The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by Peter Jackson (2001)
I’m sure that when Peter Jackson — director of such splatter classics as Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Braindead — announced that he was adapting J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, one of the most revered stories in Western literature, more than a few people doubted that he would deliver a modern cinematic epic that verges on transcendent. But that’s precisely what we got with The Fellowship of the Ring. Much of that’s due to the film’s incredible production design and art direction, which transform Tolkien’s Middle-earth into a living, breathing place that I believe can be visited every time I watch the film. Although Jackson’s changes to Tolkien’s story merit criticism in the trilogy’s subsequent titles, here they largely make the film a stronger and more cohesive story. (I’m sure Tom Bombadil has his fans, but he’s not really missed here.) From the first frame to the very last, Jackson and his incredible cast and crew deliver the very definition of movie magic that — to quote Yeats — I feel “in the deep heart’s core” every time I watch it.
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