Frodo and Sam, with the Ring in tow, are marching ever closer to Mount Doom, guided by the treacherous Gollum. Gandalf helps the world of men to survive endless onslaughts from Sauron’s army of orcs, and Aragorn prepares to take up the crown that’s had no bearer for many years. This, dear reader, will be my heart poured on the table. This is my all time favorite movie. It won’t be an objective review, picking apart what works and what doesn’t: it’s going to be an unbridled praise. No film connects with me quite like this one does. A couple come very close, but none hit the highs that this one does for me. The best place I can think of to start is the characters. When you have a massive fantasy world like Middle Earth, you do need good characters to connect with, so that you can get invested in the world around them. Luckily, with the writing of original author J.R.R. Tolkien, and with some revisions from director Jackson and writers Boyens and Walsh, the characters you get invested in here are way beyond being what one considers to be quality. Each of the main cast, even if some of them don’t have massive arcs, are still so lovable. It’s to the point that I cry tears of joy every time Aragorn gets a happy ending, and why my heart feels like it grows when we see Sam get married and starting a family. If you watch the extended editions, you spend 12+ hours with them all, and they start to feel like an extension of yourself, in an odd way. But, through great characters, will come great stakes. Just put them through natural peril, and bam, you have a conflict with heightened stakes. The build up to the war in the story feels massive, and it expertly handles “show, don’t tell”. Instead of telling us that things are dire, they show us things are dire. We see garrisons of soldiers fail, we see how powerful Sauron is, we see the numbers in his army: it’s all natural. This is also the culmination of the trilogy, and sometimes it’s very hard for a third part to keep the momentum, and try not to drop the ball. I’m sure you can tell, but this one doesn’t do that. With each moment in not only this one, but the trilogy itself, it all seems to get better and better, and it doesn’t falter once. Everything is tied up, all the characters get deserved endings, there’s no questions left to be answered, and all in Middle Earth is well. And once you arrive at the text that says “The End”, it leaves me bewildered that 6 letters can somehow make me cry from a place that no other can, but also leaves me wanting more at the same time.