"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold." So begins Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam's fever-dream adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's seminal work of gonzo reportage. Starring Johnny Depp as Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, and Benicio Del Toro as his partner in crime, Dr Gonzo, the film was famously slammed on its release—Roger Ebert described it as a "horrible mess of a movie, without shape, trajectory or purpose"—but has since become a cult classic, much like its source material. And Gilliam's bravura realisation of Thompson's famous wave speech is itself worth the price of admission: "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." Screening tonight at the Rooftop Cinema, Fear and Loathing kicks off a week of eclectic, must-see films. Director Jonathan Caouette may have gone quiet after his 2003 iMovie opus Tarnation, but All Tomorrow's Parties, his found-footage documentary about the rock festival of the same name, looks like a fascinating follow-up. And then there's Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino: The Last Emperor, which leaves the other leading fashion documentary of last year, The September Issue, for dead. Not only is Valentino a more interesting subject than Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the film itself is funnier, more dramatic and more moving. And its climax—which uses Nino Rota's music from Fellini's 8 1/2 to draw some very clever parallels—is outstanding.

Review, 2 January 2010