitude as an instrument repair technician, but is haunted by his memories, a mounting pain in his jaw, and an intrusive new neighbour.

The young jazz saxophonist Morris Poole is at the height of his career. When his wife dies he is almost overcome by grief and blames himself. When after a while he finds a new love, he ends up in a situation that reminds him of his wife's mysterious death.

The moment he's released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto's precious stones.