the long long return of the king

Finally, finally, I managed to overcome my fear of long non_Hindi_movies and trudge up to watch the final edition in the LOTR trilogy. It's also the only one of the three that I have caught on the big screen. Strong recommendations. Does not feel long. The film maintains its fluid tone. There is the benefit of a strong rich literary source serving as the narrative foundation. The film has lots of scary creepy moments balanced by spans of wonderful sets and CG. Annie Lennox's song running over the end credits is perfect (the lyrics even use notions referred to by Gandalf in the movie). Grouses: (1) I agree with Aranyak that the inevitable moment when Frodo and Sam reach the mouth of the fire pit suffers from choppy editing. It just seems rushed. (2) Given that (1) was hurried, the rest of the inevitable emotional moments seem too slow (barring the great moment when everyone genuflects to the Hobbits). That aside, this is great fun. Be prepared to see a chunk of time just go away, though.