Simply brilliant, I say!

Rating: 10/10 (7 January 2002)

Others have already praised this movie so much that I will settle on some points that made it perfect for me and give some criticism for details that bothered me. (Minor spoilers ahead, so don't read if you haven't seen it yet.)
First, the acting and the camera work (incl. special effects w/ computer renderings) were stupendous. Second, the plot of the classic story was followed very well and the makers had avoided the trap of 'updating' the plot (like in Costner's Prince of Thieves). There's not much one could have done to make this movie better, but some details come to mind: The omission of Tom Bombadil is one of them, although I understand the reasoning behind the decision. Another lacking detail was the scene where Gandalf escaped from Saruman: there was no explanation of where the bird came that took him away (wasn't it supposed to be Radagast the Brown?). Including some explanation of the Istari might have been useful here to tune in those watchers who have not read their Tolkien (sacrilege, I admit).
All in all, I suspect that those who have not read Tolkien's work or studied the maps of Middle-Earth may have been left a bit baffled by the fast recap of the history in the beginning of the movie and the references to geographic locales when the fellowship is discussing the various routes that they could take when travelling to towards their goal. Perhaps the characters could have pulled out a map of some sort to make those discussions clearer.
Another thing that bothered me was the amount of action the movie threw to the viewers faces: the book offered descriptions of the nature and the journey as well as discussions between the characters that alleviated the scenes between action sequences, whereas the movie seems to rely heavily on the action part of the story. Perhaps too much.
But, despite my critique, I think this is The Best movie that I have ever seen and I expect that the second and third part will follow the same excellent route and take the trilogy into the annals of history. And, perhaps, then a prequel about Isildur might be in order...
10/10 for this one.