Best Movie Ever?

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2003)

I'm really not inclined to say "best movie ever" about any film, so maybe I should wait until I have more time to digest this movie. But throughout this film I was overcome by the sheer craftsmanship of it. From the production, to the acting, to the directing, to the cinematography, to the casting, to the location scouting - and in how many more categories is this film excellent?
Many, many times, it could have gone sappy, been overdone, been pretentious, been slipshod, but through even the most difficult scenes the quality was kept at the highest level.
And the tension is excellenlty held and drawn out. Not having read the third book, I was amazed at how many truly tense and fearful moments there were in the movie, my teeth even started chattering a few times. But then, I've done some acting myself, and when I go to a movie, I strive to keep myself as far as possible from a cynical state of mind, and I focus on letting the actors on the screen affect me how they will. Speaking of that, I cried many times during this film, and would have cried more had I been alone.
If not the best movie of all time, ROTK should at least win the Best Picture award, because that one goes the the producers, and the producers of LOTR deserve such an award for having the guts and the vision to do the whole thing in one shot, and to do it up right.