middle ground

Rating: 9/10 (19 December 2002)

alright, I saw it--the unfortunate thing about movies such as this is that one builds up anticipation so much that a movie cannot really impress but only live up to expectations or disappoint
That being said--here's the review
The movie is good--not the best movie of all time, but definately something that will be remembered years down the line--I would hazard to say that this trilogy is turning out to be the Star Wars of wizards and swords and what not--a classic--hard to outdo
Gollum is absolutely amazing--while there are some points where it is hard to believe he his not CGI--he is the best CGI done in movies to this point--I wouldn't be surprised if he was nominated for an oscar--and won--the voice acting is superb--but also the facial expressions, body language, etc. is really amazing acting--I call it acting because someone has to come up with that stuff, and all the expressions and whatnot are so...real that its hard not to believe them--plus the fact that he is a emotionally tortured character gives the "actor" alot of chances to undergo a range of emotions
I couldn't take Legolas snowboarding down the stairs--it was only 10 seconds, I guess--but, come on--what warrior would ever do that--thats just too gimmicky--and the rest of the movie (thank god)doesn't do gimmicky garbage like that--take note george lucas
Faramir's (spoiler) departure from his character in the book I do not think has any real purpose in the movie--it doesn't add to the movie at all, so why do it?
While many hate the Arwen scenes, I didn't think they were too bad--we needed to see Aaragorn's emotional reaction to Eowyn--there is obvious attraction in both the book and the movie between these two--and what is Aaragorn going to think about in a situation like this but Arwen--Peter Jackson needed to add some depth to Aaragorn, to make the audience identify with him more, and this is how he's trying to do it
although I believe there to be flaws with this movie, I still believe that Peter Jackson is doing as good a job bringing Tolkein's work to life as could possibly be done, given the obvious limitations in dealing with such a historic and dense trilogy--it is impossible to please everybody--and I think the main reasons one cannot say these are the greatest movies of all time is because one cannot effectively communicate the full scale of these works in only 9 hours of film--in fact thats probably the main problem with these movies--too much going on--its all spectacular, but following the different plots can be burdensome in a movie even though they aren't in the book