This is tough, because it's not really a movie

Rating: 10/10 (28 December 2001)

All of the comments that you've seen here will become immediately understandable once you understand a central truth about this film: it is not a movie.
LotR:TFotR is an artistic travelogue of a novel. Its purpose (as far as I can tell) was to put images to a story that we already know and love.
Viewed only as a movie in its own right, it's hard to imagine that it could be considered a great one. The plot isn't an encapsulation of a short story or novella that can be told in a couple of hours. It doesn't revolve around a few characters simple enough that they can be fully developed in a couple of hours. It can't, by itself, have a plot, fully developed characters, an ending, and all the other things that are the sine non qua of a great movie, because at best it's only 1/3 of a story.
It could only ever possibly (at best) be a travesty to turn this book into a "movie" in the traditional sense.
On the other hand, there's also no way that it could be a faithful adaptation of the book. Issues of length aside, all of the previously mentioned "flaws" would doom it to being incomprehensible and as non- "micro-emotional" as the original. You can't take a true epic, one where learning to care about the characters and their story takes a thousand printed pages, and adapt it to the screen.
At best (and, WOW, what a best this was), you can paint a picture of the first installment of this 3-volume novel (it was never a trilogy... it doesn't have the structure of one... none of the books stands alone).

Viewed in that light, LotR:TFotR was stunning and perfect. You don't have to see all the scenes in the book, nor could you. In fact, you don't want the same proportion of the "movie" devoted to various occurances as happened in the book. It's actually a plus that the "movie" paid close attention to things that were skipped over in the novel. If you just wanted a copy of the novel, read the novel.
Also, the movie did a better job of conveying the terror of the flight from the Shire than did the books... It's pretty hard to be terrified continuously for ~100 pages...
Ok, I'm as annoyed by some of the liberties taken with the plot as the next rabid Tolkien fan... I have, after all, just finished my 44th reading of the LotR. But as far as I can tell, they were all pretty much necessary.

Let's start with the fact that 27 years of history were compressed into a 30 minute chase scene. Or should we start there? Those years weren't dwelled on in the book either. They added to the story, but only in a very peripheral way (by providing enough time for various other events to happen in the backstory that wasn't exposited until the 2nd and 3rd volumes). In turn, though, that langorous pace detracted mightily from the terror of the Nazgul...
Moving on from there, there's the omission of the Tom Bombadil scene, but in the plot of the books, all this served (besides some comic relief) was to explain how a couple of hobbits acquired some cool weapons that were later important to the plot. Having the heir of a king from times past give them weapons serves this purpose just as well, and takes a lot less time. Besides, given all the controversy over Bombadil, all it would have accomplished to show this scene would have been to p**s off all the various people whose theories about him weren't supported by the film. :-)
Glorfindel is a throwaway character in the book too, BTW...
I could have done without the dwarf-tossing joke, though.
All in all, it did almost perfectly what it set out to do. As for those that say there wasn't enough beauty in the film... I have to wonder which "movie" those people were watching...
How does one compare this to other movies? You can't, which is why it's at the top of the heap for now... Probably to avoid that you'd have to have a new category, which would hold only this film.