Simply brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2001)

My background: I have read Lord of the Rings about 5 times, but I thought I was content to see someone else's interpretation even when it differs from the images I formed reading the book. And Peter Jackson's earlier `Heavenly Creatures' is the only film released in the 90s to force its way into my all-time Top Ten, but I have seen `The Frighteners', so I know he is not infallible.
So overall the odds were that I would love this movie. The biggest risk was that I might have set my expectations too high. But in the event they were exceeded. On my first viewing I did everything wrong, going to a midnight session when I was already tired, at a multiplex I hadn't been to before, and which turned out to have inferior projection and sound, and despite my best intentions, taking with me some preconceptions about how some scenes should be played. But I came out thinking of it as a masterpiece, just slightly flawed by the fact that several scenes hadn't been played my way. I was undecided whether it rated 10/10, or merely 9 (I use the 10/10 rating to identify my Top Ten movies of all time - if any new movie gets that rating and moves into my Top Ten, one of the existing ones must drop down to 9).
However on a second viewing at a better theatre (so full I had to leave my preconceptions outside) I was surprised to see that many of what I had thought were flaws had disappeared or been greatly reduced. One of them, the different approach to the character of Aragorn, and his relationship to Boromir, had been magically transformed into a major strength, setting up the very moving ending, with the too-late reconciliation between the two.

No other movie that I have seen for the first time within the past 30 years has so moved me that I cannot stop thinking about it a week later. No other movie I have seen for the first time in that period has left me with such desire to go back and see it again.
Dr Strangelove drops out of my all-time Top Ten to make room for it.