6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) (Dir. Peter Jackson)
New Zealander Peter Jackson pulled off the impossible when he successfully transformed English novelist J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings into cinema’s best film trilogy.
Crafting each movie with an emphasis on action (and less on campy characters like Tom Bombadil), Jackson re-captured the magic of the epic fantasy movie – and none better than the first entry in the series, The Fellowship of the Ring, in which nine unlikely companions set out on a dangerous quest to destroy a potentially dooming artifact. This is the tightest and most re-watchable entry in the series, helped by its character relationships and relentless stream of eye-popping set pieces.