The last great(ish) thing Terry Gilliam ever did, this adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo travelogue is probably the closest anyone ever got to lifting the lid on Thompson’s dome and accurately portraying the nest of writhing, hyper-aggressive lizards screaming, shitting, and fucking behind his eyeballs. It’s also one of the few movies about being fundamentally altered that works best while seen stone sober. Sure, people love getting ripped out of their fucking gourd and putting on the Johnny and Benicio show (BTW, this is also the last great thing Depp ever did), but the real power of Gilliam’s work is in how he manages to translate the feeling of Hunter’s astronomical fucked-upitude to utterly straight, square minds. by Bobby Roberts