Exceptional film-making!

Rating: 10/10 (23 December 2002)

**Very minor spoiler ahead**
The Two Towers is film-making at its best.
I enjoyed Fellowship of the Ring immensely, but felt that at places it would have been better to depart from literal faithfulness to the book to be more true to the spirit. The Two Towers does just that. The Two Towers glosses over lengthy sections of the book that would have been less than cinematic and enhances elements that reveal characters' motivations more clearly.
I found only one section--from the reappearance of Gandalf to the exile of Grima--to be anything less than exceptional. Perhaps a little consolidating there would have helped. But otherwise, the movie grabs you at the start and never lets go until an ending that left my companions who saw it with me and had never read the book begging me to tell them what comes next.
The multitude of stories going on at once flow together seamlessly and the character development that never quite established itself in the The Fellowship of the Ring came through with a wallop.
The combination of amazing acting and mind-blowing CGI that made Gollum a character that truly engages both our sympathy and our disgust is an incredible achievement in itself. I never thought I would ever find myself wishing that a CGI character could be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award.
But the greatest marvel of it all is way in which Jackson can keep all of these story threads rushing forward without overloading his audience. Masterful work!