If you think musicals can only be feel-good, well then, “willkommen” to Cabaret, a bleak stage-to-screen song-and-dancer about the rise of Nazism in 1930s Berlin as it plays out in the titular Kit Kat Klub. Only the second film from Bob Fosse – the choreographer turned stage director turned film visionary with a style so iconic it’s still instantly recognizable four decades after his death – Cabaret will knock you sideways. Playful, provocative, and deadly serious about fascism’s creep and the dangers of burying your head in the sand, it also features career-best performances from Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey as, respectively, the club’s cabaret singer and its slippery emcee. – Kimberley Jones
