Excellent film, good set-up for Return of the King

Rating: 9/10 (2 October 2013)

This was an outstanding film. It had excellent use of practical effects combined with CGI, and continued the character and plot development quite nicely. I was a little disappointed at first with the changes made to Faramir, but after hearing the director's reasoning I must conclude that he has a good point. Treebeard grew very tiring though. I know that's kind of the point, and the Ents' behavior is even remarked upon, but it didn't make it drag on any less. Gollum was awesome. Andy Serkis really knocked it out of the park with this character, setting a whole new standard for performance-capture. The big battle was good, but lack of variation had a very slight detrimental effect. I also enjoyed the new characters introduced, though I wish we could've seen more of Eomer. Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone.