The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

Honourable Mentions: Infernal Affairs, Spider-Man, 28 Days Later

The phrase "cultural reset" gets thrown around a lot, but it's tough to describe Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as anything but. The New Zealand-born director marshalled a production that defined fantasy in the 21st century, taking the most seminal of genre texts from J. R. R. Tolkien and creating an awards and box office phenomenon befitting their reputation.

As with other franchise megahit Star Wars, there's a case for each of the three original LOTR films for being the best, and like with Star Wars again, you can't really go wrong with the second.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is the perfect compromise between the more intimate Fellowship of the Ring and the epic Return of the King, as our protagonists branch off into three distinct groupings and try to survive, battle, and destroy the forces of Sauron and Saruman. Jackson weaves these three stories together in a coherent and thoroughly compelling manner, whether it's the introduction of Gollum as Frodo and Samwise travel to Mordor, or the return of Gandalf and the siege of Helm's Deep.

A perfect blockbuster through and through.